Talk:Linguistic performance

Peer Review & Instructor Response

With regard to the background section, it has been re-worked to address R.M Deschaine's suggestion of including and comparing all three paradigms (langue/parole, competence/performance & i/e language). A table has also been included to describe a general overview. --LeKevin1919 (talk) 19:14, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

In the Errors of Performance section, I took into account the comments regarding the lack of citations and linking to other wiki pages and added these in. As well I changed the formatting of the subsections and expanded on ideas within them. For this round of editing I did not have time to add in images of the tree structures for the examples given but will include them in time of the final submission. Kerrkelsey (talk) 02:14, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

I used the comments from the peer review to add individual examples of different syntactic structures and their scores. In terms of Morphosyntactic Errors, I felt that the section of Errors in Linguistic Performance well-covered the details that I would've looked into for further explanation of this performance measure, so it has been synthesized into that section rather than standing alone by itself. As well, the examples in Performance Measures are numbered in order following the Errors of Performance section to abide by wiki guidelines. My goal for the final submission is to find data examples from languages other than English, as per RM's suggestion. I think our group has done a great job on improving our article since our content meetings! Emmaharris32 (talk) 03:33, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

I appreciate the feedback we have received from both Rose-Marie and our classmates and have incorporated the feedback as follows:

• Instead of incorporating the two theories on performance and word order under one heading I divided the section into performance-grammar correspondence hypothesis and utterance planning hypothesis.
• I added two subsections for clarity and comprehensiveness under performance-grammar correspondence hypothesis - head-initial structures and head-final structures. The idea with these sections was to more explicitly illustrate how Hawkins’ theory attempts to explain word order (SVO, SOV, VOS etc) across languages. I also reworked these sections to improve clarity.
• Under the two subheadings I added Hungarian and Japanese examples to further illustrate the cross linguistic application of this theory and to provide examples of sentences in languages that are not SVO.
• Reworked Wasow’s section (utterance planning hypothesis) for clarity - specifically, I attempted to align the examples and the study findings with the general explanation to improve the flow of the section - this included adding a subsection specifically illustrating early/late commitment and the effects of heavy-NP shift.
• I removed the HNPS abbreviation from Wasow’s prediction table.
• Changed the headings of the article to match the Wikipedia stylistic conventions for capitalization of headings.Gaytonan (talk) 07:52, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Tech Meeting Round 2 Questions

How do we post images to our article page using images from the internet? (ie. charts from studies to support our article) Emmaharris32 (talk) 17:33, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

