THE PRAGUE LINGUISTIC CIRCLE

A discussion group founded in 1926 by a small group of Czech and expatriate Russian linguists, for
the purpose of analysing the poetic function of language. The group was chaired by renowned
linguist Roman Jakobson, but also numbered amongst its membership Nicolai Troubetzkoy and Jan
Mukařovský. Also known as the Prague School, the group survived World War II (though many of its
members were forced into exile) but not the rise to power of the Communist Party. It was officially
dissolved in 1950, but had in reality already dissipated two years earlier. As a crucial precursor to
structuralism, the group worked through a number of ideas taken from Saussure, and created the
first effective form of a structuralist linguistics (characterized by a pronounced interest in langue
rather than parole). As with its predecessors, Opoyaz and the Moscow Linguistic Circle, from which
its membership was in part drawn in any case, the group sought to bring together poetics and
linguistics.

CONTRIBUTION:

Jakobson’s contribution to linguistics can be represented as the concept such as feature, binary
opposition, markedness, redundancy, and universals. He also focuses the importance of linguistics
on language acquisition, aphasia, act of communication, meaning in grammar, poetry, and the
systematicity of language change. Jakobson’s greatest insight, distinctive feature, (after the
phoneme) belongs to the (Functional) Structuralist Phonology. So, for more information, you may
consult functional phonology. Jakobson’s contribution in the Prague school phonology can be
represented as the Prague Circle manifesto, which changes the direction of the development of the
European phonology. (see the main theories for more details)

COMBINATION OF STRUCTURALISM AND FUNCTIONALISM

The most characteristic feature of the Prague school approach is its combination of structuralism
with functionalism. The latter term (like “structuralism”) has been used in a variety of senses in
linguistics. Here ... (100 of 30,296 words)

PORT ROYAL GRAMMAR

a linguistic theory set forth by A. Arnauld and C. Lancelot, abbots of the Port-Royal monastery, in
their Universal and Logical Grammar (1660). The grammar was written as a textbook for students at
the abbey and parallels the abbey’s textbook on logic; the two related in many ways, and a number
of sections in the books are identical.

The Port-Royal grammar, based on Cartesian principles and medieval linguistic doctrines, analyzes
the correspondence between grammar and logic. The theory holds that all human beings possess
the same capacity for thought and speech and that a single ideal logical plan underlies all
languages, although no individual language fully makes use of the intrinsic potential of human
speech. The task of grammar is to determine the principles common to all languages as well as the
basic differences between languages. Since all concrete languages rely on convention, it is possible
to create a new language that would avoid logical errors or to establish a precise and unambiguous
use for the words of a given language.

This theory, which was called philosophical grammar, contrasted with descriptive and normative
grammar and found extensive application in logic and linguistics in the 17th, 18th, and 19th
centuries in the works of G. W. von Leibniz, J. Harris, G. J. Hermann and E. Husserl. Although the
Port-Royal grammar was rejected as unscientific by comparative historical linguistics, some works
on linguistic universals and generative grammar in the early 1960’s revived its approach and saw it
as important for the development of linguistics.
 HERBERT PAUL GRICE

Born 13 March 1913 Birmingham, England, UK

Died 28 August 1988 (aged 75) Berkeley, California, U.S.

Herbert Paul Grice (b. 1913–d. 1988) was a British philosopher and linguist, and one of the pivotal
figures in philosophy during the 20th century. He wrote in many areas of philosophy, including the
metaphysics of personal identity, logical paradoxes, the analytic/synthetic distinction, the philosophy
of perception, philosophical psychology, ethics, and he wrote on historical figures such as Aristotle,
Descartes, Hume, and Kant. But his most significant contributions came in philosophy of language
and mind, on meaning, intention, presupposition, conversation, and the theory of communication.
Grice argued for an intention-based theory of meaning, and was the first to illustrate the distinction
between what came to be called semantic and pragmatic meaning, that is, between what a
speaker’s utterance (or its utterance ‘type’) means in the abstract, and what else a speaker can
mean by uttering it in a particular context. Grice highlighted this by an appeal to his framework of the
Cooperative Principle and its Conversational Maxims, which are plausibly assumed by
conversational participants and provide mechanisms for the ways in which speakers can
‘conversationally implicate’ something beyond the literal meaning of what they say, and for how
hearers can recover those ‘implicatures.’ Grice’s enduring influence on these topics helped found
the burgeoning discipline in philosophy of language and linguistics now known as “pragmatics”
(compare the article on “Pragmatics”).
 What is the distinction between competence and performance?

