Linguistic Competence without Knowledge of Language

© 2007 The AuthorJournal Compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Philosophy Compass 2/6 (2007): 880–895, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2007.00108.x

Linguistic Competence without Knowledge of Language

John Collins*University of East Anglia

AbstractChomsky’s competence/performance distinction has been traditionally understoodas a distinction between our knowledge of language and how we put that knowledgeto use. While this construal has its purposes, this article argues that the distinctionas Chomsky proposes it depends upon no substantiation of the knowledge locution;rather, the distinction is intended to abstract one system out of an ensemble ofsystems whose integration underlies performance. The article goes on to assessand reject an argument that the knowledge locution, independent of its traditionalconstrual, is of some substance due to the peculiar evidential base of generativetheories.

Introduction

On the familiar model, deriving from Chomsky’s seminal discussion(Aspects of the Theory of Syntax), linguistic competence stands in contrast tolinguistic performance. Competence is what we know when we know alanguage; performance is how we use that knowledge, including boththe datable occurrences of linguistic acts (however individuated) and thepsychological processing that subserves them. My aim here is to presentthe distinction cleansed of the encrusted epistemology, whose only purpose,it can seem, is to attract philosophical scepticism. The epistemologicalissues that have arisen around generative linguistics are multifarious andcomplex. In the space available, I shall only tackle what I take to be themost interesting consideration for the indispensability of a substantialnotion of ‘knowledge of language’ (for wider discussion, see Collins,‘Faculty Dispute’; ‘Meta-Scientific Eliminativism’; ‘Knowledge of LanguageRedux’). My concern here, it bears emphasis, is not with linguisticlegislation (as if it would be an error to speak of ‘knowledge of language’);still less do I care for the right analysis of knowledge. In certain respects,the epistemic locution served its purpose well. My aim is to lay to restcertain philosophical worries by showing that what is important to thetheoretical approach to linguistic cognition does not turn on any episte-mological conception of language.

© 2007 The Author Philosophy Compass 2/6 (2007): 880–895, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2007.00108.xJournal Compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Linguistic Competence without Knowledge of Language 881

the significance of the issues

Before we begin in earnest, something should be said about our generaltopic and why, I believe, it is so significant.

An understanding of the competence/performance distinction cruciallybears on how we are to understand the idea of a naturalistic theory oflanguage (and mind). If we adopt an epistemological understandingof competence, we are (explicitly or implicitly) constraining a naturalistictheory of language to account for phenomena as understood accordingto our common intentional/normative understanding of the pheno-mena. On the account I shall commend, a naturalistic theory has nosuch obligation. Otherwise put, a theory of competence is not a recon-struction of our intuitive idea of a linguistic agent; on the contrary,much of what goes into that notion will be abandoned, just as theoriesin every domain of science dispense with aspects of intuitive conceptionsof the phenomena at issue. Let me give two examples of what I havein mind.

The received interpretation of Chomsky (and, by implication, generativelinguistics generally) is that he has a view not dissimilar to that of JerryFodor’s, whereby linguistic knowledge is the mentally represented object(e.g. a theoretical structure) to which the competent agent stands in acomputational relation that serves to realise the knowledge relation asintuitively specified in our attributions of linguistic knowledge. I shallhave little to say in detail about this conception, although what I do say willhopefully show that this is not the governing conception of generative linguistics.Over and above this exegetical point, it will become clear, once weare relieved of the epistemological conception of competence, that thereis no obligation to reconstruct ‘knowledge of language’ as a ‘natural’relation.

An independent issue, which will be my focus in the following, is theclaim that a naturalistic theory of language is obliged to accommodate, ordepends upon, our intuitive idea that a knower of language has a warrantor is to be assessable in terms of the correctness of their judgements.Again, here we see a feature of our intuitive conception of the phenomenabeing claimed to be integral to our naturalistic theory.

In general, then, I see my proposal as offering just one example ofhow a genuine naturalistic theory of a cognitive phenomenon is notobliged to be constrained by, or to leave intact, our intuitive take onit, no matter how essential such intuitive aspects maybe to have thephenomenon presently in view. Clearly, these issues are but one aspectof much broader issues pertaining to intentionality and agency and theirplace within the natural order. I hope, in a small way, to exemplify hownaturalistic inquiry into the area most intimate with intentionality andagency may progress without being obliged to answer to our philosophicalquandaries.