Peer Review

I think this is a good starting point for the article. It has clear headings and a lot of good, scholarly references. Something that I think needs a bit of refinement is the first paragraph. I don't think "In linguistics" is necessary since the title informs the reader that "Linguistic Performance" will be discussed in the article. Also, the term "senses" may be confusing to the reader. Maybe using a different term or an explanation will help with clarification. For the sentence that says "It is also one of the two elements in Chomsky's..." it sounds that this might be a third "sense" to performance. Adding it to the list might be an option. Also, a minor format issue is that the examples do not have a uniform style or numbering system. Some examples are numbered in certain sections while other sections do not have numbered examples. The article may also benefit from more explanation of how to interpret and what each data chart introduces. In addition, adding links under "Unacceptable sentences" to refer the reader to pages about each brain injury may be beneficial. You may also consider adding further explanations under "Development Sentence Scoring" and "Unacceptable Sentences" for each category used for scoring and clarification of what each sentence is. Overall, this article has good content and layout. --Oyeung (talk) 02:27, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Hello Group A4! Overall, I think you have an excellent start and are well on your way to creating a "good article" in Wiki standards! I think the background section is clearly presented and easy to follow. However, I think that in the “supporting data” section, the table is challenging to interpret and seems unnecessary. If you were to give some examples of phrases in a head initial language, this would improve the quality and the clarity of the example. Another issue with this example that you might want to address is to change the format of the example so that it matches the format provided from the Wascow data. I think it would be useful if you included some sort of glossary for all of the lexical categories you use short hand for. For example, knowing that a "PP" means "prepositional phrase" would be useful to those who may not be as knowledgable with syntactic abbreviations. I think the "slip of the tongue" section seems to be very interesting! However, some examples would be great. I appreciate your group's ability to remain neutral in your scholarly conversation of performance. Good luck with the rest of the article! Tdpoulin (talk) 03:30, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Hello! It seems as though the references used throughout the article are scholarly and have been peer-reviewed- awesome! Your article so far is presented well and you have a lot of really good information on the topic. A few things I noticed were: - Within-Wikipedia citations: It seems as though there are quite a few within-wikipedia citations, which as someone with a lack of knowledge on the subject of performance, I find to be extremely helpful in expanding my understanding of the subject. Some terms I find to be complicated still. For example, in the section labeled “Performance and Word Order”, within Wikipedia citations might be added for PGCH, complex structure, Minimize Domains, etc. If they can be cited, I would find it beneficial to be able to read more about them. - The data examples used in the page look useful in supporting the point being made on your page. At this point, it would be beneficial to add trees to your page to show visual examples of the data, and to help show the labels of the NP object, etc. - If the data sentences (grey sections) are imbedded in a table without borders, or rows or column, they will not extend across the length of the page. This will allow you to embed pictures beside them. - The section “Alternative Grammar Models” seems to have a good start on the topic. Personally, I would find it helpful to see either links to other pages or some data to further explain these concepts. - In the introduction section, there are a few sentences that do not have a citation. I have included them so that they are easily identifiable:

“Linguistic performance does not simply reflect the intrinsic sound-meaning connections established by the system of linguistic rules. It involves many other factors, such as extra-linguistic beliefs concerning the speaker and the situation; these play a fundamental role in determining how speech is produced, identified and understood. Furthermore, performance reflects properties of cognition related to signal processing, and include memory limitations, distractions, shifts of attention and interest, and errors (random or characteristic).”

is there a citation for this information? - in the section “Morphosyntactic Errors” it would be helpful to see some data to assist the reader in understanding the concept being discussed

I hope that I have explained these alright, and that they are at least a bit helpful. Otherwise, awesome job so far! Your page is looking great, and I can't wait to see the finished product! --Stephedwood (talk) 03:40, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

I think this is a really great start to a very interesting topic! The article contains great examples and verifiable sources. There are no instances of bias and I like the general layout of the article. There are a few ways in which this article could be improved. First of all, some of the writing is more complicated than it needs to be. There are a few instances of run on sentences and improper use of semi colons. There are several different writing styles throughout the article, so I think it would be beneficial if one person edited the entire page to match one particular style. To improve the clarity of this article, sentences could be shorter and more explicit. Sometimes, less words makes a sentence easier to comprehend. In particular, I find the term 'two senses' in the first sentence of the introduction confusing. I also noticed instances of inconsistent capitalization. In the "Alternative Grammar Models" section, the sentence structure of the final couple sentences are difficult to follow. They are slightly wordy. I would suggest breaking these sentences up in to a few more clear and concise sentences. In the introduction, the linked word ‘language production’ is written in lower case. In the 1st sentence of the 2nd paragraph, the linked word “Language Production” appears with capitals. More links in the sections “Alternative Grammar Models” and “Errors in Linguistic Performance” will increase clarity. This article would also benefit from some extra links. In the sentence "Constraint-Based grammars are strongly lexicalist", I think it would be helpful to link 'lexicalist','lexical entries' or explain what the terms mean. It would also be helpful to link Lise Menn, or explain who this person is. As mentioned earlier, you have very good sources and this article is thoroughly researched. It would be beneficial to make sure sources are all formatted in the same way. For the Hawkins and Wascow section, are there any other sources that can be used to further exemplify their theories? Regarding comprehensiveness, I really like how terms are defined such as the principle ‘Minimize Domains’ in the section “Performance and Word Order”. The article has as good use of examples and tables. It's helpful to see results of studies comparing word lengths. Extra overt examples would increase the thoroughness of this article. For example, the section on "Development Sentence Scoring" could benefit from individual examples of each category. Regarding formatting, I think there should be a smoother transition between the supporting data of ‘John A. Hawkins’s PGCH and Tom Wasow’s proposition in the “Performance and Word Order” section. Maybe headings can be used to introduce each explanation to break the data up more clearly. Furthermore, headings could be formatted better. For example, in the section “Errors in Linguistic Performance” the headings for the transformational errors under “Slips of the tongue” including “Structural Analysis”, “Structural Change” and “Conditions” are the same size as the subsection “Transformational Errors”. Since these errors are a subset of “Transformational Errors”, they should be 1 size smaller. A generic picture or analogy of performance would help the reader visualize the concept better. It would also be an attention grabber at the beginning of the article. Otherwise, I think your group has done a really great job of developing this article!! --Jessicabarclay (talk) 06:16, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

