[DFHippie]

There are 6 orders of S, V, and O. All are attested, but the orders where O precedes S are vastly less common than those where S precedes O.

The counter-argument to Chomsky's Universal Grammar is that commonalities across language exist because they are all solving similar problems for which there are more or less optimal solutions. In essence, convergent evolution produces similarity. And one might argue that recursive structure isn't a feature but rather the absence of a feature: something to prevent recursion. If you have a rule that says you can make category X out of pieces which may also be of category X, then you have recursion. So using a noun as a modifier of another noun -- "lunch counter" -- produces recursion.