Links to pages: 583, 584, 585, 586, 588, 589

Comments Welcome

George W. Grace

University of Hawaii

20 November 1989

ETHNOLINGUISTIC NOTES

Series 3, Number 39

ON MINIMAL NATIVE-SPEAKER COMPETENCE

What I want to do here is raise some questions about the notion of linguistic competence and the role it plays in the assumptions of linguistics.

Maybe the best place to start is with Noam Chomsky's famous statement of the primary concern of linguistic theory. The statement (1965: 3) was the following: "Linguistic theory is concerned primarily with an ideal speaker-listener, in a completely homogeneous speech-community, who knows its language perfectly and is unaffected by such grammatically irrelevant conditions as memory limitations, distractions, shifts of attention and interest, and errors (random or characteristic) in applying his knowledge of the language in actual performance."

On the next page (1965: 4), he introduces the designation competence for this knowledge ("the speaker-hearer's knowledge of his language"). He goes on to make it clear (in fact, the point is made in the chapter title) that a generative grammar is a theory of competence.

What this says is that the locus of a language is in the individual speakers and that the language consists precisely in the linguistic competence of those speakers. In other words, we wind up making the assumption that actual speakers of a language are similar to Chomsky's ideal speaker-listener--that they differ only in that their competence is imperfect and that they must function in imperfect conditions. They have the same kind of competence--the same kind of knowledge of their language--as this ideal speaker. The difference is in detail rather than in kind.

According to Chomsky then, this linguistic competence takes the form of knowledge. What this knowledge consists of (that is, what is known by the speaker) takes the form of a grammar (where "grammar" is understood as including a lexicon). The grammars of different speakers may differ, but there is an optimal grammar for any given language. This optimal grammar represents the linguistic competence of a hypothetical ideal speaker. It seems impossible to escape the implication (however unintended it may have been) that this hypothetical ideal speaker defines the goal of all language learning.

(Or, more accurately, it defines the goal of all monoculture-language learning, where "monoculture-language learning" is understood as learning to perform monoculture functions in a monoculture-dedicated language (cf. Grace 1988: 489)).

But in Grace 1989a,b I proposed the diametrically-opposed hypothesis that it would be possible to qualify as a normal native speaker of a language (although not as a very skilled one, perhaps) with only a kind of dictionary matching linguistic expressions with situations, and perhaps some kind of capacity for interpolating or extrapolating such as the "inflections" and "expansions" described in Pawley and Syder 1983. Such a speaker, of course, would not "know its language perfectly" where knowing one's language perfectly means having an optimal system of grammatical rules generating all and only the grammatical sentences of the language.

Anyway, I would like to propose another kind of ideal speaker--what we may call the "minimally-competent speaker". This ideal minimally-competent speaker is characterized by minimal speaker competence. Minimal competence is by definition the minimal amount of knowledge ("knowledge" being understood as including linguistic skills and capabilities of all kinds) which we can assume all normal speakers of human languages to possess--the minimal knowledge required to qualify as a native speaker of any language.

There is obviously quite a gulf separating the hypothetical ideally-competent monoculture speaker implied by transformational grammar and the hypothetical minimally-competent speaker which I am proposing. And I believe there are good reasons why linguistics should take an interest in the latter as well as the former.

Ideal competence, for its part, is surely of interest for several reasons. First of all, the characterization of ideal competence is necessarily also a characterization of the nature of language as the characterizer supposes it to be. And not surprisingly, the nature of language according to this characterization turns out to be exactly what the ideology of the monoculture requires it to be. Thus, a study of ideal competence would be of interest, if for nothing else, just for the light it can throw on monoculture ideology. It should be of interest to know why the monoculture makes just the assumptions that it does. In particular, it should be of interest to know how much of the reason is functional and how much is historical accident.

Second, a thorough description of what is involved in this ideal competence (most especially, of course, of those aspects that have functional reasons for being included) is probably relevant to the application of linguistic research results to many practical problems of the monoculture--especially those which have to do with monoculture functions of language ("information-processing" uses).

Third, this ideal competence provides a fairly good characterization of linguistic skills--or at any rate the kinds of skills that monoculture language requires. It is at least roughly accurate to say that the more nearly an individual speaker approximates to the ideal competence, the more skilled (as measured by monoculture objectives) a speaker he/she is. Among other things, this fact makes the ideal competence quite relevant to specifying the objectives of language education in modern society (i.e., monoculture societies).

As for minimal linguistic competence on the other hand, I see two quite different reasons why it merits serious interest. First, it has been claimed that linguistic competence has something to teach us about the evolution of our species and more specifically about the structure of the human brain. This claim seems plausible. However, whatever lessons of this sort linguistic competence has for us, it is surely in minimal--and surely not in ideal--competence that they are to be found. Thus, it would appear that one good reason for trying to learn more about minimal linguistic competence is for what light it might throw on our nature (here I mean the nature of human beings in general, not of fully-enculturated monoculture man) and how we came to be this way.

