Linguistic competence was defined in 1965 by Noam Chomsky as a speaker’s underlying ability to produce grammatically correct expressions.^[1]

Linguistic competence refers to knowledge of language, rather than use of language, which is referred to as linguistic performance.^[2] Theoretical linguistics primarily studies linguistic competence: knowledge of a language possessed by "an ideal speaker-listener". Competence as defined by Chomsky and used in some branches of linguistics is an idealized abstraction, intended to filter out "grammatically irrelevant conditions" such as errors or social or individual variation.^[1]

The notion of communicative competence, which focuses on socially-situated performance, was developed by Dell Hymes in response to the abstract nature of linguistic competence.^[3]

[edit] References

1. ^ ^{a b} Chomsky, Noam. (1965) Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
2. ^ Ottenheimer, H.J. (2006). The Anthropology of Language: An Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology. Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth
3. ^ Hymes, Dell. (2000 [1965]) "On communicative competence." In Alessandro Duranti (ed) Linguistic Anthropology: A Reader pp 53-73. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

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