882 Linguistic Competence without Knowledge of Language


The Competence/Performance Distinction

Although the distinction between competence and performance is firstexplicitly made in chapter 1 of Aspects (1965), it was clear from thebeginning that Chomsky’s principal concern was not with what wouldsoon be dubbed ‘performance’ (in fact, the famous opening chapter ofAspects was mainly written in the late 1950s). In The Logical Structure ofLinguistic Theory (written in 1955–56, but not published until 1975),Chomsky states that the class of phenomena the theory targets is ‘a largestore of knowledge . . . and a mass of feelings and understandings’ that‘develops’ within each speaker/hearer (62). Likewise, even though SyntacticStructures (1957) misleadingly begins with a non-cognitive conception oflanguage, the theory sketched is meant to ‘offer . . . an explanation for thisfundamental aspect of linguistic behaviour [i.e. the cognitive projectionfrom finite input to unbounded competence]’ and the explanatory burdenof the theory falls squarely in that province (15, ch. 6, 8). More explicitlystill, in the review of Skinner’s Verbal Behavior (1959), a theory that appealsto a speaker/hearer’s knowledge is commended over one that seeks toassociate directly linguistic events with values of external variables. InAspects, this approach is codified and refined. Chomsky writes:

Linguistic theory is concerned primarily with an ideal speaker-listener, in acompletely homogenous speech-community, who knows its language perfectlyand is unaffected by such grammatically irrelevant conditions as memorylimitations, distractions, shifts of attention and interest, errors (random orcharacteristic) in applying his knowledge of the language in actual perform-ance . . . To study actual linguistic performance, we must consider the interaction ofa variety of factors, of which the underlying competence of the speaker-heareris only one. In this respect, study of language is no different from the empiricalinvestigation of other complex phenomena. (3–4)

Chomsky further explains that a generative grammar or a theory ofcompetence, ‘attempts to characterise in the most neutral possible termsthe knowledge of the language that provides the basis for the actual useof language’, without ‘prescrib[ing] the character or functioning of aperceptual model or a model of speech production’ (9). Let us now teaseapart this host of claims.

(i) Chomsky is not suggesting that a focus on competence is at theexpense of the study of performance; quite the contrary. It is onlyby studying competence that one may reasonably hope to gain afruitful perspective on performance (10; cf. Language and Mind 115–7;Reflections on Language 17). Otherwise put, for Chomsky, performanceis a complex cognitive phenomenon, of which the study of competenceis but one aspect. The contrast between competence and performance,then, is not a contrast between ‘mentalism’ and ‘behaviourism’. Indeed,behaviourism is not a serious pursuit at all; it is more of an expression



of a lack of interest in the basis of behaviour (Aspects 193–4, n. 1; cf.‘Review’ 548–9). So, a focus on competence sidelines behaviourism,not by eschewing phenomena, but by seeking to explain them onthe basis of the internal structure of the organism.

(ii) A complicating factor to this picture is the phenomenon of linguisticcreativity: the fact that linguistic performance is typically novel, stimulus-free,and appropriate to context (see Chomsky, Cartesian Linguistics). Chomskyhas suggested that such creativity might be mysterious, i.e. intractableto human theoretical understanding (see Collins, ‘On the Very Idea’).It is crucial to note, however, that mystery does not shroud the wholeof linguistic behaviour; in particular, a generative grammar isintended precisely to explain the novelty aspect of creativity (Chomsky,Cartesian Linguistics 77–8, n. 8). On Chomsky’s view, linguisticbehaviour is not reflexive, for we typically decide what to say; indeed,we might decide to say nothing at all. In this sense, our behaviour isstimulus-free (even when we speak unthinkingly, for no particularreason, our utterances are not under any stimulus control). But it isnot random, in that what we do say is expressive of our mutualrecognition of intentions and beliefs that form the background ofappropriateness to our linguistic exchanges. Still, such free appropriateaction has a reflexive structure to it. Children do not decide to acquirea language, anymore than a mature monolingual English speakercould decide to speak French or Mohawk. Likewise, we cannot helpbut interpret utterances in a familiar tongue and we cannot help butfail to interpret utterances in a foreign tongue, even though under-standing what our interlocutor is intending in both cases is a more orless affair based upon the prevailing shared context. A generative theorymakes explicit this fixed structure without hypothesising about themechanisms (if any) that allow for free expression, which is not to say, ofcourse, that there is nothing more to the structure than is revealed in ourlinguistic behaviour. This last point will be crucial to our later discussion.

(iii) The idealisation involved in the competence/performance distinctionis typical of scientific inquiry, although such an approach was peculiargiven the then hegemony of empiricism in psychology, linguistics, andphilosophy. Linguistic cognition in its full panoply is a complex affairapparently involving the interaction of distinct systems. Chomsky’sadvice is that we should idealise away from interface effects that are notrevelatory of the character of the systems themselves, much as we idealiseaway from friction in mechanics. Of course, the idealisations we pursueare a function of explanatory goals and on-going theoretical inquiry,and the ones Chomsky proposes are clearly appropriate in this light.An ideal speaker/hearer in a homogenous speech community is not tobe found, but the general cognitive restrictions on humans and theheterogeneity of actual speech communities look not to be constitutivefactors of linguistic competence and its development. Since actual



speaker/hearers do acquire their languages from a variable and degener-ate input, it would appear that such deviance from the ideal situation isnot a complicating factor. After all, no one has proposed that childrendepend upon heterogeneity in their data sources. An idealised modelmight well err on the side of simplicity, as all successful models do, butat least we would have a model of a simplified situation that may thenbe complicated to a degree to which factors not included in the modelbecome salient in the data. The alternative procedure, of initiallyattempting to accommodate all the factors that might contribute toextant language acquisition has all the virtues of doing celestial mechanicsby holding a video camera up at the night sky.

