Scribd
Upload
577 views

What Is Contrastive Analysis

Contrastive analysis (CA) is a linguistic enterprise that aims to compare language systems. It considers how a learner's first language may interfere with their ability to learn a second language. CA is neither purely generalist nor particularist in its approach. While it is interested in the nature of individual languages, it focuses on comparing languages. CA analysis incorporates aspects of both pure and applied linguistics, with its comparative approach making it most relevant to applied linguistics and fields like language teaching.

Uploaded by

Mafe Mafeildus
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
577 views

What Is Contrastive Analysis

Contrastive analysis (CA) is a linguistic enterprise that aims to compare language systems. It considers how a learner's first language may interfere with their ability to learn a second language. CA is neither purely generalist nor particularist in its approach. While it is interested in the nature of individual languages, it focuses on comparing languages. CA analysis incorporates aspects of both pure and applied linguistics, with its comparative approach making it most relevant to applied linguistics and fields like language teaching.

Uploaded by

Mafe Mafeildus
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 27

WHAT IS CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS?

The Place of CA in Linguistics

THE PLACE OF CA IN LINGUISTICS


LINGUISTICS: It is the scientific study of language. The study of the nature, structure, and variation of language, including Phonetics, Phonology, Morphology, Syntax, Semantics, Sociolinguistics, and Pragmatics.

A LINGUIST is a person whose main aim is the professional study of a language. His or her studies may be devoted to different fields such as: Teaching one or more languages Translation and Interpretation Language Families or Language History Philosophy As LINGUISTS we can find polyglots (multilingual), teachers, anthropologists, philologers, historians, philosophers, among others.

LINGUISTIC ENTERPRISE
ENTERPRISE: A systematic purposeful activity. Project Organization LINGUISTIC ENTERPRISE is the relationship between language and the different scientific fields with which Linguists are concerned.

LINGUISTIC ENTERPRISE
DIMENSIONS: 1)Two different approaches to Linguistics: GENERALIST: Linguists consider the general phenomenon of human language. They can be philosophers. PARTICULARIST: Linguists treat individual languages. They tend to be anthropologists or philologers.

LINGUISTIC ENTERPRISE - DIMENSIONS


PHILOLOGY is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics. ANTHROPOLOGY is the study of the human race, especially its origins, development, customs and beliefs. PHILOSOPHY is the study of the nature and meaning of the universe and human life.

LINGUISTIC ENTERPRISE - DIMENSIONS


2) Linguists study language either in isolation or in a comparative way. Someone who studies a language in isolation deals with the inherent parts of the particular language that makes it unique and different from others. Comparativist shares the assumption that languages are unique but they also say that languages share similar features which can be compared and classified into types.

LINGUISTIC ENTERPRISE - DIMENSIONS


Linguistic Typology: Synthetic It is a language in which the greatest number of ideas is comprised in the least number of words. For example: English: antidisestablishmentarianism Spanish: antidesestructurante- escribiendomelo Finish: juoksentelisinkohan. "I wonder if I should run around (aimlessly)"

LINGUISTIC ENTERPRISE - DIMENSIONS


Analytic These languages have free morphemes considered to be independent words. It uses very few bound morphemes such as English prefixes and suffixes (Refill;slowLY) and in the inflexions of English nouns and verbs (boxES; talkING; talkED)

LINGUISTIC ENTERPRISE - DIMENSIONS


Inflectional In these languages, grammatical relationships are expressed by changing the internal structure of the words through inflections. Suffixes express several grammatical meanings. For example in English: Tense: write- wrote-written Number: child-children Gender: actor-actress

LINGUISTIC ENTERPRISE - DIMENSIONS


Agglutinating In linguistics, agglutination is the morphological process of adding affixes to the base of a word. For example Japanese expresses fusion in otto ( younger brother), from oto+hito.

