CHAPTER I: PRINCIPLES AND TRENDS OF CONTRASTIVE LINGUISTICS

1.1. Contrastive studies in the practice and science

Contrary to what is often believed, most of the world's population is multilingual

multicultural, though multilingualism is not always recognised by public institutions. Living in
these communities, human beings need a tool to communicate with each other, and to carry on
human and social affairs. They seem know that "However many languages a person knows, that's
how much a person is worth". (Croatian folk saying)

1.1.1. Some terminological issues

The label contrastive has been used in linguistic inquiry mainly to refer to inter-linguistic
and inter-cultural comparisons; it has, however, also been used for comparisons within
languages/cultures. The raison d‟être of contrastive investigations is to compare (or contrast)
linguistic and socio-cultural data across different languages (cross-linguistic/cultural
perspective) or within individual languages (intra-linguistic/cultural perspective) in order to
establish language-specific, typological and/or universal patterns, categories and features.
(1) Contrastive studies, contrastive analysis, and contrastive linguistics
An astonishingly varied assortment of collocations and corresponding areas of study emerge
when considering the various head nouns such adjectives as contrastive or comparative most
readily co-occur with in the literature. Thus, depending on what particular authors feel to be the
most appropriate description for the issue under discussion, we find such labels as (Applied)
Contrastive (Language) Studies, Contrastive Linguistics, Comparative (Historical or
Typological) Linguistics, Contrastive (Interlanguage) Analysis, Contrastive (Generative)
Grammar, Comparative Syntax, Contrastive Lexicology/Lexicography, Contrastive Pragmatics,
Contrastive Discourse Analysis, or Contrastive Sociolinguistics, to mention but a few.
Behind this terminological profusion there seems to exist a difference of scope with regard to
the three main collocations the aforementioned terms tend to cluster around, namely: (i)
contrastive studies (CS), (ii) contrastive analysis (CA), and (iii) contrastive linguistics (CL). It
would seem that CS names the most general field, embodying both the linguistic and the
extralinguistic (e.g. cultural, ethnographic, semiotic, etc.) dimensions of contrastive research.
By contrast, CA is a way of comparing languages in order to determine potential errors for
the ultimate purpose of isolating what needs to be learned and what does not need to be learned
in a second-language-learning situation. It, though frequently used interchangeably with the
other two collocations, seems to more accurately name the third of the three steps involved in
classical contrastive procedure: description, juxtaposition and comparison (Jaszczolt 1995b;
Krzeszowski 1990:35). Description includes the selection and preliminary characterisation of

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the items under comparison in the framework of a language-independent theoretical model.
Juxtaposition involves a search for, and identification of, cross-/intra-linguistic/cultural
equivalents, while the comparison proper evaluates the degree and type of correspondence
between items under comparison.
Lastly, CL could be said to restrict its domain to just contrastive linguistic research, whether
theoretical, focusing on a contrastive description of the languages/cultures involved, or
practical/applied, intended to serve the needs of a particular application, as will be discussed in
turn.
(2) Language contact and multilingualism

Language changes and its important source is contact between different languages and
resulting diffusion of linguistic traits between languages. Language contact occurs when
speakers of two or more languages or varieties interact on a regular basis. Multilingualism is
likely to have been the norm throughout human history, and today, most people in the world are
multilingual. Before the rise of the concept of the ethno-national state, monolingualism was
characteristic mainly of populations inhabiting small islands. But with the ideology that made
one people, one state, and one language the most desirable political arrangement,
monolingualism started to spread throughout the world.

When speakers of different languages interact closely, it is typical for their languages to
influence each other. Through sustained language contact over long periods, linguistic traits
diffuse between languages, and languages belonging to different families may converge to
become more similar. In areas where many languages are in close contact, this may lead to the
formation of language areas in which unrelated languages share a number of linguistic features.
Multilingualism is the use of two or more languages, either by an individual speaker or by a
community of speakers. Multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's
population. Multilingualism is becoming a social phenomenon governed by the needs of
globalization and cultural openness. Owing to the ease of access to information facilitated by the
Internet, individuals' exposure to multiple languages is becoming increasingly frequent, thereby
promoting a need to acquire additional languages.
A multilingual person is someone who can communicate in more than one language, either
actively (through speaking, writing, or signing) or passively (through listening, reading, or
perceiving). More specifically, the terms „bilingual‟ and „trilingual‟ are used to describe
comparable situations in which two or three languages are involved. A multilingual person is
generally referred to as a polyglot.
Multilingual speakers have acquired and maintained at least one language during childhood,

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the so-called first language (L1). The first language (sometimes also referred to as the mother
tongue) is acquired without formal education, by mechanisms heavily disputed.

1.1.2. Contrastive studies in practical daily life

"Making comparisons is a very human occupation. We spend our lives comparing one thing
to another, and behaving according to the categorizations we make. Patterns govern our lives, be
they patterns of material culture, or patterns of language. Growing up in any society involves, in
large measure, discovering what categories are relevant in the particular culture in which we find
ourselves” (Dienhart 1999: 98). “When the child produces an utterance containing an erroneous
form, which is responded to immediately with an utterance containing the correct adult
alternative to the erroneous form (i.e. when negative evidence is supplied), the child may
perceive the adult form as being in CONTRAST with the equivalent child form. Cognizance of a
relevant contrast can then form the basis for perceiving the adult form as a correct alternative to
the child form.” (Adapted from Gass: 357). Language contrast happens in human daily life and
language exists due to the contrast in its nature and elements. “Things are classified as the same,
similar or different, and we construct mental „boxes‟ in which to put objects which „match‟ in
some way. However, the number of new boxes we create diminishes rapidly as we grow older.
We become „fixed‟ in our perceptions, and the world, once fresh and new, loses its ability to
surprise as we become increasingly familiar with the objects it contains, and increasingly adept
at placing the objects encountered today into boxes created yesterday" (Dienhart 1999: 98).

Second language learners, teachers of foreign languages, translators, travelers, businessmen,

etc in nature are polyglots. They determine both interlingual and intralingual (dis)similarities in
pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, semantics and discourse. They are practical contrastists.
Polyglots do contrast in their listening, speaking, writing and reading.

Second language learners, travelers, business men, translators, etc, in nature, teach
themselves second language. In the case, they do contrast languages (on the levels of phonetics,
phonology, lexis, grammar and meaning in listening, speaking, reading and writing): they are
contrastive „naive‟ linguists.

1.1.3. Contrastive studies in science

The origins of CL as a regular linguistic procedure can be traced back to the middle of the
15th century, and the appearance of the first contrastive theories to the beginning of the 17th
century (cf. Krzeszowski 1990). In the 19th century comparative investigations used an
empirical, historical methodology to discover genetic links and language families; while in
modern linguistics, J. Baudouin de Courtenay‟s comparative studies of Slavic and other Indo-

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european languages were continued by the Prague Circle, whose members also spoke about
analytical comparison, or linguistic characterology, as a way of determining the characteristics of
each language and gaining a deeper insight into their specific features. But it was not until after
World War II that the discipline reached its heyday. From its beginnings till the 1970s, CL
basically served practical pedagogical purposes in foreign and second language
teaching/learning. It was mainly synchronic - in fact, some would exclusively use the term
comparative linguistics to refer to the diachronic study of genetically related languages -
interlingual or cross-linguistic (rather than intralingual), involved two different languages (rather
than more than two languages/cultures), adopted a unidirectional perspective (taking one of the
two languages as frame of reference, usually English), focused on differences, and was directed
to foreign language teaching/learning.

Now, in a time when we speak about the world as a global village, when there exists a greater
recognition of intra-/cross-linguistic/cultural variation, a growing awareness has emerged of the
need for multilingual/multicultural and intra-linguistic/cultural competence and research. In
addition, and as a side effect of this, there has been a change of focus in linguistic research,
which has shifted away from speculative autonomous theorizing in the direction of a more
dynamic and practical view of language processing and interaction.

This trend towards expansion was foreseen by Trager (1949), who suggested that CL should
move beyond structurally-oriented views - predominant in the United States throughout the 50s
and 60s - and extend its scope so as to describe the differences, as well as the similarities
between two or more linguistic systems, both cross-linguistically and intralinguistically, and both
synchronically and diachronically. Thus, on the diachronic level, issues regarding the
phylogenetic development of languages are high on the agenda of CL, as well as the ontogenetic
development of individual language acquisition claims that in order to account for an
individual‟s communicative competence, the goal of inquiry in CL must also include discourse
analysis, psycholinguistics, and sociolinguistics, a position also endorsed by Kühlwein (1990),
among many others, who argues for the integration of structural and processual CL, the latter
entailing the analysis of systems of knowledge and knowledge about structural systems.
Likewise, Liebe-Harkort (1985), following Lado‟s (1957) position, adds that languages cannot
be compared without comparing the cultures in which they are spoken. The same idea is insisted
upon by Kühlwein (1990), who is particularly interested in culturally differentiated semiotic
systems that serve as the starting point for social and language interaction. But in addition, he
emphasizes the relevance of CL for foreign language teaching, given its growing recognition of
performance errors, interlanguage, transfer (i.e. the interference of L1 in L2), and the interaction

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of cognition and discourse processes. An extreme form of this trend is represented by a recent
view of contrastive literature that reduces the key task of CL to predicting and thereby obviating
learners‟ errors, while this procedure is openly criticized by other authors such as Garrudo-
Carabias (1996).

Originally, all contrastive studies were pedagogically motivated and oriented. In recent
years, however, distinctions have been drawn between “theoretical” and “applied” contrastive
studies. According to Fisiak Theoretical CS give an exhaustive account of the differences and
similarities between two or more languages, provide an adequate model for their comparison,
determine how and which elements are comparable, thus defining such notions as congruence,
equivalence, correspondence, etc. Applied CS are part of applied linguistics. Drawing on the
findings of theoretical contrastive studies they provide a framework for the comparison of
languages, selecting whatever information is necessary for a specific purpose, e. g. teaching,
bilingual analysis, translating, etc. (Fisiak 1981: 9).

“Applied contrastive studies” are sufficiently distinct from “theoretical contrastive studies”,
the former, as part of applied linguistics, especially when related to teaching, must necessarily
depend not only on theoretical, descriptive, and comparative linguistics but also on other
disciplines relevant to teaching; among them are psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, didactics,
psychology of learning and teaching, and possibly other areas which may be important in ways
difficult to evaluate at the present moment.

Finally, some comments are needed about terminology. Although the word “contrastive” is
used most frequently with reference to cross-language comparisons of the sort described above,
various authors have been trying to replace it with other terms, such as “cross-linguistic studies”,
“confrontative studies”, and some even more esoteric terms, for example, “diaglossic grammar”,
which enjoyed but a brief existence. The word “contrastive” is likely to outlive all the competing
terms since it appears in titles of monographs and collections of papers on the subject (cf. James
1980; Fisiak 1984).

1.1.4. Contrastive linguistics

Contrastive linguistics is dependent on theoretical linguistics since no exact and reliable
exploration of facts can be conducted without a theoretical background, providing concepts,
hypotheses, and theories which enable the investigator to describe the relevant facts and to
account for them in terms of significant generalizations. But contrastive linguistics is also
dependent on descriptive linguistics since no comparison of languages is possible without their
prior description. In brief, then, contrastive linguistics is an area of linguistics in which a

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linguistic theory is applied to a comparative description of two or more languages, which need
not be genetically or typologically related. The success of these comparisons is strictly dependent
on the theory applied. As will be seen later, in extreme cases, the linguistic framework itself may
preclude comparison. Therefore, contrastive linguistics imposes certain demands on the form and
nature of the linguistic theory which is to be “applied” in such comparisons. In many less
extreme situations the results of comparisons are strictly dependent on the theoretical framework
adopted in the comparisons.

Contrastive linguistics is a subfield of linguistics under the guidance of linguistic

philosophy, having its aim to determine language universals, large (bilingual or multilingual) text
corpora and computer search tools, which can open up new fronts of research in the fields of
linguistic description (at all levels), computational linguistics, machine translation or information
retrieval. Contrastive linguistics has often been linked to aspects of applied linguistics, e.g., to
avoid interference errors in foreign-language learning, to assist interlingual transfer in the
process of translating texts from one language into another, and to find lexical equivalents in the
process of compiling bilingual dictionaries.

Polyglots (people in multicultural and multilingual environment) including second

languages students, tourists, language teachers, translators, linguists, etc are the agents of
contrastive studies. They are „naive‟ or professional contrastive linguists.

Contrastive descriptions can occur at every level of linguistic structure: speech sounds
(phonology), written symbols (graphology), word-formation (morphology), word meaning
(lexicology), collocation (phraseology), sentence structure (syntax) and complete discourse
(textology). Various techniques used in corpus linguistics have been shown to be relevant in
intralingual and interlingual contrastive studies.

Contrastive linguistic studies can also be applied to the differential description of one or
more varieties within a language, such as styles (contrastive rhetoric), dialects, registers or
terminologies of technical genres.

1.2. Trends of contrastive studies

1.2.1. Contrastive studies in perspective of linguistic levels and discourse
Now considering the different levels of linguistic description, most contrastive phonetic
studies focus on articulatory and acoustic comparisons between two languages; while other
investigations run the full gamut of contrastive phonological issues.

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 Moving on to lexical CL (LCL), this research concentrates on cross-/intra-linguistic
comparisons of “lexical items”, i.e. stable (multi)word pairings of form and meaning,
considering grammatical, semantic and pragmatic information involved in the interdependence
between lexical choice and contextual factors.

On the other hand, exponents of bilingual/multilingual grammars or bilingual/multilingual

morphosyntactic aspects are presented in many contrastive studies.

Work has also mushroomed regarding the nature of semantic diversity among the planet‟s
languages and the implications of semantic diversity for general linguistic theory. Here the big
issue seems to be the testing of the Semantic Universals Hypothesis (SUH), that is, the question
whether the semantic systems of the world‟s natural languages share (at least) some common
properties. Broadly, while the first authors focus on contrastive sentential semantics,
Wierzbicka‟s group moves a step beyond and argues for the existence of a “universal semantic
common measure” founded on empirically established universal human concepts and their
universal combinatory properties which - they say - can provide an effective basis for CL.

Contrastive Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Contrastive Pragmatics (CP) are two partially
overlapping labels referring to contrastive research that goes beyond clause/sentence level to
explore the (textual features of) language in use under the assumption that the relations between
texts and contexts are mutually reflexive - texts not only reflect but also shape their contexts.
Wider in scope, CDA covers such issues as: (1) discourse particles, (2) rhetorical relations and
rhetorical transfer across languages/cultures (e.g. hedging and metadiscourse, generic
conventions, author‟s and addressee‟s intentions, responsibility for textual clarity, etc.), in
addition (3) genre studies and information packaging across languages and/or text-types, as well
as their side effects in terms of coherence and cohesion. CP, in turn, has been committed since its
beginnings to studying certain phenomena (often with a philosophical slant) such as: (1)
conversation from a speech act/implicature point of view, (2) deixis, (3) politeness; and other
pragmatically oriented aspects of speech behaviour. Nevertheless, it would appear that these
studies have not yet provided a systematic account of the contrastive implications of face-to-face
interactions.

Also close to or overlapping with CP and CDA, the field “Contrastive Sociolinguistics”
(CSL) is similar in the ascendant. The latter claims that contrastive sociolinguistics should aim at
the systematic comparison of sociolinguistic patterns and the development of a theory of
language use, defining the field as “a systematic juxtaposition of linguistic items as they are
distributed in the multi-dimensional (multi-parameter) social space”. However, it would seem

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that this definition leaves out all the phenomena associated with the sociology of language in
which principle should also concern CSL. For this reason current definitions and developments
in the field argue for more comprehensive views, in which CSL is regarded as a branch of
sociolinguistics and aims at providing comparison of cross-/intra-/multi-cultural sociopragmatic
data along such research lines as multilingualism, language planning and language politics.

Now turning to the area of computational linguistics, efforts have been devoted to, for
example, the creation of different types of electronic dictionaries or the design of computer tools
for cross-linguistic research, especially in translation enquiries and machine translation, where
the results have been disappointing, partly due to the limitations of computational resources, but
mainly owing to the complexity entailed in translation processes.

Lastly, contrastive linguistics could be said to restrict its domain to just contrastive
linguistic research, whether theoretical, focusing on a contrastive description of the
languages/cultures involved, or practical/applied, intended to serve the needs of a particular
application. The purpose of contrastive investigations is to compare (or contrast) linguistic and
socio-cultural data across different languages (cross-linguistic/cultural perspective) or within
individual languages (intra-linguistic/cultural perspective) in order to establish language-specific,
typological and/or universal patterns, categories and features.

1.2.2. Models of contrastive studies

(1) Typology of contrastive studies and Ultimately Relevant tertia comparationis
The taxonomy of contrastive studies is "based on the assumption that various kinds of
contrastive studies can be distinguished in a strict relation to various tertia comparationis
adopted and, consequently, to various kinds of equivalence" (Krzeszowski: 25). The first level
includes text-bound and systematic contrastive studies.

Text-bound studies are comparisons of texts in two (or more) languages and analysis
primary linguistic data found in texts in order to grasp and formulate generalizations about
various aspects of the compared languages.

Systematic contrastive studies (Contrastive Generative Grammar) involve comparisons of

constructions, systems, and rules.

Contrastive studies are based on statistical equivalence, translation equivalence, system

(system equivalence), constructions (semanto-syntactic equivalence), rules (rule equivalence),
phonological and lexical contrastive studies (substantial equivalence) and pragmatically
equivalent texts. The seven types of equivalence and the related tertia comparationis

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characterizing various types of contrastive studies are presented in Figure 1.1. Each of the seven
types of constrastive studies has its own hierarchy of Immediately Relevant tertia comparationis,
which have to be stated and described relative to the Ultimately Relevant tertium comparationis
and to the factual data that undergo comparisons.

Figure 1.1: Typology of contrastive studies (Adapted from Krzeszowski: 34)

CS

text bound systematic

/2-text given/ /2-text available/

± trans + trans
structurally functionally

quantitative qualitative constrained constrained

projective

corpus
system constructions rules
restricted
statistical translation system semanto- rule pragmatic

equivalence equivalence equivalence syntactic equivalence equivalence

/1/ /2/ /3/ equivalence /5/ /7/

/4/
phonological lexical

CS CS

substantial

equivalence

We do not distinguish between pedagogically oriented/6/and pure contrastive studies since we

believe that this distinction is irrelevant. Whether directional or adirectional, contrastive studies
may yield results relevant to teaching or other fields of application, but the potential
implementations of contrastive studies do not, as a matter of principle, determine the course and
the direction of the analysis. Modern studies of language and of particular languages (especially
the recently flourishing cognitive approaches) offer a very broad perspective within which
language is described, not as a set of semanto-syntactic objects called sentences - the area
roughly corresponding to items (4) and (5) in Fig. 1.1 - but as a symbolic organization
entrenched in human experience and human society. Conducted in this broad perspective,
contrastive studies yield results which are naturally relevant to teaching and other practical
domains.

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 (2) Contrastive studies in intralingual and interlingual perspectives
Contrastive studies can be conducted intralingually or interlingually, on a synchronic or
diachronic basis, and they can be distinguished: synchronic intralingual and diachronic
intralingual comparison, synchronic interlingual and diachronic interlingual comparison, which
could be illustrated in Figure 1.2.

Figure 1.2: Contrastive studies in synchronic and diachronic perspectives

(Adapted from Jia Hongwei & Tian Jiafeng: 2271)

Contrastive Analysis

intralingual comparison interlingual comparison

diachronic synchronic diachronic synchronic

Diachronic intralingual comparison refers to the comparison of constituents on the levels of

sound (phonetic and phonological), words (lexical), structure (grammatical) and meaning within
a language through history to determine what changes of the given constituents occurred, which
is in the area of philology, mainly adopted by linguists in linguistic history, etymology, etc.
while synchronic intralingual comparison refers to the comparison of constituents on the same
levels within a particular language during a given period.

Diachronic interlingual comparison is so-called comparative historical linguistics, which

mainly focused on comparing historically related forms (especially sound) in different languages
to reconstruct the proto-language while synchronic interlingual comparison is developed lately
and most complicated, which focuses on comparing two or more languages or dialects to
determine the differences and similarities and to find out the implications of the differences and
similarities for language universals, linguistic typology, language teaching and other language-
related areas as mentioned above.

Contrastive (both intralingual and interlingual) descriptions can occur at every level of
linguistic structure: speech sounds (phonology), written symbols (graphology), word-formation

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(morphology), word meaning (lexicology), collocation (phraseology), sentence structure (syntax)
and complete discourse (textology).

(3) Composite contrastive model

According to Кашкин (2007) the universal elements in linguistic systems include individual
and social (i / s), intralingual and interlingual (e / d), synchronic and diachronic contrasts.

The pair of individual and social (i / s) contrasts is associated with linguistic system inside
the mind of an individual, idiolect, and with linguistic system of communities, groups of
individuals and integral individual.

The pair of intralingual and interlingual (e / d) contrasts is connected with the possibility to
combine the two systems into a class and/or a domain, which, of course, is relative and depends
on the scope of the study.

Language contact occurs when two or more languages or varieties interact. When speakers
of different languages interact closely, it is typical for their languages to influence each other.
Language contact occurs in a variety of phenomena, including language convergence, borrowing,
and relexification. The most common products are pidgins, creoles, code-switching, and mixed
languages. Language contact can also lead to the development of new languages, and the change
as a result of contact is often one-sided.

Language contact leads to improvement social and individual language competence and the
(competence of) language becomes dynamic. This is the case of learning second language.

All the above contrastive linguistic models can be taken at every level of linguistic structure:
speech sounds, written symbols, word-formation, word meaning, collocation, sentence structure
and complete discourse and occur in learning and teaching foreign-language skills (listening,
speaking, reading, writing and thinking).

1.3. Methods and procedure in contrastive studies

1.3.1. Methods

As a research, a contrastive study is a systematic process of inquiry consisting of three

componets: a question/problem or hypothesis, data, and analysis and interpretation of data. One
of the well-known methods of research in linguistic studies, in teaching, learning foreign
languages and translation is contrastive method, which is used to compare (or contrast) linguistic
and socio-cultural data across different languages (cross-linguistic/cultural perspective) or within
individual languages (intra-linguistic/cultural perspective) in order to establish language-specific,
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typological and/or universal patterns, categories and features. This may be used facts taken from
two or more languages. The term method refers to the way of theoretical research or practical
implementation of something.

The basic techniques of contrastive studies are to establish basis of

question/problem/project, contrastive interpretation. They are illustrated as in the followings.

(i) Establishing the basis of the study is to determine object of the contrast, its nature, types
of similarities and differences. Basis of the study is established:

- One of the languages is chosen as the target, which deals with the aim(s) of the study or the
language competence of the researcher. The other(s) is source one, that sometime is the
researcher‟s native, sometime is social language.

- Determine contrastive features: base of contrasts is some phenomenon of the target

language, its characteristics.

(ii) Contrastive interpretation is performed by parallel analysis. The important thing of a

contrastive study is to define the principles and methods of interpretation of contrastive materials
of two or more languages.

The contrastive studies can be based on form, on both form and function, and/or across
functional domains.

(1) Based on form (signifier)

A typical example of comparison based on form is provided by contrastive analyses in the
domain of phonology.

Let us consider the consonant “t” of English and Vietnamese for illustration. Vietnamese un-
aspirated /t/ is written as “t” and aspirated /th/ is written as “th”, but English un-aspirated /t/ and
aspirated /th/ are both written as “t”.

Un-aspirated /t/ and aspirated /th/ are both written as “t”.

English and Vietnamese are different in pitches. Vietnamese is a tonal language that has 6
tones. The way the voice goes up and down during the production of a vowel is encoded in the
word. So 'ma' (ghost) can change into 'má' (mother), 'mà' (but), 'mả' (tomb), 'mã' (horse), or 'mạ'
(rice seed). It depends on the pitch of the 'a'. In contrast, the English word 'man' can be said with
a downward or upward pitch and this would not affect the meaning of the word or point to a
different word.

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 (2) Based on form and function (signifier and signified)
Conctrastive studies that can be based on form and function are tense categories, the passive
voice, prepositions, etc. in English and Vietnamese.

A typical example of the kind of the study is the questions with interrogative word
„when/bao giờ‟ dealt with various tenses in English and Vietnames.
- When will she leave ↔ - Bao giờ chị ấy đi

- When will she leave ↔ - Khi nào chị ấy đi

- Lúc nào chị ấy đi

Future Future

- When did she leave ↔ - Chị ấy đi bao giờ

- When did she leave ↔ - Chị ấy đi khi nào

- Chị ấy đi lúc nào

Past Past

Adjunct/WH- finite actor process

In English interrogative sentences, WHEN (Adjunct) is at the begining of the sentnces in
various tenses, and the first place after it is the finite. But in Vietnames, the structure of the
questions is the same as the structure of a statement, and interrogative words (BAO GIỜ, LÚC
NÀO, KHI NÀO) can occur at the beginning or at the end of the sentences. Their positions
depend on their temporal functions in the sentences.

(3) Across functional domains

In specific cases, contrastive studies are based on „signified‟, the generalizations across
functional or conceptual domains, and the aims is define their (dis)similarities in two languages
in particular linguistic events. The examples of the domains are the „process of thinking‟, the
function of Beneficiary, the metaphor LOVE IS A JOURNEY, etc. in English and some
particular language.

1.3.2. Procedure

Actually contrastive studies are not always clearly distinguished among the numerous
investigations of contrastive nature, which is often reflected in the terminology. Apparently,

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contrastive studies focus on specific features of the compared languages on the basis of a set of
general linguistic phenomena.

Methodological framework for a contrastive study comprises the following main stages:

1) Collecting primary data against which hypotheses are to be tested. Primary data involve
all instances of language use, utterances that speakers of the languages in question
produce;

2) Establishing comparability criteria based on a perceived similarity of any kind;

3) Defining the nature of similarity and formulating the initial hypothesis;

4) Hypothesis testing: determining the conditions under which the initial hypothesis can be
accepted or rejected. This process will normally include selection of a theoretical
framework, selection of primary and additional data and use of corpora, appeal to one‟s
own intuition or other bilingual informants, even the results of error analysis of non-
native usage;

5) Formulating the revised hypothesis;

6) Testing of the revised hypothesis, and so on.

Those contrastive formulations can be successfully tested by finding them in a corpus or

checking the behaviour of speakers. The real task for the contrastivist is to specify the conditions
under which the formulations are valid, which is essentially in traditional contrastive studies
known as the contrastive rule. Depending on the comparability criterion, these conditions can be
syntactic, semantic, pragmatic, stylistic, contextual, etc.

1.4. Three steps in “classical” contrastive studies

A classical contrastive analysis consists of three steps, not always clearly distinguishable in
the analysis itself but always tacitly assumed: (1) description; (2) juxtaposition; (3) comparison,
i. e., contrastive analysis in the strict sense.

1.4.1. Description

No comparison is possible without a prior description of the elements to be compared.

Therefore, all contrastive studies must be founded on independent descriptions of the relevant
items of the languages to be compared. The fundamental demand on such descriptions is that
they should be made within the same theoretical framework. It will not do to describe one

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language in terms of transformational grammar and another language in terms of, say, relational
grammar and then to attempt to compare them. The results of such descriptions will be
incompatible and incomparable.

Not all linguistic models are equally well suited as foundations of cross-language
comparisons. It seems that those models which make explicit references to universal categories
are more suitable than those which are connected with language isolationism, inherent in many
variants of structuralism.

1.4.2. Juxtaposition

This step is crucial in deciding what is to be compared with what. In classical contrastive
studies, this step was based on intuitive judgments of competent bilingual informants, who
determined the material to be compared. This sort of “bilingual competence”, i. e., the
knowledge of two languages, enables one to make decisions about whether or not element X in
one language is equivalent with element Y in another language.

Juxtapositions based on formal criteria alone, though naturally possible, are ill-conceived
and must be discarded in contrastive studies.

In classical contrastive studies, the investigator himself often acts as the bilingual
informant and decides what to compare on the basis of his own knowledge of the two languages.
Unless more explicit criteria constraining the data are applied, such a procedure often leads to
arbitrary decisions, which seriously undermine the rigour required in scientific investigations.

1.4.3. Comparison proper

We distinguish three basic areas of comparisons:

1. Comparisons of various equivalent systems across languages, such as pronouns, articles,

verbs, and in phonology consonants, vowels, as well as subsystems, such as nasals,
laterals, etc., depending on the degree of “delicacy” of the grammar.

2. Comparisons of equivalent constructions, for example, interrogative, relative, negative,

nominal phrase, etc., and in phonology clusters, syllables, diphthongs, and various
distributions of sounds.

3. Comparisons of equivalent rules (in those models where the concept of rule appears), for
example, subject raising from the embedded sentence, adjective placement,

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 interrogative inversion, passivization, etc., and in phonology assimilation, dissimilation,
metathesis, etc.

In each area of comparison one of three possible situations may arise:

(a) XLi = XLj

when item X in Li; may be identical in some respects with an equivalent item in Lj.

(b) XLi ≠ XLj when item X in Li, may be different in some respects from an equivalent
item in Lj.

(c) XLi = ∅ Lj

when item X in Li; has no equivalent in Lj.

The words “in some respects” are very important. In cross-language comparisons, the
relative character of identity must be remembered. Compared items can only be identical with
respect to some selected property or properties which they share. For example, the systems of
number of nouns in English, French, Polish, and many other European languages are in one
respect identical, viz., they are all based on the dichotomy “oneness” vs. “more-than-oneness”.
Other, more subtle distinctions can also be made by means of numerals and quantifiers, but the
grammatical systems of those languages provide morphological means to express just this
dichotomy. In many other languages, the system of number is in the same respect different.

In Vietnamese, nouns have no plural inflection at all, and any concept of plurality is
expressed, if necessary, by means of quantifiers and numerals. In contrast with any language in
which nouns are inflected for number, Vietnamese represents the third possibility, i. e., situation
(c), distinguished above in which no equivalent form can be attested.

Begining with comparisons of systems, we isolate a system in L1 and, having described it,
we look for an equivalent system in L2, providing there is an available suitable description of the
system. Suppose we set about comparing the systems of personal pronouns in English with the
equivalent system in Vietnamese. The English system consists of the following items:

I we

you you

he/she/it they

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The equivalent Vietnamese system looks as follows:
con/cháu/em/anh/chị/bố/mẹ/ông/bà... chúng con/chúng cháu/ông bà/...

ông/mẹ/con/bạn/cậu các bác/các chị/mọi người...

anh ấy/bố em/mẹ tôi/ họ/các chị ấy/các cháu...

Comparing the two systems, we immediately notice that in some respects they are identical;
namely, in both, distinctions are made between the first, second, and third person pronouns.
These grammatical distinctions are based on the semantic distinctions between speaker, hearer,
and the rest of the world. Furthermore, in both, distinctions in the systems are made between
singular and plural pronouns, although here we also notice some differences. Finally, we also
note that in the third person singular, distinctions are made between masculine, feminine, and
neuter pronouns. This is where the similarities between the two systems end. We then proceed to
look for differences, which are also quite conspicuous. They involve the lack of distinctions in
English between singular and plural second person pronoun you in contrast to the distinction
made in Vietnamese between the singular con and the plural các con. Another difference consists
in the distinction between virile and non-virile gender in the third person plural in Vienamese,
which contrasts with the lack of the parallel distinction in English.

From the methodological point of view, situation (c) described above, in which an item X in
Li; has no equivalent in Lj presents a problem: if there is no equivalent to compare, is it still
possible to compare? The problem arises most sharply in the comparison of systems. Such is the
case with English articles, which cannot be juxtaposed with any single system in a number of
languages. In order to see what articles can be compared with, we have to resort to the
examination of construction equivalents to see through what other means, if any, the semantic
content of articles is expressed. Without going into detail, let us assume that the basic semantic
distinction that the English articles express is that between definiteness and indefiniteness. (In
fact the problem is much more complex, but for the sake of illustration of the methodological
problem in contrastive studies, we will take this simplified view of the semantics of English
articles).

SUMMARY

1. Contrastive linguistics is a branch of linguistics under the guidance of linguistic

philosophy, focusing on all the aspects of theoretical and applied linguistics, which
aims at contrastive study of two or more languages in order to describe their

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 differences and similarities, and explicate both of them in terms of the relationship
between human languages and their spiritual activities for building and developing
general linguistics, promoting the understanding between cultures and civilizations,
including learning and teaching languages, translation, compiling bilingual
dictionaries.
2. Agents of contrastive studies are polyglots (people in multicultural and multilingual
environment) including second languages students, tourists, language teachers,
translators, linguists.
3. Methods of contrastive linguistics include some techniques:
(i) Contrastive studies can be between two (or more) languages including the
target and the source(s), and can be parallel.
(ii) The contrastive studies can be based on form, on both form and function,
or across functional domains.
4. The methodological framework comprises the following main stages:
* Collecting primary data against which hypotheses are to be tested. Primary data
involve all instances of language use, utterances that speakers of the languages
in question produce;
* Establishing comparability criterion based on a perceived similarity of any
kind;
* Defining the nature of similarity and formulating the initial hypothesis;
* Hypothesis testing: determining the conditions under which the initial
hypothesis can be accepted or rejected. This process will normally include
selection of a theoretical framework, selection of primary and additional data
and use of corpora, appeal to one‟s own intuition or other bilingual informants,
even the results of error analysis of non-native usage;
* Formulating the revised hypothesis;
* Testing of the revised hypothesis, and so on.
5. The framework consists of three steps, not always clearly distinguishable in the
analysis itself but always tacitly assumed: i) description, ii) juxtaposition and iii)
comparison.
6. Contrastive studies can be described at every level of linguistic structure: phonology,

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 lexicology, grammar and discourse or text, and in the perspectives of interlingual,
intralingual, individual and/or social contact, of linguistic contact or dynamics.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSION

1. Contrastive linguistics definition.

2. Multilingual/multicultural and intra-linguistic/cultural aspects that polyglots face in their
communication.
3. Methodology in contrastive studies.
4. Procedure of contrastive studies.
5. Your own contrasts in learning, teaching second language(s) and translation.

REFERENCES FOR THE CHAPTER

1. Bùi Mạnh Hùng, Ngôn ngữ học đối chiếu, NXB Giáo dục, 2008.
2. Chesterman A., Contrastive Functional Analysis, Amsterdam/ Philadelphia, John
Benjamins, 1998.
3. Gómez-González M. de los Á. and Doval-Suárez S. M., “On contrastive linguistics:
Trends, challenges and problems”, in The Dynamics of Language Use: Functional and
Contrastive Perspectives, John Benjamins, Amsterdam/ Philadelphia, 2005.
4. James C., Contrastive Analysis, London: Longman, 1980.
5. Кашкин В.Б. (ред.), Аспекты языка и коммуникации, Выпуск 5, Воронеж: Издатель
О.Ю.Алейников, 2010.
6. Krzeszowski T., Contrasting Languages: Scope of Contrastive Linguistics (Trends in
Linguistics: Studies & Monographs), Mouton de Gruyter, 1990.
7. Lado R., Linguistics across cultures: Applied linguistics for language teachers.
University of Michigan Press: Ann Arbor, 1957.
8. Lê Quang Thiêm, Nghiên cứu đối chiếu các ngôn ngữ, NXB Đại học Quốc gia Hà Nội,
2004.
9. Whitman R. L., “Contrastive Analysis: Problems and Procedures”, Language Learning,
Volume 20, Issue 2, pp. 191–197, 1970.

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