Likewise, idealising away from human memory, attention andsuch like seems eminently reasonable. Firstly, such restrictions applythroughout psychology and so appear to have no unique bearing onthe particular case of language. Secondly, if such general restrictions wereto be constitutive of linguistic competence, then our capacity to interpretstructures off-line, as it were, where such restrictions are not in play,would appear to be a species of decision, analogous to the construalof a complex metaphor. The phenomena, however, are not of thatkind. We do not decide to interpret a garden path sentence, say, asmeaning this rather than that. Once the structure is revealed to us, ithas a fixed interpretation, even if it remains unparsable on-line (see below).

In sum, the competence/performance distinction invites us to viewlinguistic cognition as an ensemble effect of a host of systems. A generativetheory seeks to account for one component under idealisation of itsintegration with other systems. It bears noting that this picture does notassume that the linguistic component (the language faculty) is richly suigeneris. If it is, as older theories suggested, then that speaks of the innatenessof the faculty, for such richness is not derivable from other sources,especially given the conditions on language acquisition (Chomsky, Aspects;Language and Mind; Reflections on Language). Equally, if the language facultyis a paired down combinatorial operation that contributes (more or less)nothing to the output beyond its combination of lexical features, thenexactly the same idealisations are called for; the difference is that all thatis potentially unique in the human case (the language faculty in a ‘narrow’sense) is the arrangement of systems (language in a ‘broad’ sense), not thecontent of any given system (it might be, for example, that even therecursive procedure of human syntax is exhibited in other species, albeitnot ‘wired up’ to a structure of ‘vehicles’ and conceptual structures(Hauser et al., ‘Faculty of Language’; Chomsky, ‘Beyond ExplanatoryAdequacy’; Generative Enterprise Revisited; ‘Three Factors’)). Suffice it tosay, innateness is not threatened either, for the structures the facultygenerates remain underivable by any known mechanism from data underthe conditions of language acquisition.



In this characterisation of the competence/performance, the notion ofknowledge plays no substantial role. The knowledge locution neverthelesshas a motivational use in two intimate respects. Firstly, it serves to relatethe theory (a grammar as Chomsky then called it, with familiar ambiguity)to its main evidential base, i.e. speaker/hearers intuitions or knowledge oflanguage. Thus, we can talk as if what the speaker/hearer knows explicitlyflows from implicit knowledge (I shall have much more to say about thisshortly). Secondly, the locution serves to distinguish the faculty fromsystems of perception/production. The traditional construal goes beyondsuch a motivational understanding and takes a theory of competence topick out a ‘body of knowledge’ that other systems put to use; in short,the language faculty is what a competent speaker/hearer knows, not simplyan aspect of the speaker/hearer’s internal structure, albeit abstractly char-acterised.1 Of course, the knowledge at issue is understood to be largelytacit/implicit, i.e. not consciously retrievable by a competent speaker/hearer. Furthermore, what the speaker/hearer is supposed to know is whatour theory specifies; thus, the knowledge can freely outstrip the conceptswe readily attribute to each other as knowers of a language. For example,a theory might feature a principle that says, ‘Reflexives must be boundby a c-commanding antecedent’. The attribution of knowledge of thisprinciple to a speaker/hearer is not intended to be a claim about theirexplicit competence with the technical notions occurring in the principle,for typical speaker/hearers have no such explicit competence, and even ifsome do ( linguists), possession of the concepts does not enter into anexplanation of their linguistic competence.

If we leave to one side the issue of the interpretation of Chomsky’smany later remarks on knowledge, it is clear that the traditional construaldoes not follow from what has so far been said, at least not if anythinghangs on the notion of ‘knowledge’. As so far characterised, competencemarks out one system of an ensemble that in unison accounts for performance.In effect, then, there are no performance systems in distinction to a systemof competence; there is, rather, a performance ensemble including alanguage faculty whose properties are not exhausted by or solely dedicatedto perception and production; hence, Chomsky speaks of the facultybeing ‘used’ relative to performance factors. The precise character of thefaculty is subject to on-going theory; minimally, we take the faculty to bethe combinatorial system that generates structures from a selection fromthe lexicon, and we take it to be an independent system because itsapparent properties are not exhausted by the other putative systems, insofaras they themselves are open to investigation. On this account, a grammar,or a theory of the faculty, is an abstract specification of the combinatorialconditions over lexical items that the mind/brain realises under the ideal-isation. There is, therefore, no distinction between a ‘knowledge’ systemand a ‘use’ system, at least not if ‘knowledge’ is intended to designate abody of information rather than an aspect of the mind/brain just like the



other systems with which it is integrated. I have defended this view ofthe faculty at length elsewhere (Collins, ‘Faculty Disputes’; ‘Knowledgeof Language Redux’).

