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Linguistics & Grammar vocabulary · Core Concepts

Competence

Meaning in linguistics & grammar, with examples

/ˈkɒmpɪtəns/nounAdvanced term

In linguistics & grammar, competence means: A speaker's unconscious knowledge of the rules of their language, as opposed to performance, which is how they actually use it in real situations, with slips and hesitations.

In Turkish: edinç, dil yetisi, yeti

How it is used

The competence-performance distinction comes from Noam Chomsky (1965). Dell Hymes later proposed communicative competence, which became a basis of communicative language teaching. Teachers also talk about grammatical and pragmatic competence.

Example sentences

  1. A native speaker's competence includes knowing that 'Colorless green ideas sleep furiously' is grammatical but meaningless.

  2. The course aims to develop learners' communicative competence, not just their grammar.

Common collocations

  • linguistic competence
  • communicative competence
  • competence and performance
  • pragmatic competence
  • universal grammarThe theory, associated with Noam Chomsky, that all humans are born with a set of basic grammatical principles shared by all languages, which helps children acquire language.
  • native speakerA person who learned a language from early childhood as one of their first languages and uses it naturally, without having studied it formally.
  • pragmaticsThe study of how context affects meaning: how speakers mean more than they actually say, and how listeners work out intended meanings, politeness and hints.
  • grammarThe system of rules that shows how words change their form and combine into phrases and sentences in a language; also a book that describes these rules.

More terms: Core Concepts

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