Competence vs. Performance: Summary

[Carson Schutze]

OK, in response to what Matthew suggests “is wrong with the C/P distinction”:

·      “In everyday usage, the notions of knowing and using a language  
seem inextricably bound” (Kaufer, 1979, p.257). To illustrate, Kaufer  
points out that one must strain hard to find cases of people using a  
language they do not know (reciting Latin prayers, perhaps) or, on the  
other hand, knowing a language they cannot use (e.g., some forms of  
aphasia). A similar point is also attributed by Stemberger to Fromkin:  
“assuming that performance is based on competence, we expect  
performance to reflect many aspects of competence” (InfoCHILDES,  
October 14th 2007)

This seems to be an argument against the idea that C and P are totally  
unconnected, do not interact, do not jointly influence behavior, or  
something like that. But to claim that they are logically distinct  
does not imply any of those other things, so this does not bear on the  
issue.

 “performance factors” can always be invoked to explain away  
awkward-shaped pearls that fall from children’s mouths. If they don’t  
fit the hypothesis under scrutiny they are rejected, seemingly on good  
grounds, but, of course, invoking performance in this way is not at  
all well motivated.

I agree, as discussed in my previous posting. But this isn’t the fault  
of drawing the C/P distinction, this is the fault of insufficient  
research.

·      Another view: the competence-performance distinction relies on  
a particular account of adult grammar (Chomsky’s) that is not to  
everyone’s taste. If one rejects a Chomskyan version of grammar as the  
endpoint of development, then the competence-performance distinction  
is rendered redundant in the process (Ambridge, Rowland & Pine, in  
press).

This is a total nonsequitur—see Gary’s posting. C/P has nothing to do  
with any particular account of grammar, even if both were written  
about by the same guy (who has repeatedly noted that he did not  
“propose” C/P since it’s always been around as an assumption, except  
perhaps for the Skinnerians).

·      One possible alternative is offered by McClelland & Bybee (in  
press), based on the notion of gradience, which they take to be “an  
inherent feature of language representation, processing, and learning”  
(McClelland & Bybee, in press, p.1). This view clashes with the  
traditional notion of grammatical competence in which a given  
utterance is either grammatical or ungrammatical.

Another nonsequitur. In fact, in the earliest work on generative  
syntax (Logical Structures..., 1955) already incorporated degrees of  
“grammaticalness”, as Chomsky called it then, as do many versions of  
OT today (while still being models of grammar, not models of  
processing).

·      Connectionist approaches also often clash with idealizations  
like competence, since the latter “excludes aspects of linguistic  
performance that are .... central to the structure of utterances”  
(Seidenberg & MacDonald, 1999, p.572). This point is exemplified by  
Hoff (under review) with her observation that social factors can  
affect the linguistic form of observed child speech output (for  
example, the contrast witnessed in two-year-olds’ conversation with  
their own mothers versus a researcher).
 
Competence doesn’t exclude that or anything else, if it is systematic  
behavior (it does exclude blunders, as Gary says). I sense here some  
allusion to the passage in Aspects that talks about an “ideal  
speaker-hearer...”, but even on the ridiculous assumption that  
everyone working in this paradigm is bound by every word uttered by  
its de facto leader 40+ years ago, no such exclusion would follow.

> Perhaps we should talk instead about two kinds of competence: one  
> concerned with linguistic >competence, the other with speech  
> production competence. At some level, therefore, it may be proper to  
> >acknowledge a split between competence and performance, or  
> competence in one domain from >competence in another.

Right. Certainly Chomsky and everyone else I know would be content  
with positing grammatical competence and sociolinguistic competence,  
for example (which does not preclude interactions between them, just  
like positing syntactic competence and phonological competence doesn’t  
preclude such interactions). It’s all about carving up the empirical  
pie (which is all behavior, hence performance, as I think we all  
agree) in a way that gives us the most scientifically appealing  
theories of each of the domains.

   Carson

 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/info-childes/attachments/20071017/9463530e/attachment.htm>