Contrastive Linguistics

Lecture Three
What, then, is contrastive linguistics?
Apparently, contrastive linguistics is a kind of or
a branch of linguistics. As its name suggests,
contrastive linguistics involves contrast or
comparison.
Comparison may be conducted intralingually
(within languages) or interlingually (between
languages) , on a synchronic basis or on a
diachronic basis. So four types of comparison may
be distinguished:
(1) Synchronic intralingual comparison
(2) Diachronic intralingual comparison
(3) Synchronic interlingual comparison
(4) Diachronic interlingual comparison
1. Diachronic intralingual comparison . This kind of comparison
would be made in the study of a given language’s history. A
diachronic comparison of English, for instance, reveals that the
language has undergone four stages of evolution: Old English (mid-
5th century to 1150), Middle English (1150–1500), Early Modern
English (1500–1700) and Late Modern English (1700 onwards), with
its grammar becoming increasingly analytic, that is, the number of
inflected word endings drastically decreased and grammatical
meanings were increasingly expressed by word order and function
words (such as prepositions).
Diachronic intralingual comparison is the principal method used by
researchers of language history, etymology and other related
branches of linguistic study.
2. Diachronic interlingual comparison . When comparison is
made across language borders, we get the so-called
(comparative) historical linguistics (also known as philology
The (comparative) historical linguists (or philologists were
concerned with linguistic genealogy or the establishment of
genetic “families” of language-groups. They achieved the
objective through a comparison of the linguistic systems of
different but usually related (cognate) languages in their
various stages of historical development. By means of
comparing historically related forms in different languages,
they tried to postulate or reconstruct the proto-language of a
group of related languages.
3) Synchronic interlingual comparison. According
to the purpose of comparison, three kinds of
synchronic interlingual comparison are
distinguished:
a) The first kind of synchronic interlingual comparison is carried out
with a view to finding out the common features of or common patterns
underlying the structures of all the languages of the world. The goal of
the comparison, as generative schools of linguists headed by
Transformational Grammarians have been concerned about, is to
discover such “language universals (or “linguistic universals as subject,
predicate, object or first, second and third pronouns, which are present
in all languages and which ultimately derive from our psychological
make-up and our perception of the world. Some currently unsolved
problems in linguistics are indeed about such universals, e.g.
• Is there a universal definition of word?
• Is there a universal definition of sentence?
• Are there any universal grammatical categories?
b. The second kind of synchronic interlingual
comparison (is conducted for the purpose of finding
out the typical differences between different
languages of the world in their structure so that
these languages can be classified according to their
formal features. This approach, called “linguistic
typology has established a classificatory system for
the languages of the world into which individual
languages can be slotted according to their preferred
grammatical devices.
(c) The third kind of synchronic interlingual comparison is
conducted within the scope of usually two languages, although
more languages may be involved. The aim of this kind of
comparison is to find out the discrepancies and, to a lesser
degree, the similarities in the structures of the languages being
compared. This is exactly what contrastive linguistics is about.
We may, therefore, define contrastive linguistics as: a branch of
linguistics which studies two or more languages synchronically,
with the aim of discovering their differences and similarities
(especially the former) and applying these findings to related
areas of language study or practice.
Contrastive linguistics is also known as “contrastive analysis
(CA) or “contrastive studies . These three terms are largely
interchangeable. In the United Kingdom and the United
States, “contrastive analysis” is a regular term, but in Eastern
Europe, China and some other parts of the world, the name
“contrastive linguistics” is preferred, perhaps because the
term “contrastive analysis” or “contrastive studies” may give
one an impression that they refer to approaches to specific
problems in a field instead of being a field of study in itself,
while the term “contrastive linguistics” sounds more like a
discipline in its own right, as it really is.
 Micro-Contrastive Linguistics and Macro-Contrastive
Linguistics

Broadly speaking, contrastive linguistics can be classified into

micro-contrastive linguistics and macro-contrastive linguistics .
As we know too well, a linguistic system is made up of many
layers or levels.
These layers or levels are often considered to form a scale or
hierarchy from lower levels containing the smallest linguistic units
to higher levels containing larger functional segments. So we
have phonetic, phonological, morphemic, lexical, syntactic,
textual, and pragmatic levels of linguistic structure or description.
According to the levels on which it is enacted, contrastive
linguistics may be roughly divided into two branches, i.e. micro-
contrastive linguistics and macro-contrastive linguistics.
The differentiation between micro-
contrastive linguistics and macro-
contrastive
linguistics
Micro-CA Macro-CA
Major concern Language structure Language use

