Grammatical competence

Grammatical competence 
is the ability to recognize and produce
the distinctive grammatical structures
of a language and to use them
effectively in communication.
  to use the forms of the
language (sounds, words,
and sentence structure).
 Linguistic
competence is the
system of linguistic
knowledge possessed
by native speakers of
a language.
 According to Chomsky, competence is the
'ideal' language system that makes it
possible for speakers to produce and
understand an infinite number of
sentences in their language, and to
distinguish grammatical sentences from
ungrammatical sentences. This is
unaffected by "grammatically irrelevant
conditions" such as speech errors.
 "Linguistic theory is concerned primarily with
an ideal speaker-listener, in a completely
homogeneous speech-community, who knows
its (the speech community's) language
perfectly and is unaffected by such
grammatically irrelevant conditions as memory
limitations, distractions, shifts of attention and
interest, and errors (random or characteristic)
in applying his knowledge of this language in
actual performance." ~1965
Chomsky differentiates competence, which is an idealized
capacity, from performance being the production of actual
utterances. According to him, competence is the ideal speaker-
hearer's knowledge of his or her language and it is the 'mental
reality' which is responsible for all those aspects of language
use which can be characterized as 'linguistic'. Chomsky argues
that only under an idealized situation whereby the speaker-
hearer is unaffected by grammatically irrelevant conditions
such as memory limitations and distractions will performance
be a direct reflection of competence. A sample of natural
speech consisting of numerous false starts and other deviations
will not provide such data. Therefore, he claims that a
fundamental distinction has to be made between the
competence and performance.
One's competence is defined by the
grammar, or set of language rules,
that is represented mentally and
manifested based on his or her own
understanding of acceptable usage
in a given linguistic idiom
 The core components of the
grammar are included in the
speaker's linguistic competence
and these components
corresponds to five of the major
subfields of linguistics:
 Phonetics: The physical production
and perception of the inventory of
sounds used in producing language.
Phonology: The mental organization
of physical sounds and the patterns
formed by the way sounds are
combined in a language, and the
restrictions on permissible sound
combinations.
 Morphology: The identification, analysis and
description of units of meaning in a language.
One will know the inflectional and derivational
morphology present in the language, such as the
affixes of words.
Ex: re-cuddle can be derived but not *re-rich
Syntax: The structure and formation of
sentences. One can distinguish between
grammatical sentences and ungrammatical
sentences.
E.g.: My hair needs washing is acceptable but
not *My hair needs wash
Semantics: Understanding the meaning of sentences. This is also how a user of the language
is able to understand and interpret the non-literal meaning in a given utterance. They are
three distinctions drawn here:
(i) Meaningful and non-meaningful sentences
Ex: The accident was seen by thousands is
meaningful but not *The accident was looked by
thousands

(ii) Same structure but different meanings

Ex: The cow was found by the stream versus The
cow was found by the farmer

(iii) Different structures and still be able to relate

the meanings
Ex: The police examined the bullet.
The bullet was examined by the police.