A quite different reason is that a better understanding of minimal linguistic competence might throw an entirely new light on the task of the schools. The problems which some students encounter in trying to learn monoculture linguistic skills suggest strongly that there is something about what these students bring to the learning task that the designers of the school system have failed to understand. I think it is possible that what they have failed to understand is the nature of minimal linguistic competence (and minimal linguistic competence--an immature stage of it at that--is the only competence which can safely be assumed for all students). Of course, no one else understands anything about it either, but that admission in itself should have a liberating effect in the school system. And it might lead to attempts to learn something about it.

The nature of the individual's linguistic competence must begin with, and continuously be influenced by, his/her conception of what language is. Presented early with the monoculture conception of language as an instrument for producing autonomous text (and with all of the more specific assumptions about how language is constituted and how it works which make up part of the monoculture ideology), a child may be expected to orient its language-learning efforts toward that goal--that is, toward the goal of acquiring the kind of competence that the monoculture requires.

This conception of language, or more exactly the skills which it fosters, can be very important to the individual's opportunities later in life. For example, various gatekeeping tests, such as IQ tests and tests required of applicants to colleges and professional schools, regularly contain important verbal components which seem to be esentially tests of one's approximation to ideal monoculture linguistic competence.

(Of course, our society (and the monoculture in general) places great emphasis on its reliance on achieved (rather than ascribed) statuses. However, the importance of monoculture language skills provides parents with a way of providing in advance for their children's future status--of, as it were, prequalifying them for achieved status. Adequately-equipped monoculture parents can prepare their children to acquire monoculture language skills, and so assure them of a great advantage over the large number of children who are not so prepared. The schools complete the task, for what they are best designed to do (as far as language skills are concerned) is build from immature monoculture competence toward ideal monoculture competence.)

CONCLUDING REMARKS

I believe that there are some harmful misconceptions about the nature of individuals' "knowledge" of their languages, and that to a great extent they are traceable to what I have called the linguistic ideology of the monoculture.

To begin with, this ideology gives us the notion of a superorganic system called the language (Saussure's langue). Of course, languages don't exist as clearly defined systems in the real world, but the monoculture requires that any society which wants to participate in the monoculture have what poses as one--an official standardized language.

The ideology also requires that the language be (i.e., represent itself as being) a universal system (one in which "you can say anything"). That is to say, it must provide resources which will (supposedly) permit the assembling of a linguistic expression to fit any situation (whatsoever). According to the ideology this is accomplished by means of a lexicon, the items of which "pick out" things (including actions, states, etc.) in the world, and a grammar which governs the combination of the lexical items into "propositions" (and questions, etc.). Such a system is impossible, of course.

Some people call such oversimplifying, or otherwise not-quite-true, assumptions "idealizations". Maybe the above-mentioned idealizations are the only ones of those which I want to criticize that are directly attributable to the ideology of the monoculture. However, there are other "idealizations" which I believe are sources of problems. For example:

1. the assumption that "competence" (a speaker's knowledge of his/her language) takes the form of a complete or nearly complete linguistic description of the kind that linguists write (or advocate (which, taken together with the assumption that all normal individuals acquire a competence of this kind for some language, leads to)

2. the assumption that children in the process of learning their language are acquiring a competence of this sort, and

3. the assumption that children entering school have this sort of knowledge of their language, and

4. the assumption that when there is a loss of linguistic competence caused by brain damage, for example, the loss is from a competence of this sort, etc.

I don't mind the idea that in order to be scientific, we need to work with so-called "idealizations"--that a science of language must be a sort of game of make-believe. I don't mind that idea as such. However, I think that we incur a responsibility when we resort to such strategems--the responsibility to try to be aware of what we are doing, and to be candid (with ourselves as well as with others) about it. And I think it is important to keep constantly in mind that any distortion in our assumptions will lead to distortions in our results. And while the distortions may be quite acceptable when the results are applied to one set of objectives, they can be very seriously misleading when applied to others. It is important not to apply them to the wrong objectives.

REFERENCES

Chomsky, Noam. 1965. Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge MA: MIT Press. Back up

Grace, George W. 1988. The idea of a theory of translation: On shared and unshared cultural backgrounds. Ethnolinguistic Notes, Series 3, Number 33. Printout. 10 pp. Back up. Also internet World Wide Web page (Click Here).

Grace, George W. 1989a. The association of situations with linguistic expressions. Ethnolinguistic Notes, Series 3, Number 35. Printout. 27 pp. Also internet World Wide Web page (Click Here).

Grace, George W. 1989b. The notion of "natural language". Ethnolinguistic Notes, Series 3, Number 38. Printout. 15 pp. Back up. Also internet World Wide Web page (Click Here).

Pawley, Andrew, and Frances Hodgetts Syder. 1983a. Two puzzles for linguistic theory: Nativelike selection and nativelike fluency. In Jack C. Richards and Richard W. Schmidt (eds.). Language and Communication. London and New York: Longman, pp. 191-225. Back up

Last updated 18 January 1996