3.2. Competence and Performance
Grammar is the set of principles which governs the formation and the interpretation on of words, phrases and sentences. Korossy 1993, 1997
extended the theory of knowledge structures by separating no competence and performance. Competence means skills or abilities that enable a person to solve a
problem, and cannot be observed directly. Performance is s the behavior, e.g. the answer that is given, and can be observed.
Of course, competence, demands and performance are related. However, competences are properties of persons, while demands are properties of problems.
While a demand requires a competence to fulfill it, the relationship is not a one to one relation. For example, the demand add two natural numbers may be met by
adding mentally, by adding with the help of paper and pencil or by operating a pocket calculator. Similarly, when a performance of a person is observed, it is not
obvious what underlying competences have contributed to the solution. Thus Korossy introduced two spaces: a competence space on a set of
elementary competences, and a performance space on a set of items. These spaces have the same properties as knowledge spaces, and also prerequisite and
surmise relations exist. A state in the competence space describes the competences a person has, while a state in the performance space is given by the
set of items that the person can master. By identifying the relationships between competences and performance on
the items, an interpretation function and a representation function can be defined. The interpretation on function maps a problem or an item to the set of all
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competence states that allow for solving the problem. Vice versa, the representation function maps a competence state to the set of problems, which can
be mastered with the competences of this state Korossy 1993, 1997. In any case, the interpretation function or the representation function has to
be adjusted when items become obsolete or are inserted into the performance space. The same holds for new competences that might be added to the set of
competences, enlarging the competence space. This is simply due to the fact that the domain of the functions changes.
If a new competence is added, the procedure and the problems for determining the new competence space are similar to that for knowledge spaces as
relationships between the new and the old competences should be used to avoid a large increase of the number of competence states. Furthermore, for each of the
items has to be checked whether the new competence opens up new ways of solving the item. If so, the interpretation function or the representation function
has to be updated because now there are more competence states, which allow for solving this item. For example, in the elementary school pupils are forbidden to
use pocket calculators. Later in high school the competence using a pocket calculator comes into play. This competence enables the pupils to solve items of ,
the type addition of natural numbers, but also addition of real numbers. This means the interpretation function has to be changed for both item types.
For deleting a competence from the competence space, the same procedure as deleting an item from a knowledge space is used. If a new item is added to the
domain, the following cases may occur, the new item can be solved with the
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existing, competences.
In
this case, the value of representation function has to be argumented by the new item for all competence states that allow for solving the
new item. This means that the result of the interpretation function for the new item will be the set of all competence states that allow for solving the new item, as
expected. Mastering the new item requires new competences. Now both the steps for adding new competences see above and a new item have to be performed.
Schrepp 1993 goes one step further than Korossy and investigates not only the competences of a person, but also the underlying cognitive processes. A model for
these processes also allows to derive the competence structure, and by means of the representation function the performance structure can be
obtained. The necessary actions when a new item arises depend on whether the model
of the cognitive processes can explain how a person masters the new item. If so, the new structures can be derived easily. Otherwise, the cognitive model has to be
extended which may require further research. One of the major distinctions made in psycholinguistics is that between
performance and competence. Performance refers to the actual speaking and comprehending processes, which are influenced by such factors as fatigue,
attention, and memory. Competence refers to the speaker-listeners knowledge of the language, uninfluenced by any psychological restraints. Language competence
is s the knowledge of a language that enables speakers to construct, or encode, and to understand, or decode, sentences.
Another early distinction made in psycholinguistic models was that between deep and surface structures. Basically, the surface structure of a sentence is s close
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to what is spoken and heard, it is similar to the sentence as performed. Deep structure, however, represents the meaning elements and their relationships and is
a level of the sentence that is postulated to account for a wide variety of language phenomena.
Consider these two sentences: The boy hit the ball and The ball was hit by the boy. The sentences mean essentially the same thing, although on the surface
they look quite different. The sentences differ in surface structure but not in deep structure; the
y
differ in form rather than in meaning. Now consider a third sentence: They are painting clothes. This sentence has
more than one meaning, depending on whether painting is taken as a verb or as an adjective. If painting is a verb, then the sentence means these people are
painting pictures of clothes or these people are putting paint on clothes; but if painting is an adjective, then the sentence means these clothes are used for
painting or they are the clothes that painters use. This sentence has two possible deep structures, each corresponding to one of the two possible meanings,
but with only one surface structure. Later models have challenged the original assumptions, and even
Chomsky altered his views somewhat. The newer models theorize variously that: surface and deep structures may be closer in meaning than previously thought;
more levels of structure may be involved in language processing; other factors, such as the context in which a sentence is communicated, may be more important
to meaning than structures; and deep and surface structures may simply be theoretical constructs with no basis in reality. No consensus exists in the field.
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A distinction introduced by Chomsky into linguistic theory but of wider application. Competence refers to a speakers knowledge of his language as
manifest in his ability to produce and to understand a theoretically infinite number of sentences most of which fie may have never seen or heard before. Performance
refers to the specific utterances, including grammatical mistakes and non- linguistic features like hesitations, accompanying the use of language. The
distinction parallels Varelas distinction between organization and structure. The former refers to the relations and interactions specifically excluding reference to
the properties of the refis components, whereas the latter refers to the relations manifest in the concrete realization of such a system in a physical space.
Competence like organization describes the potentiality of a system. Performance like structure describes the forms actually realized as a subset of those
conceivable.
3.3. Speech Planning Execution
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