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tern, etc., can be significant here. Why, for example, does
the taxonomic phoneme /s/ often have a slight [/]-like char-
acter in certain languages (as, e.g., Spanish, Finnish) which
lack an independent ///-phoneme? Phonetic surface phenom-
ena are, as we know, important enough (and can lead to great
difficulties for those learning foreign languages). In what way
do we best account for systematicity on this surface level? If
it can be shown that taxonomic phonemes, rather than for
example allophonic units, are crucial or at least valuable
units heie, then there is good reason to retain them in lingu-
istics (though not in a total description of language, for
instance, in a generative grammar).
Karl-Hampus Dahlstedt: My first opponent, Werner Winter,
accuses me of excluding ‘the social aspects of language from
the domain of linguistics proper’; my second opponent, Els
Oksaar, seems to be aiming at something similar, since she
reproaches me for not including the socio-dialectal conscious-
ness in the concept of competence. As a matter of fact, I
have always defended the place of social variation and dia-
lectology within linguistics, as I also did in Reykjavík (see
pp. 172 and 175). However, I am not ready to identify the
science of socio-dialectal variation in language, i.e., socio-
linguistics and dialectology, with the science of cognitively
meaningful variation in language, i.e., with the so-called
pure linguistics or linguistics proper. From a methodological
point of view it remains practical to keep these two types of
linguistics apart. Nor am I inclined to separate sociolinguistics
from dialectology, as the suggestion of Werner Winter seems
to recommend.
Furthermore, since Noam Chomsky has coined and defined
the term of competence for his own purposes, there is no
reason for changing its content. The expansion of the gener-
ative theory to the stylistic and socio-dialectal domains of
Hnguistics demands new terminology for such concepts which
had not been foreseen by Chomsky. A comprehensive term to
include all three concepts, those of competence, sensitivity,
Proceedings — 14