In the second half of the article, I shall respond to an interestingargument that seeks to show that the very phenomenon of linguisticcompetence as the evidential base of our theorising requires a substantialnotion of knowledge. In other words, it has been claimed that our firstmotivational reason for finding the ‘knowledge’ locution useful harboursa substantial epistemology. It is crucial to note that this argument is notdesigned to show that a competent speaker/hearer knows the linguist’stheory, as it were (see the above discussion); rather, the argument seeksto show that the very idea of getting evidence from speaker/hearersinvolves an epistemic conception of the linguistic agents, one under whichthe theorist is obliged to treat them as correct/incorrect in their intuitivelinguistic judgements. In this sense, the argument seeks to show thatlinguistic theory trades on speaker/hearers having explicit knowledge thatis to be accounted for in terms of their sub-personal states, independentlyof whether we construe those states in terms of tacit knowledge or not.

The Question of Knowledge

A good deal of the philosophy language of the past forty years has beenanimated by the question: ‘What do we know when we know a language?’(e.g. Davidson; Dummett; as well as the orbiting discussion). The sameinquiry also appears to animate linguistics insofar as competence is identifiedas a species of knowledge. It would appear that philosophy and linguisticsare talking the same language. Consider, however, the following remarks:

[I]n English one uses the locutions ‘know a language’, ‘knowledge of language’,where other (even similar) linguistic systems use such terms as ‘have a language’,‘speak a language’, etc. That may be one reason why it is commonly supposed(by English speakers) that some sort of cognitive relation holds between Jonesand his language, which is somehow ‘external’ to Jones; or that Jones has a‘theory of his language’, a theory that he ‘knows’ or ‘partially knows’. . . . Oneshould not expect such concepts to play a role in systematic inquiry into thenature, use, and acquisition of language, and related matters, any more thanone expects such informal notions as ‘heat’ or ‘element’ or ‘life’ to survivebeyond rudimentary stages of the natural sciences. (Chomsky and Stemmer397; cf. Chomsky, New Horizons 72, 119)

Chomsky appears to be happy to use the same locutions as the philosophersbut abjures any responsibility for the philosophical questions that arise onthe back of the locutions. Further, far from accepting the integrity of ourfamiliar epistemic talk, he appears to dismiss it as mere collocation. ForChomsky, the purpose of the locutions is to frame the area of inquiry; inparticular, they signal that we are concerned with speaker/hearers’ cognitivecompetence rather than their behaviour or action. If this is properly borne



in mind, then it matters not how we designate the competence. Chomsky’spresent view on this issue is not a recent quirk. For instance, Chomsky’scelebrated attack on behaviourism (‘Review’) was not an argument forthe legitimacy of our quotidian intentional categorisation of mental states,quite the reverse: Skinner is assailed for merely repackaging intentionaltalk into a new vocabulary. In other words, Chomsky’s accusation is thatthe putative empirical behaviourism is just logical behaviourism; even ifthe required relations of synonymy were to be established, no sciencewould be advanced. Further, Chomsky, (Reflections on Language; Rules andRepresentations) offered the substitute ‘cognize’ in order to curtail, to hismind, the needless philosophical fuss that arose with his initial use of‘knowledge’ in Aspects. Suffice it to say, the controversy over Chomsky’sapparent epistemology has been raging since the 1960s and shows littlesign of abating, notwithstanding Chomsky’s explicit denials as witnessedabove.2 Rather than delve into the history of Chomsky exegesis, let usconsider the argument advertised above, which, if right, would establishthat ‘knowledge’ in linguistics is more than convenient collocation.

The data syntacticians predominately appeal to are speaker/hearers’intuitive judgements of acceptability and interpretability (suffice it to say,any relevant data are admissible; intuitions are simply readily available, notobviously misleading, and have no serious competitor as a data source).As an example, consider the following constructions:

(1) a. Who do you believe Mary loves?b. *Who do you believe the man that loves?

(2) a. The duck is ready to eat.b. The duck is ready to be eaten.

Normal speakers of English judge that (1)a is perfectly acceptable, roughlymeaning: ‘Which person x is such that you believe Mary loves x’. On theother hand, (1)b is unacceptable, even though, with some thought, onecan see how it could express a perfectly legitimate question: ‘Which personx is such that you believe the man that loves x’ or ‘Which person x issuch that you believe the man that x loves’. That is, even though thepotential thoughts are perfectly coherent, the structure just can’t be usedto express them. With (2)a, normal speakers of English readily recognisethat it is ambiguous, meaning either that the duck is in a state of readinessto eat something or that the duck is such as to be fit to eat. (2)b is alsoambiguous, but differently so: on one reading it is (more or less) synonymouswith the second reading of (2)a; on another reading, the duck is in a stateof readiness for someone or thing to eat it – it is prepared to meet its maker.

It bears emphasis that the data here are the speaker/hearer’s intuitions/judgements/responses to the displayed sentences. It is a mere convenienceto present the data as the sentences themselves, but quick reflection tellsone that the sentences themselves, understood as inscription or soundwave types, can’t be the data. Take something like the ambiguity exhibited



in (2). When we say that the sentences are ambiguous, we are notsuggesting that the strings themselves have properties about which we usespeaker/hearers to get data on. The phenomenon, rather, is that speaker/hearers can understand each sentence in divergent ways and it is thatwhich we seek to explain; that is our data. So, to give divergent analysesof a sentence in order to explain its ambiguity is, in reality, a hypothesisabout the structures speaker/hearers employ in their production, consumption,and reflection on the strings exhibited (analogously, economics is notinterested in the properties of coins and notes, but the values they standfor as fixed by more abstract properties of interest and exchange rates,etc.). Of course, this approach does not answer the question of howspeaker/hearers associate such structures with the strings (‘Saussureanarbitrariness’), but however that is ultimately to be explained, we knowthat we must attribute the structures to the speaker/hearers, for the veryphenomena is their divergent interpretations, which would not beexplained by positing the structures to be external to the speaker/hearers(analogously, the Wall Street Crash is not explained by the properties ofcoins and notes). I take all sides to appreciate this point on how tointerpret linguistic data.

Such data across the range of languages are used to support and constrainhypotheses of syntactic structure and how the grammar for the givenlanguage (in Chomsky’s terms, the steady state of the language faculty –a component of the human mind-brain) is designed such that those structuresare used to interpret strings (inscriptions, sound waves, hand gestures). Forexample, on the basis of (1), it would appear that the arguments of a verbembedded in a relative clause can’t be questioned in the manner (1)battempts, although they can be otherwise questioned by leaving the wh-wordin-situ and applying stress (these are so-called ‘echo questions’). Now, thequestion is: Does the use of such intuitive data show that linguistics tradesin a robust understanding of knowledge? Well, why might one think thatthe answer is positive?

A number of philosophers argue along the following lines.3

(KA)(i) In general, the evidence for a theory establishes its objective domain of

inquiry.(ii) Therefore, for linguistic data to be evidence for a theory, the data must

establish the domain of the theory.(iii) Linguistic data are predominantly speaker/hearer judgements; qua judge-

ments, they can go right or wrong (what seems right for a speaker/hearerisn’t necessarily right).

(iv) But if linguistic judgement is to serve as evidence for a theory, then wemust be concerned with the cases when the speaker/hearer is right.

(v) Therefore, a speaker/hearer must be construed as standing in a minimalepistemic relation (correctness) to the domain of the theory, for the domainof the theory is revealed by correct judgement.



In general, the thought behind this reasoning is that speaker/hearers countas a data source to the extent to which we may assess their intuitions interms of their flowing from (being evidence for) the facts that concernthe theorist, and only correct judgements do so flow from the facts.Incorrect judgements would be disregarded or diagnosed as flowing froman interaction of the faculty with other systems (a ‘performance error’).To this minimal extent, the informants count as having knowledge oflanguage, even if we decline the traditional interpretation and remainneutral on what the speaker/hearers can be said to know tacitly, if anythingat all.

A precise analysis of knowledge is not our concern here; besides, (KA)trades on a minimal idea of correctness, rather than a more fully articulatednotion of knowledge. Let us, then, settle on a minimal (necessary) conditionfor a state to count as (objective) knowledge.

(MK) S knows that P only if S’s entertaining of P is correct or incorrect relativeto P, not merely to the entertaining of P.4

In essence, (MK) enshrines the seems right/is right distinction, under whichknowledge is an external relation holding between a realm of reality thatis the independent ground of correctness for our judgements over it. Wemay also grant that speaker/hearers are largely authoritive in their linguisticjudgements, i.e. ceteris paribus, we take them to be the best judges of whatis correct or incorrect; after all, our data is how they understand thelanguage, not the language itself in some abstract sense. Now, if a theoreticalaccount of competence is not even obliged to satisfy (MK), then we canbe safe in thinking that no richer conception of knowledge constrains ourtheory.

