Contrastive

Linguistics
TOPIC 1

OUTLINE

1. HISTORY
2. OVERVIEW
3 APPROACHES TO STUDYING
LANGUAGES

Contrastive
Linguistics
HISTORY

The Early Days

(Before 11th century)

CL dates back to the earliest linguistic

study.

Panini Grammar implied contrastive

elements bet. Classical Sanskrits & other
Indian languages.

European grammar books during

Renaissance written by comparing with
Greek & Latin.

=> modern CL: fruits of centuries of human

language studies.

Renaissance Period
(11th Century - 19th Century)

Early 11th century: Grammatica by Aelfric

Assumption: understanding of one
language facilitates learning the other.
17th century: John Hewes
Assumption: understanding of mother
tongues grammar both facilitates and
inhibits language learning
Later researchers: Howel, Lewis, Coles,
etc. shared the same views.

20th Century
1971: Contrastive Linguistics and
Foreign Language Teaching (G.Nickel): a
series of CL works 20th Cent. (biased
towards British & American linguistics)
J.Fisiak (1983): complete picture of CL
workwide => 3 schools.

20th Century

Eastern Europe School

1st school: Baudouin de Courterney
(Polish)
1902: 1 type - CA: no account of
family & typology.
1921: compare Polish, Russian &
Classical Slavic lgs.
Cont. by the Praha lg. school.
Russian grammar in contrasting with
Uzebek (Polivanov, 1918) => many
other Russian contrastive works.

20th Century

Western Europe School

2nd School: Charles Bally (Swiss)
Linguistique gnrale et linguistique
francaise (1932): a series of French- German
contrasts.
Others
Stylistique compare du francais et de
langlais (Vinay & Darbelnet, 1958).
Slylistique compare du france et de
lallemande ( Malblanc, 1961)
Recherches sur la frquence et la valeur des
parties du discours en francais, en anglais et
en espagnol (Barth, 1961)

20th Century

American School
3rd school: Charles Fries (1945):
Teaching and Learning English as a
Foreign Language.
The most efficient materials are
those that are based upon a scientific
description of the language to be
learned, carefully compared with the
parallel description of the native
language of the learner (Fries

20th Century

American School
Others:
Languages in Contact ( U.Weinreich, 1953)
Transfer Grammar (Z. Harris, 1954)
Linguistic across Cultures (R. Lado, 1957)
During late 60s & early 70s: Cl see serious
challenges & in crisis in America.

Revived Interest
Post modern view: more balanced
World flat: contact boom
Excitement for Machine Translation: a series
of research centers established.
Lots of Journals:
Papers and Studies in Contrastive Linguistics
( Polan from 1976)
Contrastes ( France from 1973)
Contrastive Linguistic ( Bulgarie from 1976)
Vietnam: 1997 first national conference on CL
in Ha Noi.

Overview
3 APPROACHES TO
STUDYING LANGUAGES

General Linguistics
Definition: a study of natural languages.
Its focus areas of research include:
The general
The structural
Linguistic processing
Regional, social, situational and stylistic linguistic
variation
Historical linguistic change and its reasons
The relationship between language and thought
The differences between human language and other
sign or communication systems

General Linguistics
Research can be divided into fields :
- In accordance with the levels of linguistic structure:
Phonology
Morphology
Syntax
Semantics
Pragmatics
- In accordance with several specialties: Language
typology , Historical linguistic, Sociolinguistics,
Discourse analysis , ...

Descriptive Linguistics
Definition: Descriptive linguistics is a
branch of linguistics that studies how
languages are structured.
Linguistic description >< linguistic
prescription
Larry Andrews describes descriptive
grammar is the linguistic approach
that studies what a language is like.

Descriptive Linguistics
A linguistic description is considered descriptively adequate
if it achieves one or more of the following goals of
descriptive linguistics:
A description of the phonology of the language in question.
A description of the morphology of words belonging to that
language.
A description of the syntax of well-formed sentences of
that language.
A description of lexical derivation.
A documentation of the vocabulary, including at least one
thousand entries.
A reproduction of a few genuine texts

Comparative Linguistics

Comparative-Historical Linguistics
Definition:
Comparative historical linguistics is a branch
of linguistics that compare languages and
their historical development to determine the
genealogical relationships between them.
Note: Languages which belong to the same
language family are genetically related to
one another; this means that these related
languages derive (or descend) from a single
original language, called a proto-language.

Comparative-Historical Linguistics

Aims:
i.

Recover and reconstruct as much as possible

of the ancestor language (the proto-language).

ii. Determine the changes in the various

languages that developed from the protolanguage.
.Comparative Approach: Diachronic (Diachrony
studies the evolution of languages through
history)

Comparative-Historical Linguistics

Basic Technique:
Comparative historical linguistics would
attempt to reconstruct the sound system first;
this leads to the reconstruction of the
vocabulary and grammar of the protolanguage.
Note: The reconstruction must be done by
working backward and reconstructing the
immediate ancestral forms of those languages
which are most closely related, and then
extending to the less closely related dialects.

