Lecture 5: COMPETENCE AND PERFORMANCE CONTENTS
1.0 Introduction
2.0 Objectives
3.0 Main Body
3.1 General overview
3.2 Competence and Performance
3.3 Points of Convergence & Divergence
4.0 Conclusion
5.0 Summary
6.0 Tutor Marked Assignments
7.0 References and Other Sources
1.0 INTRODUCTION In this unit, we will study two basic theories of language
acquisition and language use which have influenced sociolinguistic studies. The
first of the theories is the theory of ‘Langue and Parole’ by Ferdinand de Saussure
while second of the theories is ‘Competence and Performance’ by Noam Chomsky.
The basic notion of these theories is hinged on the concept of language,
acceptability of language use and individual application of language codes. We
will study the points of convergence and divergence between the theories and the
sociolinguistic implications.
2.0 OBJECTIVES By the end of the unit the students will be able to: 1.
Understand the theories of langue and parole 2. Know the theories of competence
and performance 3. Distinguish the two theories properly 4. Realize the
implication of the theories in sociolinguistics 5. Accept that individual language
use must be in line with societal needs
3.0 MAIN BODY 3.1 General Overview
Language acquisition and use is related to a society’s growth and development. In
traditional grammar and philosophy, language is believed to be a heavenly
property which comes from birth and not learned. Language was also seen as a
prescriptive phenomenon whereby the users have nothing to contribute to it. In
1916, the publication of Ferdinand de Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics
(posthumously by his students) marked a turning point in the study of human
language. It marked the beginning of linguistics and the starting of scientific
analysis of human utterance. De Saussure recognized the concept of ‘Langue and
Parole’ in human language. Simply translated, "langue" and "parole" are
"language" and "speech", however, such a translation is misleading because those
terms are almost synonyms. Jonathon Culler, an American Deconstructionist who
has written extensively on Saussure, defined langue and parole in the introduction
as follows:"...Saussure's most fundamental contribution, on which all of modern
linguistics rests, was the step by which he postulated a suitable object for linguistic
study. If linguistics tries to concern itself with every fact relating to language, it
will become a confused morass. The only way to avoid this is to isolate a coherent
object which will provide both a goal for analysis and a principle of relevance. And
that is precisely what he did, distinguishing with a bold stroke between language as
a system (la langue) and the actual manifestations of language in speech or writing
(la parole)... This distinction between langue and parole has been important not
only for linguistics but for other disciplines as well, where it can be rendered as a
distinction between institution and event, or between the underlying system which
makes possible various types of behavior and actual instances of such behavior.
Study of the system leads to the construction of a model which represents the
various possibilities and their derivation within the system, whereas study of actual
behavior leads to the construction of statistical models which represent the
probabilities of particular actions under specified conditions. Roy Harris in his
version of the CGL translates la langue using the terms linguistic structure (a bold
and excellent translation). Three points are crucial to la langue: 1) its theoretical
character (it is invented to explain the occurrence and distribution of forms in
parole), 2) its systematic or relational character (its terms mutually define and
compete with each other) 3) it is an "institution" or social construct and by
definition the inheritance of the many. La langue then is shared linguistic structure.
Saussure explained la langue as follows: "It is a fund accumulated by the members
of the community through the practice of speech, a grammatical system existing
potentially in every brain, or more exactly in the brains of a group of individuals;
for the language is never complete in any single individual, but exists perfectly
only in the collectivity..." (Course in General Linguistics, Harris translation, 13).
Note that this definition avoids aligning la langue with any particular definition of
a language or a dialect: the "collectivity" remains undefined. However, among
scholars, these concepts have generated a lot of controversies. Noam Chomsky
gave his own version but he has a slight shift from those of Saussure.
3.1 Self-Assessment Exercise Explain the contributions of Ferdinand de Saussure
in modern linguistics
3.2: Competence Grammar versus Performance Grammar
The limitations of current language processing systems are not surprising: they
follow immediately from the fact that these systems are built on a competence-
grammar in the Chomskyan sense. Chomsky made an emphatic distinction
between the "competence" of a language user and the "performance" of this
language user. The competence consists in the knowledge of language which the
language user in principle has; the performance is the result of the psychological
process that employs this knowledge (in producing or in interpreting language
utterances). The formal grammars that theoretical linguistics is concerned with,
aim at characterizing the competence of the language user. But the preferences that
language users display in dealing with syntactically ambiguous sentences
constitute a prototypical example of a phenomenon that in the Chomskyan view
belongs to the realm of performance. There is ambiguity-problem from an intrinsic
limitation of linguistic competence-grammars: such grammars define the sentences
of a language and the corresponding structural analyses, but they do not specify a
probability ordering or any other ranking between the different sentences or
between the different analyses of one sentence. This limitation is even more
serious when a grammar is used for processing input which frequently contains
mistakes. Such a situation occurs in processing spoken language. The output of a
speech recognition system is always very imperfect, because such a system often
only makes guesses about the identity of its input-words. In this situation the
parsing mechanism has an additional task, which it doesn't have in dealing with
correctly typed alpha-numeric input. The speech recognition module may discern
several alternative word sequences in the input signal; only one of these is correct,
and the parsing-module must employ its syntactic information to arrive at an
optimal decision about the nature of the input. A simple yes/no judgment about the
grammaticality of a word sequence is insufficient for this purpose: many word
sequences are strictly speaking grammatical but very implausible; and the number
of word sequences of this kind gets larger when a grammar accounts for a larger
number of phenomena. To construct effective language processing systems, we
must therefore implement performance-grammars rather than competence-
grammars. These performance-grammars must not only contain information about
the structural possibilities of the general language system, but also about
"accidental" details of the actual language use in a language community, which
determine the language experiences of an individual, and thereby influence what
kind of utterances this individual expects to encounter, and what structures and
meanings these utterances are expected to have. The linguistic perspective on
performance involves the implicit assumption that language behaviour can be
accounted for by a system that comprises a competence-grammar as an identifiable
sub-component. But because of the ambiguity problem this assumption is
computationally unattractive: if we would find criteria to prefer certain syntactic
analyses above others, the efficiency of the whole process might benefit if these
criteria were applied in an early stage, integrated with the strictly syntactic rules.