Chomsky separa competencia y desempeño; que describe la "competencia" como una capacidad
idealizada que se encuentra como una propiedad psicológica o mental o la función y el
"rendimiento" como la producción de los enunciados reales. En resumen, la competencia consiste
en "saber" el lenguaje y el rendimiento implica "hacer" algo con la lengua. La dificultad con esta
construcción es que es muy difícil de evaluar la competencia sin evaluar el rendimiento.

b.       Why is it important to make a distinction between competence and performance?

Noting the distinction between competence and performance is useful primarily because it allows
those studying a language to differentiate between a speech error and not knowing something about
the language. To understand this distinction, it is helpful to think about a time when you've made
some sort of error in your speech. For example, let's say you are a native speaker of English and
utter the following:

We swimmed in the ocean this weekend.

Is this error due to competence or performance? It is most likely that as a native speaker you are
aware how to conjugate irregular verbs in the past but your performance has let you down this
time.   Linguists use the distinction between competence and performance to illustrate the intuitive
difference between accidentally saying swimmed and the fact that a child or non-proficient speaker
of English may not know that the past tense of swim is swam and say swimmed consistently

How do competence and performance apply to the language classroom?

As we have learned, competence and performance involve “knowing” and “doing”. In the recent
past, many language instruction programs have focused more on the “knowing” (competence) part
of learning a language wherein words and sentences are presented and practiced in a way to best
help learners internalize the forms.  The assumption here is that once the learners have ‘learned’ the
information they will be able to use it through reading, writing, listening and speaking.   The
disadvantage of this approach is that the learners are unable to use the language in a natural way. 
Having been trained to learn the language through “knowing”, learners have difficulty reversing this
training and actually “doing” something with the language.   In brief, it is difficult to assess whether
the learners’ insufficient proficiency is due to limitations of competency or a lack of performance.

In order to focus learners more on the “doing” part of learning, which allows a more accurate
measure of learners’ language proficiency, a more communicative approach to teaching can be
used.  This type of approach concentrates on getting learners to do things with the language.  If we
think of B-SLIM we can see that this relates to the Getting It and Using It stages of the model.  By
encouraging students to eventually “learn through the language” as opposed to strictly learning the
language there is a more balanced focus on both competence and performance.

Use a communicative real example to explain/ clarify/ exemplify the terms and their
   
importance. Check this cartoon as a model.

For another example, think about being able to ride a bicycle. You can have the ability to ride a bike
even when you're not using that ability and even though you probably aren't fully aware of all the
complex motor tasks and feats of balance and timing that are involved. (As with your knowledge of
language, there are many things about riding a bicycle that you cannot fully explain to someone
else.) When you get on a bike and go, that's bicycling performance.
Now suppose you're riding along, and you hit a bump and fall off. That doesn't mean you're not a
competent cyclist, even though your performance was impaired. Maybe you just weren't paying
attention to where you were going, or a cat ran in front of your tire, or it was dark and you couldn't
see well.

Linguistic performance is quite similar: speech usually contains lots of mistakes and hesitations, but
that doesn't mean that the competence underlying that speech is flawed. Since competence can't be
observed directly, linguists use linguistic performance as a basis for making hypotheses and
drawing conclusions about what competence must be like. However, in most cases they try to
disregard performance factors (the inevitable speech errors, incomplete utterances, and so on) and
focus on consistent patterns in their study of linguistic competence.