page_title: Linguistic performance
section_title: Slips of the tongue
hierarchical_section_title: Linguistic performance / Errors in linguistic performance / Slips of the tongue
caption_attribution_description: English: Phrase tree structure for grammatical sentence "and what did he say?"
context_page_description: The term linguistic performance was used by Noam Chomsky in 1960 to describe "the actual use of language in concrete situations". It is used to describe both the production, sometimes called parole, as well as the comprehension of language. Performance is defined in opposition to "competence"; the latter describes the mental knowledge that a speaker or listener has of language.
  Part of the motivation for the distinction between performance and competence comes from speech errors: despite having a perfect understanding of the correct forms, a speaker of a language may unintentionally produce incorrect forms. This is because performance occurs in real situations, and so is subject to many non-linguistic influences. For example, distractions or memory limitations can affect lexical retrieval, and give rise to errors in both production and perception. Such non-linguistic factors are completely independent of the actual knowledge of language, and establish that speakers' knowledge of language is distinct from their actual use of language.
context_section_description: One type of slip of the tongue which cause an error in the syntax of the utterance are called transformational errors. Transformational errors are a mental operation proposed by Chomsky in his Transformational Hypothesis and it has three parts which errors in performance can occur. These transformations are applied at the level of the underlying structures and predict the ways in which an error can occur. 
  Structural analysis
  Structural Change
  Conditions
  Structural Analysis
  errors can occur due to the application of (a) the rule misanalyzing the tense marker causing the rule to apply incorrectly, (b) the rule not being applied when it should or (c) a rule being applied when it should not.
  This example from Fromkin (1980) demonstrates a rule misanalyzing the tense marker and for subject-auxiliary inversion to be incorrectly applied. The subject-auxiliary inversion is misanalyzed as to which structure it applies, applying without the verb be in the tense as it moves to the C position. This causes "do-support" to occur and the verb to lack tense causing the syntactic error.
      6a. Error: Why do you be an oaf sometimes?
      6b. Target: Why are you an oaf sometimes? 
  The following example from Fromkin (1980) demonstrates how a rule is being applied when it should not. The subject-auxiliary inversion rule is omitted in the error utterance, causing affix-hopping to occur and putting the tense onto the verb "say" creating the syntactic error. In the target the subject-auxiliary rule and then do-support applies creating the grammatically correct structure.
      7a. Error: And what he said?
      7b. Target: And what did he say?
  This example from Fromkin (1980) shows how a rule is being applied when it should not. The subject-auxiliary inversion and do-support has applied to an idiomatic expression causing the insertion of "do" when it should not be applied in the ungrammatical utterance.
      8a. Error: How do we go!!
      8b. Target: How we go!!
  Structural Change
  Errors can occur in the carrying out of rules, even though the analysis of the phrase marker is done correctly. This can occur when the analysis requires multiple rules to occur.
  The following example from Fromkin (1980) shows the relative clause rule copies the determiner phrase "a boy" within the clause and this causes front attaching to the Wh-marker. Deletion is then skipped, leaving the determiner phrase in the clause in the error utterance causing it to be ungrammatical. 
      9a. Error: A boy who I know a boy has hair down to here.
      9b. Target: A boy who I know has hair down to here.
  Conditions errors restrict when the rule can and cannot be applied.
  This last example from Fromkin (1980) shows that a rule was applied under a certain condition in which it is restricted. The subject-auxiliary inversion rule cannot apply to embedded clauses. In the case of this example it has causing for the syntactic error. 
      10a. Error: I know where is a top for it. 
      10b. Target: I know where a top for it is. 
  A study of deaf Italians found that the second person singular of indicatives would extend to corresponding forms in imperatives and negative imperatives. 
  The following is an example taken from Dutch data in which there is verb omission in the embedded clause of the utterance (which is not allowed in Dutch), resulting in a performance error.
  A study done with Zulu speaking children with a language delay displayed errors in linguistic performance of lacking proper passive verb morphology.
caption: Phrase tree structure for target "And what did he say?"
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