Definition:
The generative grammar stored in the brain that allows a speaker to produce language that other speakers can understand. See also:
Observations:
- "One way to clarify mental or competence grammar is to ask a friend a question about a sentence. Your friend probably won't know why it's correct, but that friend will know if it's correct. So one of the features of mental or competence grammar is this incredible sense of correctness and the ability to hear something that 'sounds odd' in a language."
(Pamela J. Sharpe, Barron's How to Prepare for the TOEFL IBT. Barron's Educational Series, 2006) - "When viewed as the representation of a speaker's linguistic competence, a grammar is a mental system, a cognitive part of the brain/mind, which, if it is one's first native language, is acquired as a child without any specific instruction. . . .
"Descriptive grammars aim at revealing the mental grammar which represents the knowledge a speaker of the language has. They do not attempt to prescribe what speakers' grammars should be."
(Victoria M. Fromin, Introduction, Linguistics: An Introduction to Linguistic Theory. Blackwell, 2000) - "All humans are born with the capacity for constructing a Mental Grammar, given linguistic experience; this capacity for language is called the Language Faculty (Chomsky, 1965). A grammar formulated by a linguist is an idealized description of this Mental Grammar."
(Peter W. Culicover and Andrzej Nowak, Dynamical Grammar: Foundations of Syntax II. Oxford Univ. Press, 2003)
Also Known As: competence grammar, linguistic competence
