Ngôn ngữ học đối chiếu là một phân môn của ngôn ngữ học, ưu tiên sử dụng phương pháp đối chiếu của các ngôn ngữ khác nhau để tìm ra điểm giống và khác nhau giữa chúng nhằm mục đích lý luận và thực tiễn. Mời các bạn cùng tham khảo để nắm rõ chi tiết nội dung của Giáo trình Ngôn ngữ học đối chiếu dưới đây.
Trang 1TRUONG ĐẠI HỌC THỦ ĐÔ HÀ NỘI (HANOI METROPOLITAN UNIVERSITY)
Trang 3PREFACE
The influence of the learners" mother tongue on the acquisition and use of a foreign language has long been my great concem During a gestation period of compiling this course book entitled CONTRASTIVE LINGUISTICS, the author was much influenced by some competing viewpoints Along with many others, Carl James (1980) and Ulla Connor (1999, 3" printing) had a great impact not only ‘on my teaching, but also on my foreign language writing research in relation to contrastive analysis
Given 45 classhours similar to 3 credits, the course book designed for English majors in English Linguistics (required compulsory) consists of 5 chapters Chapter 1 that is considered to be the theoretical background related to the course title particularly deals with “Some Generalities of Contrastive Linguistics” in which the author mainly focuses on what contrastive analysis is; the psychological basis of contrastive analysis; the linguistic components of contrastive analysis; microlinguistic and macrolinguistic contrastive analysis; and some basic procedures commonly used in contrastive analysis Chapter 2 presents “English — Vietnamese Contrastive Analysis on the Level of Segmental and Suprasegmental Units” in which the author especially provides the introduction to segmental and suprasegmental units; general classification of phonemes; and some suprasegmental units of the English and the Vietnamese language: a suggested contrastive analysis, Apart from the introduction and some major terms provided, chapter 3 chiefly discusses “The Morphological Features of English and Vietnamese: a Contrastive Analysis” beginning with the morphological features of word formation; some problems of parts of speech between English and Vietnamese; grammatical categories of English and Vietnamese; and word formation Chapter 4 chiefly focuses on “English - Vietnamese Contrastive ‘Analysis on the Perspective of Semantics and Syntax” in which the author ‘especially provides noun phrases in English and in Vietnamese: their structural and semantic — syntactic features; nominalization in English and in Vietnamese; verb phrases in English and in Vietnamese: their structural and semantic features; the simple sentences in the two languages: their clause structures and clause types, syntactic and semantic approaches; some suggestions for contrastive analyses between the English and Vietnamese simple sentences; coordination: phrasal and ©lausal, complex sentences: clause types and some functional classification of
subordinate clauses; and some suggestions for a contrastive analysis between the English and the Vietnamese sentences The last chapter ~ chapter Š — discusses “English — Vietnamese Contrastive Analysis on the Level of Above-Sentence” beginning with what the level of above-sentence is, apart from the introduction; then paragraph and paratone; gente in English and in Vietnamese; contrastive thetoric and applied linguistics; contrastive thetoric and the field of rhetoric and composition, Academic institutions; contrastive thetoric and text linguistics in English and Vietnamese; writing as an activity embedded in a culture; contrastive
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rhetoric and translation studies; and some teaching implications and research directions
‘Our only goal is to help students overcome difficulties in the process of learning English as a foreign language Furthermore, what we can do then is to help them identify what contrastive analysis is, and why they need to show differences rather than similarities if or when any two language items between English and Vietnamese can be compared Accordingly, from the perspective of contrastive analysis, we ean assist Vietnamese learners of English not only analyze, predict ‘errors, but also explain why they occur in order to improve their English as a foreign language
However, one more thing we would like to add here is that contrastive analysis can involve comparison of two (or more) languages or subsystems of languages (Cross-linguistie contrastive analysis); determine both the differences and similarities between them; and can also be done within one language (Intra- linguistic contrastive analysis), for example, the analysis of contrastive phonemes as in /p/ and fb/ in English
‘At last, I would like to express my sincere thanks to my colleagues from the Faculty of Post-graduate Studies, University of Languages and International Studies - Vietnam National University, Hanoi; to my colleagues and English ‘majors from the Faculty of Foreign Languages, Hanoi Metropolitan University ‘where I-have been teaching English for ages Last but not least, I am greatly indebted to my family Without their help and support from them, the course book could not have been completed
Hanoi, 31 October, 2016 ‘The course book compiler,
'Nguyễn Huy Kỹ, PhD and senior lecturer of English 0
Trang 5PREFACE, TABLE OF CONTENTS ‘TABLE OF CONTENTS 1-1IREoietion 12 hat is contrasiveaoalysis?