The argument presented is problematic in steps (iii) and (iv), where aminimal condition on knowledge is introduced as underwriting the useof linguistic judgement as evidence for a theory.

First, note that the argument claims that data count as evidence only ifthe data flow from the hypothesised facts, where the data are the speaker/hearers’ contents or opinions. In a sense, the general assumption here istrivially true: if a range of data is not viewed as flowing from the hypothesisedfacts, then the data clearly do not count as evidence for the hypotheses athand. Further, it is trivially true in the particular case of linguistics on theassumption that the data are linguistic judgements.5 On the other hand,the distance between evidence and hypothesis is often vast and highlycomplex. Indeed, such distance is highly valued, for the more abstract ahypothesis is – the more distant it is from the description of a particulardata source – the more likely it is that it will cover a greater range ofotherwise disparate phenomena. In other words, the cost of greaterabstraction is an increase in the length and complexity of our explanatorydeductions, but the far greater benefit is genuine explanatory depth asopposed to mere descriptive coverage. In what sense, then, might we



think of speakers’ judgements as flowing from the facts of their linguisticconstitution and so as useable as evidence on the faculty? I think theanswer is far from clear beyond the banality that the judgements are inpart caused or explained by the hypothesised structures attributed to themind. What does not follow is that the speaker/hearer needs to be correctin their judgement for the judgement to be evidence for the constitutionof the language faculty. This does not entail that speaker/hearers cannotbe properly said to be correct or incorrect in their judgements; the pointis merely that the epistemic standing of the speaker/hearer is irrelevant tothe theoretical project and, in particular, the evidential status of intuitivedata.

First off, what the speaker/hearer qua data source can be reasonably saidto know (be correct about) is very distant from what the theory postulates.In general, we are merely interested in how a speaker responds to aconstruction, or what readings they can find for it. We have no concernfor what the speaker thinks the actual structure of the sentence is. So,what we credit the speaker as knowing qua data source sheds no lightwhatsoever on the language faculty independent of some on-going theoryin terms of which we might begin to analyse the structures about whichthe speakers have their judgements. This just means, of course, that thereflection there is of the theoretical postulates in the content of thespeakers’ judgements we are using as data is massively mediated by ouron-going theory. For example, even if we were to credit a speaker withknowledge that the arguments of a verb within a relative clause can’t bequestioned via movement (an absurdly rich principle to credit someonewho merely attests to a difference between (1)a and (1)b), the actualexplanation of why this is so need not advert to, say, the notion of arelative clause or a question at all; indeed, the standard explanation refersto neither.6 Similarly, that a speaker/hearer may recognise the ambiguitiesin (2) sheds no light on how the underlying structures are differentiatedso as to explain that judgement. The present point, therefore, is not thatwe shouldn’t speak of ‘knowledge of language’, but merely that weshouldn’t construe the knowledge at issue as being assessable in light ofthe facts; we simply need not care, for that we make the linguistic judge-ments we make is clearly a consequence of our linguistic constitution, butthis relation is in no need of epistemic underwriting at the intentionallevel, for, typically, the speaker/hearer’s judgement is not a reflection ofthe hypothesised facts in a way that we could judge it for correctness inlight of the facts.7 We want the facts to enter into an explanation of thejudgements and for that we need not construe the judgements as beingcorrect over the facts.

The question remains, however, of how we are to understand thespeaker/hearer as a data source such that the objective realm of thelinguistic facts is evidenced. I think naivety should be the order ofthe day. It suffices merely to think of speaker/hearers as honest in their



judgements; they needn’t know anything, at least not so as to provideevidence, i.e. we have no concern about the speaker/hearer’s correctness.In this light, the judgements count as evidence because we take them tobe the product of their competence, but they needn’t reflect the structureof that competence in a way different from how a piece of cobalt paperreflects the chemical constitution of the fluid in which it is immersedor how perceived starlight indicates the position of the star. It is a theo-retical matter to separate the ingredients that go to produce the elicitedjudgements, just as in any other empirical inquiry. The speaker/hearers’ epistemic stance towards their judgements is neither here northere.

Are we now lumbered with the thought that whatever seems right to aspeaker/hearer is right? Well, as it happens, we know that this is not thecase, and it is this fact that has lead some philosophers to think that sucha difference grounds the conception of the speaker/hearer as an epistemicallyrobust knower, for the facts of language are revealed to be constitutedindependently of the range of speakers/hearers’ judgements. The easiestway to see the point here is via a consideration of theoretically sanctionedbut unparsable sentences:

(3) a. The horse raced past the barn fell.b. The paint daubed on the wall stank.

