语言学第一章补充教案

一．

1.How is Sausure’s distinction between langue and parole similar to Chomsky’s dintinction between competence and performance?

Sausure made a distinction between langue and parol. According to Sausure, Language refers to the abstract linguistic system shared by all the members of a speech community; Parol refers to the realization of language in actual use. As a social product, language is a set of convention, or generalized rules of a language that members of a speech community seem to abide by. Parol, on the other hand, is the concrete use of the conventions or application of the rules. Langue is abstract, parol is specific to a situation; Langue is not actually spoken by anyone, parol is always a naturally occuring event; Langue is relatively stable and systematic, parol is subject to personal and situational constrains. What a linguist has to do is to discover the regularities govering all instances of parole and langue. This distinction is very importaant and far-influential.

Similar to the distinction between langue and parole is the distinction between competence and performance made by Chomsky in the 1950s. Competence is the ideal user’s knowledge of the rules of his language. Performance is the actual realization of this knowledge in speech. A speaker’s compentence is stable but his performance is often inflenced by psychological and social factors. Such as pressure, distress, anxiety, etc. Compentence enables a speaker to produce and understand an infinite number of sentences, but his performance does not always match his compentence.

Chomsky’s competence is similar to Sausure’s langue, performance is similar to parole, and both of them holding that language consists of specific realizations and abstract underlying linguistic rules. Sausure thinks that langue should be the subject of linguistics, and Chomsky also agrees that the focus of linguistics should be the ideal user’s competence, not his performance. However, Sausure looks at language more from a sociological perspective while Chomsky looks at it more a psychological perspective.

2.Linguistic potential and actual linguistic behaviour

Halliday made the distinction between linguistic potential and actual linguistic behaviour in the 1960s. Halliday looks at language from a functional point of view; he is more concerned with what speakers do with language. With language, there is a wide range of things a speaker can do in the culture he is in. His linguistic potentialis is similar to Sausure’s langue and Chomsky’s competence. and his actual linguistic behaviour is similar to the notions of parole and performance. Among the distinctions, parole, performance and actual linguistic behaviour have a lot in common; but langue, competence and linguistic potential differ considerably. They are similar only in one aspect, that is, they all refer to the constant which underlies the utterances that constitute parole/performance/actual behaviour. Their differenc is fairly obvious. Langue is a social property while linguistic potential something available for the speaker to select from. Competence is a form of “knowing”while linguistic potential is a set of possibilities for “doing”. The competence versus performance distinction is one between what a person “knows” and what he “does”, while the linguistic potential