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    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Chomsky's original competence/performance distinction treats grammaticality as binary, making gradient measurement a category error for core linguistic theory.

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    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.Native speakers consistently produce gradient acceptability judgments; dismissing these as mere 'noise' ignores robust empirical phenomena requiring explanation.
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    • 2.Many syntactic phenomena (garden-path effects, extraction domains, agreement) show gradient behavior that discrete rules alone cannot capture.
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    • 3.Linguistic competence itself may incorporate probabilistic/gradient mechanisms; the binary/gradient distinction need not map onto competence/performance.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • 1.Competence describes idealized mental rules; performance involves messy execution. Gradient judgments reflect performance noise, not core grammar.
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    • 2.Binary grammaticality aligns with generative syntax's core insight: language uses discrete, recursive rules, not continuous scales.
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    • 3.Treating gradience as theoretically fundamental conflates acceptability (social/pragmatic) with grammaticality (structural), obscuring the distinction.
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