This document discusses the concepts of performance and competence in linguistics. It defines performance as the actual language produced by speakers, as seen in corpora, while competence refers to a speaker's internalized knowledge of language. The document notes that performance is influenced by factors like memory limitations, attention, social context, and individual style. A performance grammar aims to describe language as it is spontaneously used, including features like hesitations, while a competence grammar describes the systematic rules of a language.

1. PERFORMANCE
GRAMMAR

2. John B. Carroll
"Towards a Performance
Grammar of Core Sentences in
Spoken and Written
English," Journal of Structural
Learning, 1975

3. • "This performance grammar thus far centers
attention on language production; it is my
belief that the problem of production must be
dealt with before problems of reception and
comprehension can properly be investigated.“
- (John Carroll, "Promoting Language Skills,"
in Perspectives on School Learning: Selected Writings
of John B. Carroll, ed. by L. Anderson. Erlbaum, 1985)

4. • A description of the syntax of
English as it is actually used
by speakers in spontaneous
dialoges.

5. PERFORMANCE
• term used in linguistic theory,
and especially in generative
grammar, to refer to language
seen as a set of specific
utterances produced by native-
speakers, as encountered in
a corpus; analogous to the
Saussurean concept of parole
Page 5

6. de Saussure’s Theory
• Parole is the actual utterances.
• It is an external manifestation of
langue. It is the usage of the
system, but not the system

7. La Langue
• It has a large number of elements
whereby meaning is created by
the arrangements between the
elements and their consequent
relationships.

8. • While learning a language, we
master the system of grammar,
spelling, syntax and punctuation
(elements of langue).

9. Performance vs. competence
• is opposed, in this sense,
to the idealized conception
of language known
as competence
Page 9

10. • utterances of performance will
contain features irrelevant to the
abstract rule system
- hesitations
- unfinished structures
-arising from the various psychological and
social difficulties acting upon the speaker
Page 10

11. • e.g.
lapses of memory, or biological
limitations, such as pauses being
introduced through the need to
breathe
These features must be discounted in a grammar of the
language, which deals with the systematic process of
sentence construction

12. POSSIBLE IMPLICATION
OF THIS VIEW
• performance features are
unimportant
• strongly criticized in recent years
• factors which contribute
to performance grammars are
now of considerable interest
Esp. in Psycholinguistics

13. Linguistic Performance
• -the sentences that we actually
produce--is limited by these
factors. Furthermore, the
sentences we actually produce
often use the more simple
grammatical constructions

14. • Our speech is full of false starts,
hesitations, speech errors, and
corrections. The actual ways in
which we produce and understand
sentences are also in the domain
of performance.

15. Chomsky (1986)
• distinguished between
externalised language (E-
language) and internalised
language (I-language)

16. E-language linguistics
• is about collecting samples of
language and understanding their
properties
• it is about describing the
regularities of a language in the
form of a gramma

17. I-language linguistics
• is about what speakers know
about their language

18. • For Chomsky, the primary aim of
modern linguistics should be to
specify I-language: it is to produce
a grammar that describes our
knowledge of the language, not
the sentences we actually
produce."

19. Linguistic performance
Some of the factors which influence
linguistic performance are:
(a) the linguistic competence or
unconscious linguistic knowledge
of the speaker-hearer,

20. • (b) the nature and limitations of the
speaker-hearer's speech
production and speech perception
mechanisms,

21. • (c) the nature and limitations of the
speaker-hearer's memory,
concentration, attention and other
mental capacities,

22. • (d) the social environment and
status of the speaker-hearer,

23. • (e) the dialectal environment of the
speaker-hearer,

24. • (f) the idiolect and individual style
of speaking of the speaker-hearer,

25. • (g) the speaker-hearer's factual
knowledge and view of the world
in which he lives,

26. • (h) the speaker-hearer's state of
health, his emotional state and
other similar incidental
circumstances.

27. Each of the factors mentioned is a
variable in linguistic performance
and, as such, may influence the
nature and characteristics of a
particular instance of linguistic
performance and its product(s).

28. • http://grammar.about.com/od/pq/g/
performancegrammarterm.htm

29. QUESTIONS? 
THANK YOU!
FRANCELLE CALUB