Becoming understandable is recovery from a very sad situation.
The amazing thing is that humans learn to talk at all. The grammar is enormously complex and subtle. And the evidence that children get is poor. Only some sentences are finished. Many are unfinished. Of course, the child does not know which is which.
The linguistics of English
The mechanisms of speaking and understanding the language
Linguistic competence and performance
One a clearly defined object of investigation, the other less clear
Linguistic and Communicative Competence
One a clearly defined object of investigation, the other less clear