This looks like a good start to your article so far. As the rest of the group has already said the content is thorough and the presentation is generally clear. In addition to what has already been suggested I would like to draw your attention to a few details that could be sorted out. -In the section 'Slips of the tongue" the citations should link to the bottom of the page. -In the "Slips of the hand" and "Unacceptable sentences" sections you have no citations, some should be added. -The style of your citations should be consistent throughout the article so that you either use the superscript numbers or the author's name and the publication date. -example 7a/b and your calculation of clause density could benefit from a more detailed explanation especially for readers who have little background in syntax. Good start overall and good luck on the rest. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cedricha (talk • contribs) 06:31, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Comments on content & structure of entry

Overall: Make sure that you abide by Wikipedia’s stylistic conventions relative to capitalization of section headings. Throughout, provide links to other Wikipedia entries. Also try to find discussion of languages other than English. In particular, there should be a discussion of how word order (SVO, SOV, VSO, OSV, VOS, OVS) affects processing.

Introduction: Remove definition (1) on “phonetic performance” from the main text. (See other articles for how to do this.) Don’t define linguistics performance it terms of what it is not, define it in terms of what it is.

Background: Reframe the entire first paragraph in more general terms. Compare and contrast de Saussure’s langue/parole, Chomsky’s distinction between performance/competence, and the more recent contrast between I-language and E-language. Insert a table that shows these pairwise distinctions so that the reader can see at a glance what the terminology is.

Performance and word order: Introduce two subsections (one entities Performance-Grammar Correspondence Hypothesis, and the other entitled Utterance Planning Hypothesis. When presenting Hawkins’ proposal, give examples that illustrate the word order data that his theory is trying to account for, and describe the tables in more detail. When presenting Wasow’s proposal, annotate the examples so that the reader can see at a glance what the pattern is, and revise the text so that description matches up with examples in a more transparent fashion. In the table, don’t use the “HNPS” abbreviation.

Alternative grammar models: provide more extensive references and examples

Errors in linguistic performance: Make sure that that this doesn’t overlap too much with the “speech errors” entry, and explicit flag that entry at the beginning of the section. Give actual examples of each of the error types. Rather than using table format to illustrate the errors, provide tree diagrams of the “target” and “errorful” sentences. In presenting the error types (transformational errors, structural errors, and structure change error), identify the rules that these errors range over, and work through the logic of predicted error types. Right now, it’s presented as an arbitrary list.--RM Dechaine (talk) 19:59, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

Questions for technical support meeting

• How do we insert figures, charts and images into our article?
• In many wikipedia articles there is a bar containing important dates, names, and other information on the right hand side of the article, how do we create this?
• How do we add the special table of contents that appears on the right side, that links our topic to other related fields? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.84.184.240 (talk) 16:06, 24 October 2014 (UTC)
• What exactly does one do to submit their article for 'good status'