Normal speakers judge (3)a to be unacceptable – the verb fell appears tobe dangling at the end. In contrast, (3)b is fine. On the model of (3)b,however, one can see how (3)a is perfectly well-formed: fell is the mainverb with the material preceding it being its subject inclusive of anelliptical relative clause. There are many such sentences; indeed, given therecursivity of language, there will be an unbounded number of sentencesthat, due to their complex clausal embeddings, will be unusable by normalspeakers. Does this tell us that speakers/hearers are knowledgeable abouttheir language because they have a defeasible but largely authoritative graspof an independent realm of fact?

Such a conclusion is far too strong. Minimally, as argued above, the datatell us that linguistic performance is the output of a complex of systems,not merely a grammar as usually conceived. We should not imagine, forinstance, that speaker/hearers ought to recognise (3)a as grammatical; it isbuilt into their nature as speaker/hearers that they will not do so. In nosense that is the concern of linguistics are the subjects in error here.Worse, if we were to view the subjects as being in error and knowledgewere understood as a guarantee of evidence, then we would over-ride thedata of (3)a, i.e. we would not treat it as evidence for competence.Obviously, however, we take the data seriously, we don’t merely over-rideit. The data pair pose a question: Why can speaker/hearers parse (3)a, butnot (3)b? Integral to any answer here is that The horse raced past the barn isambiguous while The paint daubed on the wall is not. The first can be a



sentence or a determiner/noun phrase; the second can only be a determiner/noun phrase. On reflection, we can see why this is so. If Bill raced thehorse past the barn, the horse raced, but if Bill daubed paint on the wall,it doesn’t follow that the paint daubed; the second thought is justincoherent. Thus, hearers of (3)b are not ‘led down the garden path’ becausethere is only one grammatical analysis available; with (3)a, hearers aremisled, because they invariably go for the sentential reading, which resultsin a dangling verb at the end of the string according to the analysis bywhich the hearers interpret the string. Hence, there is some extra-grammaticalprinciple that leads one down the garden path in the second case. Ineffect, then, the parsing data provide evidence for grammatical analysis,which contradicts the claim that judgement data are to count as evidenceonly when they track the competence. Here, the opposite is the case: thejudgement does not track the underlying competence at all, but it stillcounts as very good evidence for the nature of the competence. As shouldbe clear, this treatment of the data is perfectly flush with the minimalconstraint that we take speakers to be simply honest; we don’t require anyricher conception of their epistemology.

It bears emphasis that this is not a sceptical conclusion.8 In a perfectlylegitimate sense, competent speaker/hearers do know lots about theirlanguage and this knowledge is traceable to their language faculty, alongwith other systems with which it is integrated. My claim is only that noepistemological issues arise here, sceptical or otherwise; in particular,speaker/hearers qua providers of evidence need not be construed asknowers.9 Linguists need have no concern with the speaker/hearers warrantfor their judgements, or even if they are correct in relation to anindependent realm; it is enough if the judgements they make are honest.By way of close analogy, note how empty the epistemological problem ofother minds is to the psychologist studying theory of mind competence.The psychologist has no concern with the warrant (if any) children havein attributing beliefs and intentions to fellow humans; indeed, the psychologistneed not even care if there are any beliefs or intentions in a sense thatgoes beyond our competence to attribute them. Still, it is perfectly legiti-mate to call such theory of mind competence a species of knowledge,although nothing hangs on such a description beyond the convenience ofcollocation.

As readily conceded above, the issue of ‘knowledge of language’ is verycomplex. The relation between our intuitive self-conception as knowersof a language and the domain of theoretical linguistics is prime groundfor philosophical reflection. My argument in this paper has been that therelation is presently quite opaque and, in particular, we have no goodreason to think that peculiar epistemic constraints are in play when we dolinguistics. For sure, how things are for the speaker/hearer is our principaldata source, but the evidential status of the data requires no guaranteefrom the epistemic standing of speaker/hearers.



Short Biography

John Collins’s research is primarily at the intersection of cognitive scienceand philosophy, with especial reference to linguistics. He also researcheson the concept of truth and has a long-standing interest in all aspects ofthe philosophy of Kant and early analytical philosophy. He has publishedwidely in these areas, including articles in The British Journal for the Philosophyof Science, Language and Mind, Mind, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research,and Synthese. His forthcoming book, entitled Chomsky: A Guide for thePerplexed, offers an historical overview of the generative enterprise fromthe perspective of recent ‘minimalist’ thinking. He holds a B.A. and M.A.in philosophy from the University of Warwick and a Ph.D. in philosophyfrom the University of London. He currently teaches in the school ofphilosophy at the University of East Anglia.

Notes

* Correspondence address: Department of Philosophy, University of East Anglia, Norwich,Norfolk NR2 2PN, UK. Email: [email protected].

