My assignment of Competence Theory (Chomsky & Generative Linguistics)
The notion of competence according to Chomsky is what forms the foundation of generative linguistics and can be defined as the knowledge that speakers have regarding their language, which can be grammatical, syntactic, and the ability to produce potentially limitless sentences using finite resources (Chomsky, 1978). Competence is abstract, inner and idealised as it is the hidden system of cognition that facilitates linguistic behaviour . Chomsky compares that with performance, which involves real use of language with its mistakes, pauses and processing restrictions (Chomsky, 2011). This difference enables generative linguistics to concentrate on the mental grammar behind linguistic capacity, and not on the variability and flaws in speech in the real world. The competence helps in underpinning the generative business of explaining the natural language know-how that is a component of human cognitive system ( Freidin , 2016). One exam...