Gaytonan (talk) 05:42, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

Annotated bibliography of sources for expanding this page:

Chomsky, N. (1986). Knowledge of language. New York, NY: Praeger. Noam Chomsky, commonly thought to be the most influential figure in modern linguistics, authored this work to further his ideas on what it means to know a language. Important to the topic of linguistic performance, he argues that E-language should not be the object of inquiry and, in particular, argues for a shift of focus to I-language. The author explains E-languages as, “languages in this sense are not real world objects but are artificial, somewhat arbitrary, and perhaps not very interesting constructs” (Chomsky, 1986). He contrasts E-languages to I-languages, which are person specific and include the linguistic structures present in the mind/brain. These ideas build on his previously articulated performance/competence dichotomy and propose a dramatic shift for those studying language and, specifically, for psychologists and psycholinguists who take linguistic performance, or E-language, as their object of inquiry. A limitation of this work is that it does not point toward specific empirical evidence. Nevertheless, the reader comes away with a clear understanding of the author’s ideas and the logic behind them.

Dummett, M. (1986). A nice derangement of epitaphs: some comments on Davidson and Hacking. In E. LePore (Ed.), Truth and interpretation: perspectives on the philosophy of Donald Davidson (pp. 459-476). Oxford, UK: Blackwell. In this essay, Michael Dummett, a significant and well-known contributor to the philosophy of language, takes aim at Davidson’s claim that language, as defined philosophically, does not exist and argues against language as internalized theoretical knowledge. He proposes that the notion of language is required to account for the existence of common languages (such as English) that are independent of the person. Specifically, he explains, “words have meanings in themselves, independently of speakers” and “they have them in virtue of belonging to the language, and hence in virtue of the existence of a social practice” (Dummett, 1986). This essay is in large part an argument for a focus on E-language which is in contrast to the views held by Chomsky and thus, is important for inclusion in a summary on linguistic performance. One limitation of this response is that the original paper was not included so it is difficult to determine if the views of the original work are represented as intended by Davidson. Overall, the work is a successfully argued and clear rebuttal of what seems like an extreme view on the part of Davidson.

Oviatt, S. L., & Cohen, P. R. (1991). Discourse structure and performance efficiency in interactive and non-interactive spoken modalities. Computer Speech & Language, 5(4), 297-326. The purpose of this article was to analyze observed contrasts between spoken discourse using technologies of telephone and audiotape communications to gain insights into extralinguistic processes that surround spoken communication. With greater understanding of 'linguistic performance,' future communication technologies could be better developed with improved insights into these extralinguistic processes. This article is relevant because it serves as an excellent reference from which to discuss the notion of unconscious, extra-lingual processes that surround speech production. It can be used to expand the minimal content of the current Wikipedia article, express that performance is a concept of the extralinguistic knowledge a speaker must be aware of in order to produce a comprehensible utterance. This article argues that differences between written and spoken language production are multi-dimensional. One shortcoming is the article focuses on extra-lingual processes of purely spoken language, not addressing crucial factors that might necessitate speech 'in-person' (like visual cues). It is a fairly dense article but that is because it is very thorough in analysis of its methodology.

Christiansen, M. H., & Chater, N. (1999). Toward a connectionist model of recursion in human linguistic performance. Cognitive Science, 23(2), 157-205. The article argues a reevaluation of Chomsky’s arguments that the existence of recursive structures in language suggests that finite state and associative models of language processing are implausible. By creating a 'Connectionist Model' of artificial intelligence that analyzes recursion with performance comparable to a human's, the article provides evidence against Chomsky's claim. This article would be extremely useful as a reference to introduce Connectionist theories on linguistic performance. Linguistic performance is a concept that has been mostly explored through a generative perspective, so introducing a different perspective would help in enriching our article. A downfall of this article is that its claims are of course not definitive as its findings are the findings of only a single article. It admits that its findings are not conclusive such that a Connectionist framework could be be generalized to account for “the acquisition of the full complexity of natural language.” I personally found the article quite interesting as I have not been exposed too much to Connectionist theories. It provides a very thorough and complex analysis of artificially intelligent model it used to analyze recursion. Kaufer, D. S. (1979). The Competence/Performance distinction in linguistic theory. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 9(3), 257-275. doi:10.1177/004839317900900301 In his article The Competence/Performance distinction in linguistic theory Kaufer discusses Chomsky’s Aspects of the Theory of Syntax and argues that one cannot distinguish between competence and performance and that “the distinction is not an argument but a truism” (Kaufer, 1979). He states that there are specific and rare contexts where one would “(eg. reciting a Latin prayer) would a speaker use a language they do not know..(eg. aphasia) would they know a language they cannot use.” (Kaufer, 1979). He goes further to explain previous linguists, such as Saussure, which lead to Chomsky’s work on defining competence and performance. There is an obvious bias in this article towards Kaufer’s evaluation of Chomsky’s work. However during the discussion he does offer additional perspectives for the competence/performance argument. This article would be of value as it explains background as to the development of defining competence and performance by Chomsky. Kaufer also provides an evaluation of Chomsky’s distinction which could offer an interesting aspect to our Wikipedia page. I found while reading the article that Kaufer would offer analogies in an attempt to explain concepts which caused, at times, to get rather lost and off topic. Gleason, J. B., & Weintraub, S. (1976). The acquisition of routines in child language. Language in Society, 5(2), 129-136. doi:10.1017/S0047404500006977 Gleason and Weintraub were interested children’s acquisition of language routines. They looked specifically at how adults taught the Hallowe’en routine to children played a role in their performance of this routine. They noted how the children’s parents were more “concerned with correct performance and no emphasis was placed on cognitive factors” (Gleason and Weintraub, 1976). They argue that children recite “Trick or Treat” without knowledge of its meaning. After performing their study they conclude that “With routines, performance comes first” (Gleason and Weintraub, 1976) as opposed to competence as in other aspects of language acquisition. A downfall to this article is its lack of cross-linguistic evidence supporting that performance is developed before competence in language routines. Although Gleason and Weintraub used a very specific ritual of Hallowe’en which is not celebrated world wide they do refer to a study done by Audrey Richards of the Bemba single girl initiation ritual their hypothesis would be better supported with additional evidence. This article would be supportive to our Wikipedia article as performance is further explained through language acquisition and the case of language routine acquisition is one which performance outranks competence. I found this article very interesting as it used a real world situation which I have taken part in to describe a linguistic concept. I would have liked if the article went further to describe other instances of routine acquisition both for children in North America and across the globe.

Bialystok, E., & Craik, F. I. (2010). Cognitive and linguistic processing in the bilingual mind. Current directions in psychological science, 19(1), 19-23. This article examines how bilingualism affects both cognitive and linguistic performance in areas such as verbal-fluency tasks, lexical decision, size of vocabulary, and, on the cognitive side, executive control. It draws upon a variety of studies, arguing that, although bilinguals of all ages are worse at a variety of linguistic performance tasts, the cognitive benefits outweigh this linguistic challenge. Though a large part of this article treats on the broader cognitive effects of being bilingual, it provides a good (and fairly recent) survey of the way it influences linguistic performance across a speaker’s lifetime. It also helps to illustrate the cognitive grounding of linguistic performance phenomena such as “the tip-of-the-tongue” phenomenon. This article’s main use for the wikipedia article on linguistic performance will be in describing how bilingualism and linguistic performance interact. This article’s main weakness is that it presents little novel information - the authors did not conduct novel experiments or do extensive theoretical work. This is balanced, however, by its conciseness in bringing together information from a variety of other researchers, which makes it an excellent reference for something like a wikipedia article.

