Competence

The concept, introduced by the linguist Noam Chomsky in 1965, was intended to address certain assumptions about language, especially in structuralist linguistics, where the idea of an unconscious system had been extensively elaborated and schematized. Competence can be regarded as a revision of the idea of the language system. The empirical and formal realization of competence would be performance, which thus corresponds to diverse structuralist notions of parole, utterance, event, process, etc. Chomsky argues that the unconscious system of linguistic relations, which Ferdinand de Saussure named langue, is often mistakenly associated with knowledge or ability (or know-how). Chomsky is concerned to establish a science that would study what he calls the language faculty, in analogy with other mental faculties like logic, which as a kind of intuitive reasoning power requires no accumulation of facts or skills in order to develop. Grammatical knowledge too seems to be present and fully functional in speakers fluent in any language. So competence in Chomskys sense implies neither an accumulated store of knowledge nor an ability or skill. He rejects Saussures langue as merely a systematic inventory of items, and instead returns to a rationalist model of underlying competence regarded as a system of generative processes (4). This has the advantage of explaining plausibly events of linguistic innovation in unpredictable situations, as well as pertinence of expression and understanding in particular contexts. This faculty seems to be absent in animals and (so far) in machines that can nonetheless be taught or programmed to use signs in imitative or predetermined ways. A key source for Chomskys conception is Rene Descartes, whose concern with the creative powers of the mind leads him to regard human language as an instrument of thought. Chomsky also cites Wilhelm von Humboldt as a source for the conception of the generative nature of competence. Humboldt argues that use of language is based upon the demands that thinking imposes on language, and that this is where the general laws governing language originate. In order to understand the instrument or the faculty itself, however, it would not be necessary or even desirable to consider the creative abilities of great writers or the cultural wealth of nations; the linguist would, rather, attempt to abstract the generative rules, which remain unchanged from individual to individual. Competence, in Chomskys sense, is to be

regarded as entirely independent of any considerations of performance, which might concern other disciplines, like pragmatics, psychology, medicine, or literary theory. An individuals competence is defined by the grammar, or set of rules, that is represented mentally and manifested by their understanding of acceptable usage in a given linguistic idiom. Grammatical competence thus defines an innate knowledge of rules rather than knowledge of items or relations. It is said to be innate because one apparently does not have to be trained to acquire it and it can be applied to an unlimited number of previously unheard examples. The two phrases I speak acceptable Chinese and I speak Chinese acceptably would be regarded as acceptable by any native English speaker, but I speak acceptably Chinese would probably not. Despite this, the more complex form, I speak quite acceptably Cantonese and some other Chinese dialects as well as Japanese, might be regarded as alright. Examples like these are thought to provide evidence of a deep structure of grammar, in other words, a linguistic competence. A project in generative grammar has two distinct aims. First, it is a matter of analyzing the elements of a sentence or phrase into its distinct parts, thus revealing the so called deep structure of the sentence. Competence thus implies an unconscious knowledge of the rules for converting deep structure into surface structure. The procedures have been adopted by or incorporated into several approaches to text and discourse analysis. The relationship between surface structure and deep structure can be easily demonstrated, for instance, by examples of structural ambiguity, a key source of jokes, like Groucho Marxs line from Animal Crackers: One morning I shot an elephant in my pyjamas; how he got into my pyjamas Ill never know. The comic aspect of the punch line lies in its revealing the fact that the surface structure of the main sentence expresses two possible grammatical sentences: in my pyjamas I shot an elephant; and I shot an elephant who was wearing my pyjamas. The discrete unit in my pyjamas each time plays a different grammatical role in the deep structure of the sentence. The second, more controversial, aim of generative grammar is to establish and produce descriptive models of the rules that compose the complete grammar. The rules must be finite yet must be capable of generating an infinite number of innovative sentences. This aspect of grammar is open to debate and misunderstanding partly because of the intuitive nature of an individuals sense of what is and is not acceptable. Projects in generative grammar abound with

examples of sentences that lie on the boundaries of what speakers might regard as acceptable, revealing fine degrees of unacceptability as well as acceptability. The point is not to establish what is right or wrong in any absolute sense. Rather it is to establish first that a speakers competence leads them to intuitive judgments concerning the relative acceptability of sentences; and then it is a matter of producing models of that competence. So the controversial aspect of generative grammar lies in its assertion of an innate cognitive faculty, from which issues the rules of grammatical structure and generation, and which thus describes the entire grammar of the language faculty, its syntax, which is manifested by an individuals competence in their language. Despite the ideal implied by the notion of a complete grammar, Chomsky insists that any science of the language faculty must, like all science, be subject to interminable revision and refinement.

Performance
a speakers actual use of language in real situation. What the speaker actually says, including grammatical errors and other non-linguistics features such as the situations. So, language performance is the actual spoken ability of the speaker. This includes phonetic, syntactic and other speech error. ( Hymes, Dell. (2000 [1965]) We unconsciously know how to put language together. But we do not always perform language correctly. That is, we occasionally stumble over words or begin sentences that get so complicated and out of hand that we have to stop and start the sentence again. These are performance errors that are due to extra-linguistic factors such as fatigue or excitement. Performance errors do not reflect on the linguistic competence of a native speaker. We can observe speakers' linguistic performance through their speech, make hypotheses and draw conclusions about the unconscious knowledge (linguistic competence) that underlies it. You can think of linguistic competence as being a person's unseen potential to speak a language, and his or her linguistic performance as the observable realization of that potential.

In the cartoon below, poor Tarzan's competence -- what he CAN say -- didn't match his actual performance -- what he actually DID say: