This course on Contrastive Linguistics aims to provide students with a wide perspective
on this field of linguistic analysis, and also with the tools they need in order to
be able to establish comparisons and to contrast English with Spanish or Catalan.
Contrastive Linguistics (CL) is a discipline of Applied Linguistics that first emerged
in the United States in the mid-50s, under the influence of structuralism, and as
a result of a renovated interest in the teaching of foreign languages. Initially,
it sought to contrast pairs of languages in order to determine similarities and differences
between them. The hypothesis postulated within this framework was that the systematic
analysis of two languages should help predict the difficulties that learners of a
foreign language (FL) will encounter when acquiring it.
The base of CL is grounded on the idea, suggested by Robert Lado (1957), that it is
possible to identify areas of difficulty for the learners of a foreign language by
contrasting their mother tongue (L1) with the language they are learning (L2). The
analysis proposed by this author in his influential work (Linguistics across Cultures: Applied Linguistics for Language Teachers) always involved the analysis of at least two languages, that is, a target language
(TL) and a source language (SL), even though more languages could be contrasted if
required. Difficulties are expected to appear in those areas in which the two languages
differ. For that reason, special attention must be paid to difficulties; similarities,
on the other hand, are expected to facilitate the learning process.
Lado’s work is important because in it he suggested the techniques for contrasting
languages. For example, he proposed to search for features of the L1 that do not exist
in the L2 at the phonological or morphological levels, in order to create teaching
materials that would make students aware of them. At the lexical level, he proposed
to study the problems between pairs of words in both languages, taking into account
the similarities and the differences in both form and meaning.
The concept known as Tertium Comparitionis is core to Contrastive Linguistics. Making a comparison between two linguistic properties
or features, regardless of the language level you are contrasting, presupposes the
existence of a common feature that becomes the basis for the comparison. This common
feature is called Tertium Comparitionis.
CL faced a decline for several reasons (for a more profound account see Antenberg
& Granger 2002). Nevertheless, in the last decades there has been a resurgence of
CL as an area of interest in linguistic research. According to Artenberg and Granger
(2002: 3), there are several interrelated factors that can explain this revival. On
the one hand, the integration of European countries in a ‘multilingual and cross-cultural’
space has created a real need for comparing and contrasting languages and cultures.
Intercultural communication has become the focus of intensive research.
On the other hand, from a methodological point of view, there has been a shift in
the way languages are currently studied. The most important one is the emergence,
in the 1980s, of the empiricist approach to linguistic analysis (i.e. Corpus Linguistics),
which implied a revolution in the way data is approached and collected.
The course you are about to start presents a contrastive account of English, on the
one hand, and Spanish and Catalan on the other. Each unit deals with the contrast
of these languages at a different level of linguistic analysis, phonetics, morphology,
lexicology, syntax and, finally, discourse and pragmatics. As you can very well imagine,
even though each unit discusses a lot of different aspects, we cannot cover every
single area that could be contrasted between two or more languages, but we do cover
some of the most important ones.
The course is structured as follows. In Unit 1, you will be introduced to the basic
notions in phonetics and phonology that are necessary in order to describe and compare
phonological systems. These notions will help you to learn how to describe the consonant
and vowel systems of English, and how to contrast them to the Catalan and Spanish
systems. You will also find a description of the main characteristics of English word
stress, sentence stress, rhythm and intonation, also contrasted with Catalan and Spanish.
Thus, you will learn to identify the differences and similarities between the English
and Catalan/Spanish sound systems and will become aware of potential areas of difficulty
for Catalan/Spanish learners of English.
In Unit 2, you will be presented with some basic notions that are fundamental for
the study of morphology, both inflectional and derivational morphology. In addition,
we will explain the most relevant differences between English and Catalan or Spanish,
with respect to noun and verb morphology. Similarities between the morphological systems
will also be explained. Finally, we will explain the various word formation processes
in English and Catalan and Spanish.
Unit 3 is divided in two different parts. In the first part, we present the general
structure of the noun phrase and explain the differences and similarities in all three
languages. In the second part, we compare and contrast sentences following the theoretical
framework known as Construction Grammar. Thus, some of the most basic constructions
in English, Spanish and Catalan, such as the transitive or the passive construction,
are reviewed and compared.
Unit 4 is devoted to the study and contrast of languages at the lexical level. We
will review Lado’s classification and briefly present some concepts such as that of
false friend or cognate. In addition, we will present lexical divergences such as
lexical gaps, and review some productive mismatches between English and Spanish or
Catalan. Finally, we will move on to the concept of extended units of meaning, beyond
the word level. You will learn how to identify and translate them.
In Unit 5 we deal with discourse and pragmatics. Within discourse, we focus on the
various cohesion mechanisms that make a text coherent in the three languages (reference,
syntax, connectors and lexical cohesion), and on the differences in how information
structure is conveyed at the sentence level. As for pragmatics, we explain the concepts
of speech act, politeness, and face. Then, by studying three specific speech acts
(apologies, requests and complaints), we discover how the differences in politeness
are revealed in how people perform them.
Finally, all the units present an abundance of practical examples and activities and
exercises for students to practice.