LINGUISTIC ENTERPRISE - DIMENSIONS


Tone In a tone language, different tones will change the meaning of the words, even if the pronunciation of the word is the same. There are many languages in which the tone can determine meaning of the word, and changing from one tone to another can completely change the meaning. For example: In Kono, a language of west Africa, we find the following: High level: b (uncle) Low level: _b (greedy)

buu (horn) _buu (to be cross) \ma (scold)

In Mandarin Chinese for example: ma (mother) /ma (hemp)

LINGUISTIC ENTERPRISE - DIMENSIONS


3) we can distinguish two sciences of language: DIACHRONIC: The study of language change. It has five main concerns: to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages to reconstruct the pre-history of languages and determine their relatedness, grouping them into language families to develop general theories about how and why language changes to describe the history of speech communities to study the history of words, i.e. etymology

LINGUISTIC ENTERPRISE - DIMENSIONS


SYNCHRONIC: The study of the grammar, classification, and arrangement of the features of a language at a given time, without reference to the history of the language or comparison with other languages.

For example: linguistic typology .

WHAT IS CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS?


The nature of contrastive analysis as a linguistic enterprise Neither generalist nor particularist. Interested in both the nature of the language and its comparison with other languages. It doesnt consider classifications. It is not synchronic. CA seems to be a hybrid linguistic enterprise. * CA is a linguistic enterprise aimed at producing contrastive language systems and founded on the assumption that languages can be compared.

CA AS INTERLANGUAGE STUDY

Linguistics has as its object of study any human language in general. It consist of a variety of branches which are concentrated on parts of whole languages. For example: Phonetics: it is concerned with human noises by which the message is given audible shape Dialectology: Dialectology is a study of language that focuses on understanding dialects. When dialectologists study language they are principally concerned with identifying how the same language can vary, based on a number of circumstances. This does not simply mean pronunciation changes, but can also mean differences in word choice, spelling and other factors.

CA AS INTERLANGUAGE STUDY
3 Kinds of DIALECTS can be distinguished. HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIAL

HISTORICAL DIALECTS
The letter /k/ and /t/ were represented by /c/ Examples: cyssan to kiss cinn chin

ge (plural) pu (singular)

today we use you in both cases.

GEOGRAPHICAL DIALECTS

SOCIAL DIALECTS
/r/ that comes before a vowel as in car or star People of high social class have the tendency to omit this sound. Suffix- ing In words like swimming and sleeping there are two types of pronunciation: /in/ and /i/ Higher social classes use more /in/ compared to /i/.

CA AS INTERLANGUAGE STUDY
Interlanguage study: A linguistic system that results from a second language learner attempt to produce the target language. It is considered to be a separate linguistic system from the native language and target language.

CA AS INTERLANGUAGE STUDY

Within the interlingual study there are three branches:

Translation theory: the study of how texts from one language are transformed into comparable texts in another language. Error analysis: in error analysis learning develops in different stages as learners interact with the environment. It looks at the errors made by learners while they are learning and asks questions about them. For example: the student who may change sat to seated or sated because the past tense ed has just been internalized. Error analysis looks at such errors positively and considers them necessary to the development of language, be it first or second. Contrastive Analysis: it considers L1 to be mainly an interference to the mastery of L2

CA AS INTERLANGUAGE STUDY
INTERLANGUAGE STUDIES We have to take into account the two languages concerned (SL/NL and FL/TL). The focus of attention is on the intermediate space between these languages. The language which appears in this intermediate state is called INTERLINGUA according to translation theory. It is a system which includes the analysis characteristics of the source language and the synthesis characteristics of target language.

INTERLINGUA INTERLINGUA

NL

FL SL

CA AS PURE OR APPLIED LINGUISTICS


APPLIED LINGUISTICS An interdisciplinary field of study that identifies, investigates, and offers solutions to language-related real-life problems. Some of the academic fields related to applied linguistics are education, psychology, anthropology and sociology.

CA AS PURE OR APPLIED LINGUISTICS


PURE LINGUISTIC Pure or general linguistics aims to study general properties of language independently from other disciplines. In addition, it studies linguistic properties primarily for its own sake, not for application purposes.

It is important to mention that pure linguists have been practicing something very similar to CA. their interests are not comparative, contrastive, or typological, but lie in the universals of language.

CA AS PURE OR APPLIED LINGUISTICS

CA analysis is a form of both pure and applied linguistics. While pure CA is not relevant in pure linguistics, it is the major concern of applied linguistics.

You might also like