Talk:Linguistic competence

[Untitled]
This page needs to provide a more exact description of Chomsky's competence/performance dichotomy, which is central to the concept of generative linguistic theory. Basically, Chomsky thought of a linguistic grammar as licensing native speaker intuitions of grammatical well-formedness. Linguistic performance referred to psychological strategies for actually producing and comprehending language. rwojcik 05:23, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

The description of Chomsky as a "linguistic anthropologist" has been removed. This is simply not Chomsky's area of specialization. 216.165.49.195 17:58, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

This article and communicative competence
I don't know enough about linguistics to help a whole lot, but there's a more fleshed-out article at communicative competence which we should at least link to, somehow. Another choice might be to describe both concepts at a merged article (perhaps competence (linguistics)) with sections like "Chomsky's notion of competence" and "Hymes' notion of competence", but here's where it would be a big mistake for me to attempt it, as I don't really get the subtleties. Kingdon (talk) 17:57, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Communicative competence
I would personally like to see the reference to Hymes removed. I think it is misleading, as it sort of implies that Hymes' notion of communicative competence is a commonly referenced alternative to, or elaboration on, Chomsky's notion of competence. In fact, Hymes' work is no more relevant than that of the 1000s of other authors who have said something about competence and the competence/performance distinction. Would anyone object to this being removed? Cadr (talk) 23:49, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
 * This is not my area of specialization, but according to Hymes' Wikipedeia page: "Hymes formulated a response to Noam Chomsky's influential distinction between competence (knowledge of grammatical rules necessary to understanding and producing language) and performance (actual language use in context). Hymes objected to the marginalization of performance from the center of linguistic inquiry and proposed the notion of communicative competence, or knowledge necessary to use language in social context, as an object of linguistic inquiry."  He is also very widely cited on the subject.  If you think there are many more, or better alternatives, please add them, but I think the reference to Hymes should stay. Francis Bond (talk) 00:43, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Project in Progress
We are making adjustments to this page as part of a school project. Please be gracious and give us some time to tidy things up on this page. In the mean time, we welcome any feedback and comments to make the page a better one. thank you.

daphne wee 16:01, 27 October 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Weey0014 (talk • contribs)


 * I am not sure if the sections on Pustejovsky and Humor really add much to this article. I think they should either be removed or linked more explicitly.  I also think there is probably more in the literature on competence that could be cited here, but it is outside my area of speciality. Francis Bond (talk) 14:25, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Reality of competence/performance distinction
Several functionalist theories argue that the competence/performance distinction is artificial and doesn't correspond to reality. This I think should be included.·Maunus· ƛ · 17:54, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
 * If you could do this it would be greatly appreciated.Francis Bond (talk) 00:35, 9 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Hmm. I'll try to see if I can get time to find something here.·Maunus· ƛ · 20:55, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I have added a bit - the article misrepresented the relation between cognitive linguistic and functionalism - cognitive linguistics is one variant, the main American one, of functionalist grammar theories. All functionalist theories consider performance to be as relevant as competence and many disagree with the distinction itself. The article still doesn't treat the funcitonalist viewpoint adequately, but now it is at least mentioned and some of the critiques are presented. ·Maunus· ƛ · 22:31, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

WP:LEAD
The lead is too short according to WP:LEAD - this will have to be corected before the article can be promoted to GA status - it would be good to expand the lead before the review is undertaken, since this is a reason for that can result in quickfail. ·Maunus· ƛ · 17:53, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

History
The article doesn't mention that Chomsky's competence/performance distinction is basically a reformulation of Saussure's distinction between langue and parole. This is pretty crucial for understanding both the history of the concept and its meaning. The relation can be seen forexample in " George A. Miller 1975. SOME COMMENTS ON COMPETENCE AND PERFORMANCE. Volume 263, Developmental Psycholinguistics and Communication Disorders pages 201–204, September 1975"·Maunus· ƛ · 23:13, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Problems with examples
There are two very different sorts of problems with the examples in the section "Competence and Components of grammar", one a stylistic issue and one an issue of fact.

Stylistically, the use of pre-formatted text (added by placing a space at the beginning of a line in Wiki markup) looks terrible, at least on my browser, where the example sentences run off the edge of the browser window. It's also not entirely clear to me why green and red font color is used for the example sentences. This does not appear to relate to the WP:MOS.

Factually, it is not true — or at least not uncontroversially so — that the form slib is disallowed by the phonology of English. Any one of those segments can occur in any one of those environments (compare glib and slip, for example); the absence of slib as an English word appears to be an accidental gap. Including that example as an exemplar of phonological competence is probably misleading.

Similarly, although most prestige varieties of English disallow "My hair needs washed," some varieties allow it. Therefore it's also a questionable example.

An overarching issue is that nowhere does the page specify that these examples relate to grammatical competence in a particular variety of English. Linguistic competence describes the grammatical ability of a speaker of a specific language, not just language ability generally. The article needs to specify that its examples relate to competence in (Standard?) English. Cnilep (talk) 01:14, 12 February 2011 (UTC)
 * An example that seems wrong to me (no linguist) seems to be in Morphology:

"E.g.: re-cuddle can be derived but not *re-rich" - re-cuddle does not exist, as far as I am aware. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 176.1.212.131 (talk) 01:48, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Aphasia section deletion
The article concerns Competence. The subsection on Aphasia begins with that, but then continues with a statement that is contentious in this context as well as snide in tone:

The measurement of implicit language competence, although apparently necessary and satisfying for theoretic linguistics, is complexly interwoven with performance factors.

It then contines with another statement, this time carrying no substantiation, which appears to be on the subject of Performance and not Competence:

Transience, stimulability, and variability in aphasia language use provide evidence for an access deficit model that supports performance loss.

It seems that either the subsection needs rewriting or deleting.

LookingGlass (talk) 19:01, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

Copyright issue
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DonFB (talk) 12:31, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

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