Where does competence collide?

The unspoken, internalised knowledge of the rules of a language that lets an idealised speaker-hearer produce and judge an unlimited number of new expressions. Chomsky's 1965 Aspects of the Theory of Syntax drew the line between competence, this underlying knowledge, and performance, the messy actual use of language shaped by memory, slips, and distraction. The referent is a mental grammar carried in the head of a language user, studied through what a person accepts as well formed, and it has nothing to do with a bacterial cell taking up DNA, a defendant's fitness for trial, or a drive to master the world.[1]

Unit

One idealised speaker-hearer's internalised grammar

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Inferred from a speaker's grammaticality judgments, not from tallies of what they actually say

The transient physiological state in which a bacterial cell can bind, take in, and integrate naked DNA from its surroundings, the process called natural transformation. Griffith's 1928 The Significance of Pneumococcal Types showed that a harmless pneumococcus could be permanently changed by material from a killed virulent strain, and microbiology later named the DNA-ready state that permits this uptake competence. The referent is a physical capacity of a living cell to import genetic material, switched on for a short window of growth, and it shares nothing with a mental grammar, a legal judgment of fitness, or a motive to master the environment.[2]

Unit

A single cell in the transient DNA-uptake state

Recovery means

The competent state is temporary, developing and then decaying over a narrow window of the growth cycle

Measured by

Quantified as transformation frequency, the fraction of cells that acquire a genetic marker from added DNA

The requirement that a criminal defendant have enough present mental capacity to understand the proceedings against them and to assist in their own defence, so that a trial may fairly go ahead. Bonnie's 1992 The competence of criminal defendants: A theoretical reformulation recast this legal test, separating a basic competence to assist counsel from a higher capacity for decisions such as pleading guilty. The referent is a threshold judgment about one person's fitness to be tried, decided by a court against a legal standard, and it is a different thing from a grammar in the mind, a cell's uptake of DNA, or a general drive toward mastery.[3]

Unit

One defendant judged fit or unfit to proceed

Recovery means

A defendant found incompetent may be restored to competency through treatment before a trial resumes

Measured by

Assessed by forensic evaluation of whether the person understands the proceedings and can assist counsel

An organism's capacity to deal effectively with its surroundings, understood as fed by an intrinsic urge, which White called effectance, to produce effects and gain mastery for its own reward. White's 1959 Motivation reconsidered: The concept of competence argued that curiosity, exploration, and play are driven by this motive rather than by hunger or other drives. The referent is a broad effective capacity of a whole person, later borrowed by workplaces as bundles of measurable skills, and it is unlike a speaker's grammar, a bacterium's DNA uptake, or a court's finding of fitness for trial.[4]

Unit

A person's overall effective capacity, as a trait or motive

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Inferred from mastery behaviour and self-report, and later operationalised as competency frameworks

In literary theory, competence refers to literary competence, the learned conventions that let readers read literary texts as literature. This meaning comes from Culler (1975) in Structuralist poetics: structuralism, linguistics and the study of literature.[5]

Unit

Recovery means

Measured by