The ministry of higher and secondary specialized education of the republic of uzbekistan

1.1.2 LINGUISTIC OR GRAMMATICAL COMPETENCE

In general, linguistic competence deals with making up grammatically correct sentences. That`s to say, it considers mainly grammatical, syntactical, stylistic and lexical rules and pays attention to using them correctly in communication. Even though, nowadays the most important issue is communicative language teaching approach, a lot of teachers still focus on linguistic competence in their lessons. I think it is not enough to accomplish a communicative goal since non-linguistic factors play a role in constructing social meanings.

I think Linguistic competence is the system of linguistic knowledge possessed by native speakers of a language. It is distinguished from linguistic performance, which is the way a language system is used in communication. Noam Chomsky introduced this concept in his elaboration of generative grammar, where it has been widely adopted and competence is the only level of language that is studied.

Chomsky's theory, our linguistic competence is our unconscious knowledge of languages and is similar in some ways to Ferdinand de Saussure's concept of langue, the organizing principles of a language. What we actually produce as utterances is similar to Saussure's parole, and is called linguistic performance. 

According to Hyme’s notion there are four basics in communicative competence. They are Linguistic, Sociolinguistic, Discourse, and strategic. Linguistic competence refers to the knowledge of grammar and vocabulary.

As for me, linguistic competence is power or special mental quality which we could use while communicating with the help of languages materials such as grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation.