Why We Still Need Knowledge of Language1

tion of linguistics. The case against Chomsky is based on two principal claims. First, that we can separate the study of linguistic competence from the study of its outputs: only the latter belongs to linguistic inquiry. Second, Chomsky’s account of a speaker’s competence as consisiting in the mental representation of rules of a grammar for his language is mis-taken. I shall argue, fi rst, that Devitt fails to make a case for separating the study of outputs from the study of competence, and second, that Devitt mis-characterises Chomsky’s account of competence, and so his objections miss their target. Chomsky’s own views come close to a denial that speak-er’s have knowledge of their language. But a satisfactory account of what speakers are able to do will need to ascribe them linguistic knowledge that they use to speak and understand. I shall explore a conception of speaker’s knowledge of language that confi rms Chomsky’s mentalist view of linguistics but which is immune to Devitt’s criticisms. We tend to take the speech of the Chinese as inarticulate gurgling. Someone who understands Chinese will recognize lan-guage in what he hears. (Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p. 1) What enables us to recognize language in the sounds we hear? Cru-cially, what matters is our knowledge of language: knowledge of which sequences of phonemes are words, which word strings are grammatical, 1 My thinking on these topics was infl uenced by invaluable discussions wit