Competence vs. performance; theoretical vs. applied: The development and interplay of two dichotomies in modern linguistics

Frederick J. Newmeyer
University of Washington

The past 30 years have seen marked shifts in the generative grammarians’ view of the nature of linguistic competence. The rule-oriented period of early Transformational Grammar, which was ushered in by the publication of Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures in 1957, gave way a decade later to the principle-oriented period of Generative Semantics. By the mid-1970s, the rule-oriented Lexicalist framework had replaced Generative Semantics. Since around 1981, the principle-oriented Principles & Parameters approach is the one to which a majority of generative syntacticians hold allegiance. Each shift in the generativists’ view of the nature of competence has been accompanied by a revised view of how concepts derived from generative syntax might be applied to second language teaching. Since 1957, three different strategies for applying the theory have been propounded: the ‘mechanical’, the ‘terminological’, and the ‘implicational’, each of which has been instantiated during each period in the development of generative syntax. The paper closes with some speculative remarks about the feasibility of applying generativist theory to second language teaching.

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