This would amount to an integrated implementation of competence- and
performance-notions. But we can also go one step further, and fundamentally
question the customary concept of a competence-grammar. We can try to account
for language-performance without invoking an explicit competence-grammar.
(This would mean that grammaticality-judgments are to be accounted for as
performance phenomena which do not have a different cognitive status than other
performance phenomena.)
3.2 Self-Assessment Exercise Defend the statement that competence-grammar
forms the basis for performance-grammar.
3.3 Points of Convergence & Divergence There is a similarity between
Chomsky’s competence and performance and Saussure’s terms langue and parole.
Chomsky explains competence as a factor that refers to a speaker’s knowledge of
his language that enables him to understand an infinite number of sentences often
never heard or produced before. Similar, in Saussure’s point of view, the term
langue represents the general system of language. Performance refers to the actual
use and realization of language, which is alike to parole, that relates to the
appliance of language, the actual process of speaking. To exemplify how Chomsky
and Saussure thought and why they used the terms they did, one can use the phrase
‘structure rules’. A sentence can be fragmented into single units that describe the
structure of a sentence. S can be analyzed into NP and VP, NP into DET and N or
into PN for example. A (native) speaker knows all these rules, even though he
might not be completely aware of it. The general concept of the internalization of
the rules is similar to competence while usage of them can be referred to
performance and parole. Langue and competence are not too similar here, because
langue does not contain any dynamic rules, but is only a system of signs. Apart
from this affinity there is an important difference that has to be mentioned.
Chomsky sees competence as an attribute of the individual person, whereas
Saussure stated that “language exists perfectly only within a collectivity”. Another
important difference is that langue only refers to the sign system.
3.3 Self-Assessment Exercise Outline clearly the similarity between Saussure and
Chomsky’s theories
4.0 CONCLUSION In linguistics, the innateness hypotheses assume that every
human being has a mental language faculty. It states that human beings are
genetically equipped with a Universal Grammar. This contains basic principles and
properties that are common to all human languages and therefore it represents the
basis for language acquisition by supporting and facilitating it. The main reason for
proposing this theory is called the “poverty of the stimulus”. It describes the gap
between the information about the grammar of a language that we are exposed to
during our childhood and the knowledge that we ultimately attain. The stimulus,
the linguistic experience, of a child is not sufficient in order to construct the
grammar of his/her language. In fact, there are several inadequacies in the
stimulus: First, not every sentence a child is exposed to is grammatical. Second,
the received information is limited, and third, children gain knowledge without
further evidence. Nevertheless, the child succeeds in obtaining linguistic
competence, so there must be an additional element for support. Thus, language
acceptability and use is determined by the stated rules of communication from
which the individuals operate. The child in the social milieu performs from the
existing linguistic phenomena around him and this makes him belong to that
society properly.
5.0 SUMMARY The essence of language use is communication. Correlation
establishes a close connection between language and the social, but does so by
leaving each as quite separate entities and leaving language as autonomous;
language itself is not changed by the actions of individuals. The distinction
between langue and parole by Saussure is to create an enabling understanding
between language use and language acquisition. He believes that language is a sign
and that people in a given society use these signs to communicate ideas. He thus
postulates that these signs form the core from which other people draw from in
order to transmit ideas and information. While langue can be acquired, Chomsky
believes that competence is an idealized phenomenon which may not be acquired.
In this vein, competence is not an achievable phenomenon but performance can be
achieved since it is judged based on individual performance. In sociolinguistics,
individuals perform language in order to belong to the society while a society may
use a language form that is acceptable by the entirety of the people in order to
foster harmony in communication.
6.0 TUTOR MARKED ASSIGNMENTS Answer the following questions
carefully: 1. Discuss the contributions of Saussure in modern linguistics 2. Discuss
Chomsky’s opposition to ‘langue’ and ‘parole’ 3. Compare langue with
competence 4. Explain the relationship between performance and parole 5. Relate
these theories to sociolinguistic studies
7.0 REFERENCES AND OTHER SOURCES Bloomfield, Leonard. (1926) "A
set of postulates for the science of language." Language 2:153-4. Chomsky, Noam.
(1954) Syntactic Structures. Mass: MIT Press. Corder, S. Pit. (1973) Introducing
Applied Linguistics. Harmondsworth: Penguin. De Saussure, Ferdinand. (1916)
Course in General Linguistics. Paris: Bolis. Romaine, Suzanne. (1994). Language
in society: An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. London: Blackwell.