Comparative-Historical Linguistics

Example:
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the linguistic
reconstruction of the common ancestor of the
Indo-European languages. PIE was the first
proposed proto-language to be widely accepted
by linguists. The Indo-European family includes
most major current languages of Europe, and
parts of Western, Central and South Asia.
Some other major language families: NigerCongo, Austronesian, Sino-Tibetan

Typological Linguistics
Definition:
Typological linguistics studies the similarities and
differences in languages with the aim to establish
linguistic categories for language classification.
Comparative Approach: Synchrony
(It only focuses on comparing the structural
characteristics of the languages at a specific
point of time, regardless of their genealogical
relationship.)
Typological linguistics could compare a wider
range of languages than comparative-historical
linguistics.

Typological Linguistics
Sub-disciplines:
1.

Typological classification: Compares all basic

components of language structure (phonology,
morphology, syntax, and semantics) to classify
languages into different groupings.

EX: Word order typology classifies languages

according to their basic order of Subject, Verb,
Object in a sentence. The majority of languages
falls into one of 3 main groups:
SOV (Japanese, Tamil, Turkish),
SVO (Chinese, English),
VSO (Arabic, Welsh)

Typological Linguistics
Sub-disciplines:
2. Typological generalization: The study of
patterns that occur systematically across
languages. (Croft, 2003) These typological
patterns are called language universals .
EX: If a language is spoken, it has consonants
and vowels.;
All languages have pronouns.
3. Theoretical Typology: Provides an explanation
(theoretical framework) for the distribution of
patterns in languages.

Contrastive Linguistics
Definition:
Contrastive linguistics is a sub-discipline of
linguistics which studies two or more languages in
order to determine both the differences and
similarities between them on all levels of language
structure (phonological, morphological, syntactic,
lexical-sematic). (Thiem, 2004)
Note: Contrastive linguistics can compare any two
or more languages regardless of whether they
are genealogically or typologically related or not.

Contrastive Linguistics
Comparative Approach: Synchrony
Applications:
1. Theoretical:
Contrastive linguistics tasks are to give detail
description of the similarities and differences in
languages and to find out the reasons behind them.
.Helps verify tentative universals.
.A very useful tool for linguists in the development
of general theories of language.

Contrastive Linguistics
2. Practical:
Applied contrastive analysis draws on the
theoretical findings for whatever necessary
information to use for a specific purpose.
Therefore, contrastive linguistics is an interface
between theory and application. (Gast, 2012)
Contrastive analysis is used in some applied
disciplines such as foreign language acquisition
and translation studies

Contrastive Linguistics
2. Practical:
In the field of Second Language Acquisition (SLA),
when using a foreign language, mistakes in
pronunciation, grammar, etc. are made because of
influence, or interference of the mother tongue.
The basic steps to overcome them are:
i.

Systematically compare the mother tone /L1/

with the foreign language /L2/.

ii.

Identify and explain the difficulties in acquiring

language.

iii.

Use the analyzed results to improve the

teaching materials for language learners. (Gast,
2012)

Comparison

ComparativeHistorical
Linguistics
Scope of
Study

Aims

Genealogical
language family

(1) Recover and

reconstruct as much
as possible of the
ancestor language
(the protolanguage).
(2) Determine the
changes in the
various languages
that developed from
the proto-language.

Typological
Linguistics

Language types
(1) Compares all
basic components of
language structure
to classify languages
into different
groupings.
(2) Establish linguistic
universals across
language.
(3) Provides an a
theoretical
framework for the
distribution of
patterns in

Contrastive
Linguistics
Similarities and
differences
between two or
more languages

Objective of
applicability
Apply the findings
into the
development of
linguistic theories
and into practical
uses in disciplines
such as SLA,
translation,

Comparison

Connection
1.

Contrastive Linguistics vs. Comparative-Historical

Linguistics

o.CL and CHL both compare languages and their

studies may overlap if two genetically related
languages are compared and contrasted.
o.In order to trace backwards the historical
development of languages, scholars must first start
examining their shared and contrasted features at a
certain point in time. Thus, contrastive analysis sets
the foundation for further diachronic research in CHL
(Hung, 2008).
o.By drawing on the findings of CHL, CL could find
relevant explanations why languages contrast, such
as geographic separation, language contact, etc.

Comparison

Connection
2.

Contrastive Linguistics vs. Typological Linguistics

o.These two disciplines both examine languages for

similarities and differences. While TL only establish the
most major generalizations across a wide variety of
languages, CL studies compare only 2 (or very few)
languages but with a higher degree of details, as it
takes into account all grammatical areas of those
languages.
o.CL can use the findings of TL as basis to further
explore the contrasts and properties of languages.
o.A contrastive study revealing detailed, striking
differences between two languages could provide
much more in-depth data for a comprehensive
typology study, particularly in determining linguistic
universals and language groups.

THANK YOU!