Generative Grammar and Linguistic Competence

According to Chomsky, to learn a language is to develop a grammar for it – a generative grammar which assigns a definite structure and a definite meaning to each of a definite set of sentences. This forms the speaker’s linguistic competence , which represents a distinct faculty of the mind, called the faculty of language . This view has been widely criticised, from many separate angles and by many different authors, including some of Chomsky’s pupils. As one of the earliest and most persistent c