Performed on Phonology, lexis, Text, pragmatics

levels of language grammar
Micro-contrastive linguistics is the “classic,” traditional mode
of contrastive linguistics. It is “code-oriented that is, oriented
towards langue (which, in Saussurian linguist theory, means
the system of language) or “Competence (which, in
Transformational Grammar, refers to a person’s internalized
grammar or ability to create and understand sentences,
including sentences that they have never heard or read
before). The goal of micro-contrastive linguistics is to compare
the universal as well as particular structural properties of
human languages. Specifically, it concentrates on four
structural levels of linguistics: phonetics, phonology, lexis and
grammar.
Macro-contrastive linguistics represents a broader
perspective of linguistic analysis and offers
considerable scope for new work in contrastive
linguistics. The goal of macro-contrastive linguistics
is to compare and understand how people use
different languages to communicate with each
other. Specifically, it addresses problems on two
higher levels—the textual and the pragmatic levels
—of linguistic description.
 Why Contrastive Linguistics?
Having answered the question of “what,” we are
now in the position to take up the question of
“why.” Why do we need contrastive linguistics?
The short answer to the question is that we
need it for at least two reasons: one theoretical,
and the other practical.
 1.2.1 The Theoretical Need for Contrastive
Linguistics
Viewed from a theoretical perspective, contrastive linguistics is indispensable to
the development of general linguistics. Different models of language can describe
different features of language with varying degrees of success. Transformational
Grammar a major theory of generative linguistics, e.g. can effectively account for
native English speakers’ intuition that certain types of construction (e.g. active and
passive sentences) are somehow related (cf. Tommy opened the door and The door
was opened by Tommy) and that certain others are ambiguous (e.g. Flying planes
can be dangerous).
On the other hand, Case Grammar another major theory of generative linguistics,
provides exceptionally efficient apparatus for explaining the
semantic affinity between more related sentences, e.g.
• This key opens that door.
• That door opens with this key.
• You can open that door using this key.
• That door can be opened with this key.
 1.2.2 The Practical Need for Contrastive
Linguistics
The second reason for which contrastive
linguistics is desirable is that the study of
contrastive data might suggest solutions to
various practical linguistic problems, especially
those which cannot be solved without the
analysis of evidence from more than one
language. Interlingual translation, for example, is
a field with abundant problems of that kind.
The History and Development of Contrastive
Linguistics
Contrastive linguistics originated in the United States during
the Second World War. At that time, a lot of immigrants
rushed into the country from different parts of the world to
stay away from the war. They had to master English in order to
make a new start in a foreign land. Later, when the United
States stepped into the war after the Japanese surprise attack
on Pearl Harbor, a large group of American soldiers were
required to learn within the shortest possible time some ABCs
of the languages of the belligerent states. That urgent need to
learn foreign languages gave rise to the problem of how to
teach a foreign language in a most effective and economical
way.
The solution found to the problem was
contrastive analysis . Fries (1945, p. 9) writes:
“The most efficient [teaching] materials are
those based on a scientific description of the
language to be learned, carefully compared with
a parallel description of the native language of
the learner.”
Beginning from the late 1960s, however, contrastive
analysis came under severe criticism in the United States. It
no longer claimed as much pedagogic attention as it used
to. The decline of pedagogic interest in contrastive analysis
was caused mainly by two circumstances.
(1) First of all, the theoretical basis of contrastive
description appeared to be shaken by newly emerged
approaches to psychology and linguistics. Specifically,
behaviorist psychology and structural linguistics met with
powerful challenges respectively from cognitive psychology
and Transformational Grammar in the 1960s.
Secondly, a more complex, real-life condition also added to the
decline of interest in the pedagogical power of contrastive
analysis .
Language teachers discovered that the contrastive
descriptions to which the had been exposed were only able to
predict part of the learning problems encountered by their
learners, and that those points of potential difficulty that were
identified seemed to cause various and variable problems
among different learners, and between the perception and the
production of language. Language learning, in short, was less
predictable from contrastive linguistic description than
teachers had been led to believe.