Sag, I. A., & Wasow, T. (2011). Performance-compatible competence grammar. Non-transformational syntax: Formal and explicit models of grammar, 359-377.

In this article, Sag and Wasow discuss the various ways in which linguists have tried to model a grammar that reflects the way language is processed, taking into accounts phenomena such as the garden-path effect, and understanding people’s sentences before they are complete. It examines the question of how syntactic information and lexical information is processed in the course of a conversation. They argue that traditional generative grammar may be less suitable for describing language grammars than more surface-oriented, lexicalist models (such as a constraint-based system) This is extremely valuable to an wikipedia article on the subject of linguistic performance, because most models of syntax do not take performance as a primary consideration. This article’s performance-oriented perspective illuminates many of the contemporary issues surrounding linguistic performance, and ultimately the issue of creating a competence-based grammar that also reflects performance. The main difficulty with this article with respect to creating a wikipedia article is that it refers at great length to less well known or widely accepted theories of grammar, which may not be well-suited to kind of depth expected of a wikipedia. I think it is nonetheless an extremely valuable asset, and such theories may even merit their own subheading in the Performance (Linguistics) article on wikipedia.

Frisch, S. A., & Wright, R. (2002). The phonetics of phonological speech errors: An acoustic analysis of slips of the tongue. Journal of Phonetics, 30, 139-162. doi:10.1006/jpho.2002.0176 In this source, Frisch and Wright explain their findings from an acoustic analysis, looking at whether speech errors are a result from lexical, segmental or featural organization in speech production. They argue that all of these linguistic qualities are psychologically real, meaning that the qualities have impact on speech production and the errors that occur. The source frequently included terms such as “gradient”, “concatenation errors” whichwere not clearly defined, implying that readers should be equipped with moderate background knowledge of phonological experiment methods. Despite this, the authors explicitly defined the integral term “error”, which they claim are utterances where the speech output differs from the speaker’s intended output. The source’s value is derived from their novel findings that features and gestures of speech influence production errors, which is an asset to the linguistic community. Additionally, Frisch and Wright suggested using recording elicited errors to during production analysis allow for more accurate and natural analysis, which was helpful for me to see how the analysis process has evolved through history.

Smith, M. S. (2004). In Two Minds About Grammar: On the Interactions of Linguistic and Metalinguistic Knowledge in Performance. Transactions of the Philological Society, 102(2), 255-280. doi:10.1111/j.0079-1636.2004.00137

In this paper, Smith discusses the role of metalinguistic knowledge for performance in first and second languages. He argues that language performance involves both Universal Grammar (UG) and meta-grammar, which are separate entities, but are required by the speaker for communicating. This unbiased presentation of the two theories is appreciated when describing how each of the theories hinder or aid performance. Smith presents an excellent background section to give unfamiliar readers knowledge for the topics and terminology being discussed, as he cites and summarizes several other authors’ arguments and findings. Though majority of the paper relies on Ray Jackendoff’s thoughts about the core language system and not his own, but Smith does an excellent job of synthesizing previous research within one paper, an excellent resource for those eager to learn about the subject, such as myself.

Bibliography posted on behalf of --Colinej (talk) 07:56, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

RM Dechaine (talk) 05:34, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Merge with Language Production

If this article isn't going to be expanded, I'm in favor of the merge. So long as a note is made at the top that "production" and "performance" overlap, but aren't necessarily equivalent terms. Lizmarie (talk) 03:07, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

It'd be better to merge with competence and make it a competence/performance page and discussion of the differences. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.246.150.253 (talk) 02:36, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Problem here

Where is the criticism of the competence vs. performance distinction? Certainly loads has been written criticizing the distinction. I see one feeble attempt in the article to include criticism of the notion. This is not good. Squads of undergraduates have been ungaged to promote one particular theory of syntax, to the detriment of others. --Tjo3ya (talk) 20:53, 19 December 2014 (UTC)