COMPETENCE AND PERFORMANCE.

In LINGUISTICS, the distinction between a person's

knowledge of language (competence) and use of it (performance). Performance contains slips of the
tongue and false starts, and represents only a small sample of possible utterances: I own two-thirds of an
emu is a good English sentence, but is unlikely to occur in any collected sample. The terms were
proposed by Noam CHOMSKY in Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, when he stressed the need for a
GENERATIVE GRAMMAR that mirrors a speaker's competence and captures the creative aspect of
linguistic ability. In Knowledge of Language (1986), Chomsky replaced the terms with I-language
(internalized language) and E-language (externalized language). A similar dichotomy, LANGUE and
PAROLE, was proposed by Ferdinand de Saussure (1915), who stressed the social aspects of langue,
regarding it as shared knowledge, whereas Chomsky stressed the individual nature of competence. See
COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE, MISTAKE.
COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE. [Coined by the US anthropologist Dell Hymes]. A term in
SOCIOLINGUISTICS for a speaker's underlying knowledge of the rules of GRAMMAR (understood in
its widest sense to include phonology, orthography, syntax, lexicon, and semantics) and rules for their use
in socially appropriate circumstances. The notion is intended to replace Noam CHOMSKY'S dichotomy
of competence and performance. Competence is the knowledge of rules of grammar, performance, how
the rules are used. Speakers draw on their competence in putting together grammatical sentences, but not
all such sentences can be used in the same circumstances: Close the window and Would you mind closing
the window, please? are both grammatical, but they differ in their appropriateness for use in particular
situations. Speakers use their communicative competence to choose what to say, as well as how and when
to say it. See COMPETENCE AND PERFORMANCE, LANGUAGE TEACHING.

CHOMSKY, (Avram) Noam [b. 1928]. American linguist and political writer, born in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and introduced to philology by his father, a scholar of
Hebrew. At the U. of Pennsylvania he studied under the structural linguist Zellig
Harris. After gaining his Ph.D. in 1955 (dissertation: Transformational Analysis), he
taught modern languages and LINGUISTICS at Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, where he became full professor in 1961. He was appointed Ferrari P.
Ward Professor of Foreign Languages and Linguistics in 1976. During this period, he
became a leading figure in US linguistics, replacing a mechanistic and behaviouristic
view of language (based on the work of Bloomfield) with a mentalistic and
generative approach. His linguistic publications include: Syntactic Structures (1957),
Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (1965), Cartesian Linguistics (1966), The Sound
Pattern of English (with Morris Halle, 1968), Language and Mind (1968, 1972), The
Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory (1975), Reflections on Language (1975),
Lectures on Government and Binding (1981), Barriers (1986). His social, political,
and economic works include: American Power and the New Mandarins (1969), The
Political Economy of Human Rights (two volumes, 1979). Language and
Responsibility (1979) combines his linguistic and social interests by exploring
relationships among language, science, ideas, and politics.
Chomsky originated such concepts as TRANSFORMATIONAL-GENERATIVE GRAMMAR
(TGG), transformational grammar (TG), and generative grammar. His definition of
GRAMMAR differs from both traditional and structuralist theories, in that he is
concerned not only with a formal descriptive system but also with the linguistic
structures and processes at work in the mind. He sees such structures as universal
and arising from a genetic predisposition to language. Features drawn from
mathematics include transformation and generation. As proposed in 1957,
transformational rules were a means by which one kind of sentence (such as the
passive The work was done by local men) could be derived from another kind (such
as the active Local men did the work). Any process governed by such rules was a
transformation (in the preceding case the passivization transformation) and any
sentence resulting from such rules was a transform. In Chomsky's terms, previous
grammars had only phrase-structure rules, which specified how sentences are
structured out of phrases and phrases out of words, but had no way of relating
sentences with different structures (such as active and passive).
Such earlier grammars were also concerned only with actual attested sentences and

not with all the potential sentences in a language. An adequate grammar, however,
in his view, should generate (that is, explicitly account for) the indefinite set of
acceptable sentences of a language, rather than the finite set to be found in a
corpus of texts. Aspects (1965) presented what is known as his standard theory,
which added the concepts deep structure and surface structure: deep or underlying
forms which by transformation become surface or observable sentences of a
particular language. In this theory, a passive was no longer to be derived from an
active sentence, but both from a common deep structure which was neither active
nor passive. Comparably, sentences with similar surface structures, such as John is
easy to please and John is eager to please were shown to have different deep
structures. The standard theory distinguishes between a speaker's competence
(knowledge of a language) and performance (actual use of a language), Chomskyan
grammar being concerned with competence, not performance.
Subsequent work has concentrated less on rules that specify what can be generated
and more on constraints that determine what cannot be generated. A definitive
statement of his recent views is Lectures on Government and Binding, in which the
theory is GB theory. Government is an extension of the traditional term whereby a
verb governs its object, but for Chomsky prepositions may govern and subjects may
be governed. Binding is concerned with the type of anaphora found with pronouns
and reflexives, but the notion is greatly extended. The traditional notion of case is
similarly used, though modified in that it need not be morphological. Such devices
can be used to rule out ungrammatical sentences that might otherwise be
generated. Barriers (1986) extends GB theory.
Chomsky is widely considered to be the most influential figure in linguistics in the
later 20c and is probably the linguist bestknown outside the field. His views on
language and grammar are controversial and responses to them have ranged from
extreme enthusiasm, sometimes verging on fanaticism, through a sober and
reflective interest, to fierce rejection by some traditionalist, structuralist, and other
critics. See. CHILD LANGUAGE ACQUISITION, COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE,
LINGUISTIC TYPOLOGY, PSYCHOLINGUISTICS, STRUCTURAL LINGUISTICS.
TRANSFORMATIONAL-GENERATIVE GRAMMAR, short form TG. In theoretical
LINGUISTICS, a type of generative grammar first advocated by Noam CHOMSKY in Syntactic
Structures (1957). Since then, there have been many changes in the descriptive apparatus of TG. Common
to all versions is the view that some rules are transformational: that is, they change one structure into
another according to such prescribed conventions as moving, inserting, deleting, and replacing items.
From an early stage of its history, TG has stipulated two levels of syntactic structure: deep structure (an
abstract underlying structure that incorporates all the syntactic information required for the interpretation
of a given sentence) and surface structure (a structure that incorporates all the syntactic features of a
sentence required to convert the sentence into a spoken or written version). Transformations link deep
with surface structure. A typical transformation is the rule for forming questions, which requires that the
normal subjectverb order is inverted so that the surface structure of Can I see you later? differs in order
of elements from that of I can see you later. The theory postulates that the two sentences have the same
order in deep structure, but the question transformation changes the order to that in surface structure.
Sentences that are syntactically ambiguous have the same surface structures but different deep structures:
for example, the sentence Visiting relatives can be a nuisance is ambiguous in that the subject Visiting
relatives may correspond to To visit relatives or to Relatives that visit. The ambiguity is dissolved if the
modal verb can is omitted, since the clausal subject requires a singular verb (Visiting relatives is a
nuisance), whereas the phrasal subject requires the plural (Visiting relatives are a nuisance).