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Linguistics Competence and Performance

According to Noam Chomsky, humans have an innate ability to learn language. He distinguished linguistic competence, which is the underlying knowledge of a language, from linguistic performance, which is how language is actually used. Competence refers to one's implicit knowledge and ability to recognize grammatical sentences, while performance can be impacted by external factors such as memory limitations, errors, and distractions. Chomsky argued that a theory of language should focus first on competence before extending to performance.

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Blauria Baligod
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661 views11 pages

Linguistics Competence and Performance

According to Noam Chomsky, humans have an innate ability to learn language. He distinguished linguistic competence, which is the underlying knowledge of a language, from linguistic performance, which is how language is actually used. Competence refers to one's implicit knowledge and ability to recognize grammatical sentences, while performance can be impacted by external factors such as memory limitations, errors, and distractions. Chomsky argued that a theory of language should focus first on competence before extending to performance.

Uploaded by

Blauria Baligod
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Linguistic competence

and performance

Prepared by: Blauria Elizabeth Baligod


Noam Chomsky

According to Noam Chomsky, humans have innate ability


to learn language. Every native speakers has innate
ability to use his first language effectively.
He distinguished the underlying knowledge of language
from the way language is actually used in practice.
According to him, language performance may be affected by such
things as attention, stamina and memory etc.

Therefore, a theory of language should be a theory of


competence. Once a full theory of competence is developed, it
can be into a theory of performance, which will also consider other
cognitive abilities.
What do
linguistics
competence
and
performance
mean?
Linguistics Competence

Competence is the knowledge which is in


our mind about a particular language.
When we know language, it is our
competence.
It is the person’s underlying linguistic ability
to create and understand the sentences.
For example

Eight very lazy elephants drank


brandy.
Eight elephants very lazy brandy
drank.
Language Competency

It is a person’s underlying (subconscious)


linguistic ability to create and understand
sentences, including sentences they have
never heard before.
It includes components such as phonology,
syntax, semantics and morphology.
Language Performance

Performance is the use, expression, and


manifestation of that knowledge.
When we use language, it is our
performance.
It is the real-world linguistic output.
It may accurately reflect competence,
but it also may include speech errors.
Summary

According to Chomsky, competence is what a


person knows. To illustrate, we can distinguish
between ‘GRAMMATICAL’ and ‘UNGRAMMATICAL’
expressions and recognize ambiguity. We are
capable of judging sentences we have never heard
before. On the other hand, performance is what a
person can produce. Like, we tend not to produce
what is in our ‘competence’ because of memory
limitations, distractions, errors, false starts, etc.
Thank you
for listening!
Resources

https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=8jN9iiv5cBI
https://www.slideshare.net/mdpillai/class1-
178

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