This report is the outcome of an attempt to relate what may be called the "Le Pagean view of competence" to a linguistic community very different from that which gave rise to the concept. While upholding the general principles, the paper contends that the methodology elaborated for work in fluid creole communities may not be universally appropriate. A variety of association testing is proposed as an alternative technique. The community studied in an experiment testing this technique was that of Strasbourg. The approach of Saer to bilingualism was adopted, i.e., abandoning the sequential aspect of language for an associationist view. The experiment consisted of two parts: a word-association test in which a mixture of French and German words were read to the subjects, who were free to respond in either language; and a simple test of recall, again using a mixture of French and German. Results of this experiment seem to corroborate the validity of the technique, but much further work is needed before this kind of experiment can be usefully employed. (AM)