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determined maturational processes, and interaction with the social and physical environment. The analyst’s job is to account for the systems as constructed by the mind in the course of interaction. Further, the particular system of human knowledge which has lent itself most readily to the performance of such a task is the system of human language. Chomsky ( 1974, pp. 136 - 137 ) presents the conditions for task performance, very forcefully, when he says the analyst interested in studying languages is faced with a very definite empirical problem. He has to look at a mature adult speaker who has acquired an amazing range of intricate and highly articulated abilities which enable her to use language in “highly creative” and novel ways. Much of what she says and understands bears no close resemblance to anything in experience. Chomsky regards the abilities as knowledge of language, which he characterises as instinctive or innate knowledge. Persons possess instinctive knowledge, because they approach the learning experience with very explicit and detailed schematisims which tell them what languages they are exposed to. As children, they do not begin with knowledge that they are hearing particular languages such as English, Dutch, or French. They start with knowledge that they are hearing a human language of a very narrow and explicit type which permits a very small range of variation. The Chomskyan position on experience is expressed clearly when he claims what are revealed from serious study of a wide range of languages: remarkable limitations to the kinds of systems which emerge from the different types of experiences to which people are exposed. The analyst who investigates these limitations must confront a well-delineated scientific problem, accounting for the gap between the small quantity of data presented to persons when they are children and the highly articulated, highly systematic, profoundly organised knowledge derived from the data. What is Chomsky’s explanation of the gap? Persons, themselves, contribute overwhelmingly to the general schematic structure and, perhaps, to the specific content of knowledge they derive, ultimately, from the data, otherwise characterised by him as “very scattered and limited experience.” LINGUISTIC COMPETENCE AND GENERATIVE GRAMMAR His primary concern in offering explanation of language learning is to account for linguistic or grammatical competence and generative grammar. Let me, thus, provide interpretations of his versions of theory, linguistic competence, and generative grammar. He states that linguistic theory is concerned with an ideal speaker/listener in a completely homogeneous speech community who knows language perfectly and is not affected by factors such as memory limitations or distractions. He specifies his positions about the ideal speaker/listener in a statement that grammatical or linguistic competence is a cognitive state which “encompasses those aspects of form and meaning and their relations, including underlying structures that enter into that relation which are properly assigned to the specific sub-system of the human mind that relates representations of form and meaning.” ( Chomsky, 1980: pp. 24 - 59 ). In a statement about generative grammar, he says it is expressive of principles which determine the intrinsic correlation of sound and meaning in language. It is also a theory of linguistic competence, a speaker’s unconscious latent knowledge ( Chomsky, 1966: pp