1 See, e.g. Fodor, Modularity of Mind; Higginbotham; Patterson; Jackendoff; Carston. Whilethere are substantial differences between these theorists and many others, they all agree that thefaculty is a ‘body of knowledge’ that, as such, is distinct from other ‘processing’ systems; inother words, the ‘knowledge’ label is not serving merely to mark a difference between systemsof the same kind – abstract specifications of mental structure – whose precise character andintegration is subject to on-going theory.2 See, e.g. Cowie; Devitt; as well as many of the papers in Barber, Epistemology of Language.3 The following reconstruction of the reasoning is based upon the argument of Smith (‘WhatI Know’; ‘Why We Still Need Knowledge’), foreshadowed in Smith’s ‘UnderstandingLanguage’ (for a brief response to the initial argument, see Chomsky, New Horizons 142–3).Reasoning in the same spirit as Smith can be found in Barber, ‘Idiolectal Error’; Fodor,‘Some Notes’; George; Matthews, ‘Knowledge of Language’; ‘Could Competent Speakers’;Wright.4 MK is intended to sideline cases where mere ‘entertaining’ might suffice for knowledge as in(potentially) self-reflexive perceptual reports.5 It is worth noting, however, that linguistic judgement in the relevant sense need be no morearticulated than, ‘Sounds odd’, ‘Don’t know what that means’, etc. Such judgements indicatelevels of acceptability and are not construed by the linguist as opinions on structure. It is thelinguist’s theoretical task to discern how such inchoate judgements reflect the fine structurehypothesised to be (partly) explanatory of the judgements. See below for more on this.6 The classic explanation for movement restrictions (e.g. Chomsky, Essays on Form) appeals tocertain phrase bracketings and privileged elements, such as subjects; more recent explanation interms of a Phase Impenetrability Constraint is more abstract still, making essential appeal to covertphrasal heads. See, e.g. Chomsky, ‘Minimalist Inquiries’.7 Devitt misses this point in his assault on the ‘Cartesian’ conception of linguistic intuitions,under which intuitions are a kind of direct insight into the language faculty, or can at least beso treated by the linguist. He suggests, for example, that, in contrast to ambiguity and gram-maticalness, speakers don’t have intuitions ‘about’ much of the exotica of linguistic theory, suchas ‘heads, A-positions, c-command, cases’, etc. (101). Quite! But this tells us nothing about theevidential role of intuitions save that an intuition can evidentially bear on X without theconcept [X] being part of the content of the intuition. Thus, binding intuitions bear onheadedness, the interpretation of idioms bears on A-positions, the interpretation of double-objectconstructions bears on c-command, obligatory prepositions bear on case, and so on indefinitely.



Unfortunately, a thought not too distant from the ‘Cartesian’ conception appears to animatethe more general epistemic model of intuitions.8 Barry Smith (personal correspondence) has suggested that even if this line of reasoning iscorrect, it doesn’t follow that the linguist is free to take speaker/hearers to be largely incorrectin their judgements; that is, the unparsable data are exceptions that prove the rule. I take Smith’spoint, but part of my claim is that we shouldn’t be wondering whether speaker/hearers arelargely correct or incorrect; for, qua data source, we just don’t care about their correctness, onlytheir honesty. It is up to the theorist to determine the evidential status of a range of intuitions.Thus it is that across a range of cases, especially binding and scope phenomena, it is hard toseparate intuitions reflecting syntactic, semantic or pragmatic competence. Chomsky’s Aspects(3) idealised speaker/hearer is very much an idealisation, for our intuitions are high-levelcognitive reflections that are not a direct reflection of competence. For sure, under the idealisation,intuitions are treated as if they reflect the underlying system so that we may frame an area ofinquiry into one of the systems whose interaction with others is the basis for the intuitions.Still, such idealisation requires no epistemic grounding. In this light, Smith and others mightbe perilously close to a ‘Cartesian’-like model of intuitions assailed by Devitt.9 See the above quotation from Chomsky. It also worth noting that as early as 1972, we findChomsky writing: ‘Since the language has no objective existence apart from its mental repre-sentation, we need not distinguish between “systems of belief ” and “knowledge” ’ (Languageand Mind 169, n. 3). In other words, all that is important is the characterisation of the internalstate that underlies the competence; no issue of warrant arises.

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Vol. 3. Ed. A. Belletti. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004. 104–31.——. Cartesian Linguistics. New York, NY: Harper and Row, 1966.——. Essays on Form and Interpretation. Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1977.——. The Generative Enterprise Revisited. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2004.——. Language and Mind. Enlarged ed. New York, NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1968/72.——. The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory. New York, NY: Plenum, 1975 [1955–56].——. ‘Minimalist Inquiries: The Framework’. Step by Step: Essays on Minimalist Syntax in Honor

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Linguistic Competence without Knowledge of Language