linguistic competence essay

Linguistic Competence and Performance

Universality and innateness, rule-governed creativity, critical period in the first language acquisition.

Linguistic competence is the ability of a person to speak and understand the language in a manner which is correct grammatically and lexically. The linguistic competence of a person consists of his or her ability to speak a certain language so that others should understand him or her, and at the same time ability to understand the words, phrases, and messages pronounced by other speakers of the same language. Thus, if a person can speak a language and understand what other people say in the same language, he or she possesses linguistic competence.

As contrasted to linguistic competence, linguistic performance is the ability of a person to use the knowledge and language skills he or she has in practical situations in real day-to-day life. Linguistic competence includes the ability to use not only the lexical but also extra-lingual components of communication such as emotional coloring, hesitations, gestures, non-verbal communication, mimics, and many others.

There are opinions that language is universal for all human beings and is an innate capacity of them only. These opinions are built upon the theory that no other animals can communicate and exchange messages between them. The fact that animals do communicate with each other is explained by their instincts while human language is a non-instinctive way to communicate which is universal for all human beings. However, its universality can be doubted because people brought up in isolated societies or outside the society display no capacities for languages. Thus, the innateness of language for all human beings is also under doubt as it is the skill that should be learned.

Rule-governed creativity is the unique ability of the human brain which presupposes the ability of language speakers to create new utterances and sentences that people have never heard before. This ability of the human brain is explained by the fact that knowing the rules of language grammar and syntax a person can build utterances based on familiar examples but aimed at absolutely different purposes and bearing different information. Thus, an infinite number of sentences can be created by people who have linguistic competence, linguistic performance, and know the grammar and syntax rules of the particular language.

The critical period in the first language acquisition is the period acknowledged by scientists and scholars during which a person, namely a child of an early age, is supposed to master the language skills. In other words, scholars are sure about the fact that there is a period in the child’s upbringing during which all skills, and language ones, in particular, should be acquired, and if they are not, then there is no guarantee that the child will master these skills at all. Thus, for example, it is easier for people to study foreign languages from early childhood because this critical moment has not come yet. On the contrary, those who start studying languages at a mature age have trouble with them because their critical periods are already in the past, and brains are not directed at such activities as acquiring new skills. Thus, the critical period is the time after which acquiring skills, language skills, in particular, becomes problematic or even impossible as the examples of children brought up by wolves demonstrate.

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StudyCorgi. (2021, October 9). Linguistic Competence and Performance. https://studycorgi.com/linguistic-competence-and-performance/

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Linguistic competence, Communicative Competence and Interactional Competence

• November 2019
• INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF COMPUTERS & TECHNOLOGY 10:7537-7552
• 10:7537-7552

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• British University in Dubai

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Linguistic Performance

Creating and Understanding Sentences in a Language

• An Introduction to Punctuation
• Ph.D., Rhetoric and English, University of Georgia
• M.A., Modern English and American Literature, University of Leicester
• B.A., English, State University of New York

Linguistic performance is the ability to produce and comprehend sentences in a language .

Since the publication of Noam Chomsky's Aspects of the Theory of Syntax in 1965, most linguists have made a distinction between linguistic competence , a speaker's tacit knowledge of the structure of a language, and linguistic performance , which is what a speaker actually does with this knowledge.

• Chomskyan Linguistics
• Communicative Competence
• Lexical Competence
• Pragmatic Competence
• Psycholinguistics

Factors That Influence Linguistic Performance

" Linguistic performance and its products are in fact complex phenomena. The nature and characteristics of a particular instance of linguistic performance and its product(s) are, in reality, determined by a combination of factors:

(6) Some of the factors which influence linguistic performance are: (a) the linguistic competence or unconscious linguistic knowledge of the speaker-hearer, (b) the nature and limitations of the speaker-hearer's  speech  production and speech perception mechanisms, (c) the nature and limitations of the speaker-hearer's memory, concentration, attention and other mental capacities, (d) the social environment and status of the speaker-hearer, (e) the  dialectal  environment of the speaker-hearer, (f) the  idiolect  and individual style of speaking of the speaker-hearer, (g) the speaker-hearer's factual knowledge and view of the world in which he lives, (h) the speaker-hearer's state of health, his emotional state, and other similar incidental circumstances.

