Chomsky

Chomsky changed the direction of linguistics away from empiricism and towards rationalism in a remarkably short space of time. In doing so he apparently invalidated the corpus as a source of evidence in linguistic enquiry. Chomsky suggested that the corpus could never be a useful tool for the linguist, as the linguist must seek to model language competence rather than performance.

Competence is best described as our tacit, internalised knowledge of a language.

Performance is external evidence of language competence, and is usage on particular occasions when, crucially, factors other than our linguistic competence may affect its form.

Competence both explains and characterises a speaker’s knowledge of a language. Performance, however, is a poor mirror of competence. For examples, factors diverse as short term memory limitations or whether or not we have been drinking can alter how we speak on any particular occasion. This brings us to the nub of Chomsky’s initial criticism: a corpus is by its very nature a collection of externalised utterances – it is performance data and is therefore a poor guide to modelling linguistic competence.

Further to that, if we are unable to measure linguistic competence, how do we determine from any given utterance what are linguistically relevant performance phenomena? This is a crucial question, for without an answer to this, we are not sure that what we are discovering is directly relevant to linguistics. We may easily be commenting on the effects of drink on speech production without knowing it.

However, this was not the only criticism that Chomsky had of the early corpus linguistics approach.

• Competence: What we know- Our deep structure- What we are capable of doing.
• Performance: What we show- Our surface structure. What we do.

 Be commoCompetence vs. performance

􀁺 Competence: what speakers know about

language

􀁺 Performance: what speakers do with

language

Competence vs. performance:

a simple example

􀁺 Competence: I am capable of speaking

English

􀁺 Performance: if my mouth is full of water, I

am unable to actually produce English 􀃆 but

my competence is unimpaired

Competence vs. performance:

a more complex example

􀁺 The dog that the cat that the mouse ran away

from bit just came in.

􀁺 Difficult to process?

􀁺 The dog that the cat that the mouse ran away

from bit just came in.

􀁺 The mouse ran away from the cat that bit the

dog that just came in.

Competence vs. performance:

a more complex example

􀁺 The dog that the cat that the mouse ran away from

bit just came in.

􀁺 Native English speakers have the competence to

understand this sentence; but the difficulty in

processing it may cause impaired performance

􀁺 When an L2-learner has difficulty with a particular

structure…

􀁺 is the problem with competence?

􀁺 or with performance (processing)?

􀁺 Need the right kind of task to answer this question

Explicit vs. implicit knowledge

􀁺 Measuring explicit knowledge:

􀁺 Ask the learner to judge the grammaticality of a

sentence, to conjugate a verb, etc.

􀁺 Measuring implicit knowledge:

􀁺 Devise a task which doesn’t let the learner know

what is being measured: e.g., ask the learner to

describe a picture, to judge the truth of an

utterance, etc.

Explicit vsCompetence vs. performance

􀁺 Competence: what speakers know about

language

􀁺 Performance: what speakers do with

language

Competence vs. performance:

a simple example

􀁺 Competence: I am capable of speaking

English

􀁺 Performance: if my mouth is full of water, I

am unable to actually produce English 􀃆 but

my competence is unimpaired

Competence vs. performance:

a more complex example

􀁺 The dog that the cat that the mouse ran away

from bit just came in.

􀁺 Difficult to process?

􀁺 The dog that the cat that the mouse ran away

from bit just came in.

􀁺 The mouse ran away from the cat that bit the

dog that just came in.

Competence vs. performance:

a more complex example

􀁺 The dog that the cat that the mouse ran away from

bit just came in.

􀁺 Native English speakers have the competence to

understand this sentence; but the difficulty in

processing it may cause impaired performance

􀁺 When an L2-learner has difficulty with a particular

structure…

􀁺 is the problem with competence?

􀁺 or with performance (processing)?

􀁺 Need the right kind of task to answer this question

Explicit vs. implicit knowledge

􀁺 Measuring explicit knowledge:

􀁺 Ask the learner to judge the grammaticality of a

sentence, to conjugate a verb, etc.

􀁺 Measuring implicit knowledge:

􀁺 Devise a task which doesn’t let the learner know

what is being measured: e.g., ask the learner to

describe a picture, to judge the truth of an

utterance, etc.

Explicit vs