Each of the factors mentioned in (6) is a variable in linguistic performance and, as such, may influence the nature and characteristics of a particular instance of linguistic performance and its product(s)." Rudolf P. Botha, The Conduct of Linguistic Inquiry: A Systematic Introduction to the Methodology of Generative Grammar . Mouton, 1981

Chomsky on Linguistic Competence and Linguistic Performance

• "In [Noam] Chomsky's theory, our linguistic competence is our unconscious knowledge of languages and is similar in some ways to [Ferdinand de] Saussure's concept of langue , the organizing principles of a language. What we actually produce as utterances are similar to Saussure's parole , and is called linguistic performance ." Kristin Denham and Anne Lobeck, Linguistics for Everyone . Wadsworth, 2010
• "Chomsky divides linguistic theory into two parts: linguistic competence and linguistic performance . The former concerns the tacit knowledge of grammar , the latter the realization of this knowledge in actual performance. Chomsky distinctly relegates linguistic performance to the peripherals of linguistic inquiry. Linguistic performance as the actual use of language in concrete situations is viewed as 'fairly degenerate in quality' (Chomsky 1965, 31) because performance is full of errors.
• " . . . Chomsky's linguistic competence corresponds to la langue , and Chomsky's linguistic performance corresponds to la parole . Chomsky's linguistic competence, however, because it is concerned primarily with the underlying competence, is viewed as superior to de Saussure's la langue ." Marysia Johnson, A Philosophy of Second Language Acquisition . Yale University Press, 2004
• "Competence concerns our abstract knowledge of our language. It is about the judgments we would make about language if we had sufficient time and memory capacity. In practice, of course, our actual linguistic performance —the sentences that we actually produce--is limited by these factors. Furthermore, the sentences we actually produce often use the more simple grammatical constructions. Our speech is full of false starts, hesitations, speech errors, and corrections. The actual ways in which we produce and understand sentences are also in the domain of performance.
• "In his more recent work, Chomsky (1986) distinguished between externalized language ( E-language ) and internalized language ( I-language ). For Chomsky, E-language linguistics is about collecting samples of language and understanding their properties; in particular, it is about describing the regularities of a language in the form of a grammar. I-language linguistics is about what speakers know about their language. For Chomsky, the primary aim of modern linguistics should be to specify I-language: it is to produce a grammar that describes our knowledge of the language, not the sentences we actually produce." Trevor A. Harley, The Psychology of Language: From Data to Theory , 2nd ed. Psychology Press, 2001
• Linguistic Competence: Definition and Examples
• Definition and Discussion of Chomskyan Linguistics
• Transformational Grammar (TG) Definition and Examples
• Learn the Definition of Mental Grammar and How it Works
• Definition and Examples of Speakers in Language Studies
• Definition and Examples of Grammaticality
• Generative Grammar: Definition and Examples
• (linguistics)
• Universal Grammar (UG)
• Communicative Competence Definition, Examples, and Glossary
• The Term Langue in Linguistics and Semiotics
• What Is Linguistic Functionalism?
• Biography of Noam Chomsky, Writer and Father of Modern Linguistics
• An Introduction to Theoretical Grammar
• An Introduction to Semantics

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Linguistic competence: Theory and empiry

L anguage competence has sometimes been used as an idealized notion which somehow embodies the collective knowledge of a speech community in the person of an ideal speaker-hearer. However, the basic notion is the competence of an individual in a language. If the language in question is not the native language, it is taken for granted that the person may be proficient in the language to some degree. The standard is then generally set by native competence. However, native competence is itself a matter of degree. Consequently, objective criteria are required by which one may assess the competence of a person in one or more languages by a common standard. This presupposes a notion of linguistic competence which has empirical import. The paper tries to articulate a concept of linguistic competence which can be converted into language tests. A test was devised on this basis and administered to groups of native and non-native speakers of German. The results of the experiment suggest that there is no difference in principle between native and foreign language competence, whether on theoretical or empirical grounds.

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