1.2.1 The place of contrastve analysis in linguistics | 1:22 Contrastive analysis a intelanguage study | 1.23, Contastive 1.2.4 Contrastive analysis as pure or applied linguistics analysis and bilingualism
1.3 The psychological basis of contastive analysis 13.1 Tranfer in learning psychology 132 Some problems of definition
133, Transfer theory and contrastive 134A scale of difference analysis
13.5 Conrative analysis and behaviourist eaming thon 14 The linguistic components of eontrastive analysis 1.4.1 Levels of language
142 Categories 143 Language models for contrasive analysis onthe of grammar level
1.5, Microlinguistic analysis and macrolinguisic contastive 1.5.1 Microlingisticcontrastive 152 Macrolinguisticcontastive analysis analysis
basic procedures commonly used in contastive thapter I questions =8 n2 ng
72.1 Introduction to segmental and suprasegmental units 2.2 General classification 2.3 On the segmental units of phonemes
1 The consonants of English and their classification 23.2 The vowels of English and thei classification 2.3.3 The consonants of Vietnamese and their classification
2.3.4 The vowels of Vietnamese and their classification 2.4, On the suprasegmental units
2.4.1, Stress in English 2.4.2 English rhythm
2.43, English intonation 2.4.4, Some other issues related to English rhythm and dain Galante
2.4.5 Some information about tones in Vietnamese 2.5 Some suprasegmental units of the English and the ‘Vietnamese language: A suggested contrastive analysis 2.6, Summary (Chapter2.questions
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The
3, Some major tenns used in the chapter 7 Morphological | 3.3 The morphological features of word formation B
Features of 3.4 Some problems of parts of spezch between English
English and and Vietnamese B
Viemamese:2 | 3.4.1 What is an analytic language? B Contrastive 3.42 What i an isolating language? ” Analysis 3.5 Grammatical categories 3.5.1, Verb grammatical categories in English of English and Vietnamese | 75, 7 315.2, Verb grammatical categories in Vietnamese 76
3365 Word formation T6
1316.1, Affaxation: prefiation and suffixaton in English and Vietnamese 7 3.6:2 Conversion in English and Vietnamese 78 3.6.3 Compounding in English and Vietnamese 80 3.6.4, Reduplication in English and in Vietnamese 3.6.5 Acronyms in English and in Vietnamese 82 33 3.6.6 Clipping in English and in Vietnamese 84
3.7 Summary 86
Chapter 3 questions 86
CHAPTERS [41 Introduction s8
English ~ 42 Noun phrases in English and in Vietnamese: their | 88 Vietnamese structural and semantic ~ syntactic features
Contastive 42.1, English noun phrases: thei structural features and | 88 Analysis ‘onthe Perspective | 42.2 Vietnamese noun phrases: ther structural features | 92 semantic ~ syntactic features
of Semantics and | and semantic ~ syntactic features
Syntax 423 Noun phrases ‘suggested contrastive analysis in English and in Vietnamese: A | 94 43 Nominalization 43.1, What is nominalization? in English and in Vietnamese 95 95 43.2 Nominalization in English 95 433 Nominalization in Vietnamese 95 43.4, Some comments on nominalization in English and | 95 ‘Viemamese
44, Verb phrases in English structural and semantic features and in Vietnamese: their | 96
4.4.1, What is a verb phrase? 96
4.42 English verb phrases: ts structural and semantic | 96 features 4.43 Vietnamese verb phrases: its strictural and semantic | 100 features 4.44, Some contrastve analyses of verb phrases in 101 English and in Vietnamese
45, The simple sentences in the two languages: their | 102 clause structures and clause types; syntactic and semantic approaches
45.1 What is a simple sentence? 102 452 The English simple sentence: its clause streture | 102
and clause type
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3 The English simple seatence: is syotacic and TOE semantic approaches
4.6 Some suggestions for contrasive analyses between the| 103 English and Vietnamese simple sentences
47 Coordination: phrasal 47.1, Coordination and clausal 103 103
47121 Phrasal coordination 103
473, Clausl coordination 104
4.8 Complex sentences: lause types and some funtinal | 104 classification of subordinate clauses
4.8.1, What is a complex sentence? 104 4.82 Subordination and coordination 104 4.83 Clause types 4.84, Some funetona classification of subordinate clauses| 105, 104 4.9, Some suggestions for a contrative analysis between | 105 | the English 4.10, Summary and the Viettamese sentences 106
Chapter 4 questions 106
CHAPTERS English = [5.1 Introduction 5.2, Whatis the level of above-sentence? 108 108
Vietnamese 53, Paragraph and paratone 108
Contrastive 533.1, Paragraph 108
Analysis conibe Level of | 5.33 Some suggestions 5232 Pưưone fora contrastve analysis of © | 111 mn ‘Above-Sentence | paragraph 54, Genre in English and in Vietnamese and paratone between English and Vietnamese 12
5.4.1 The concept of genre m2
5.42 Genre in English 12
543 Gene in Vietnamese 113
5.4.4, Some suggestions fora contrastve analysis between | 113 genre in English and gene in Vietnamese 5.45 Genges and text types 13 5.46, Some suggestions fora contrasive analysis between | 115 English and Vietnamese text types
5.5 Contmstve thetoric and applied linguistics I6
5.51 Contasiverhetoie 116
552 Applied linguistics 16
5.6, Contrastve chetorc and the field of rhetoric and | 117 composition, Academic institutions
5.6.1, Conrastive rhetoric (previously mentioned in 5.5) 117 3.62 The field of rhetoric and composition 17
5.63 Academic institutions 1
5.64, Types ofacademic insitutons 47 5.7 Coatrastive thetori and text linguistics in English and | 118 Vietnamese 5.7.1 Some techrieal terms employed inthe section | 118 5.7.2 Contretive thetori (previously mentioned in 5.5) | 118
573 Tex linguistics 18
5.78, Some suggestions fora contrastive analysis of — |12L
Trang 8‘colesive devices that oreate cohesion in tex between English and Vietnamese
58 Weiting as an activity embedded in a eulture 121 5.8.1 Some necessary explanations related tothe section | 121 5.82 Some important bases forthe section to develop | 121 5.83 Knowledge as the bases forthe sctivty of writing | 122 584 Writing is culturally determined 12 ‘585 Different emphasis on cross-cultural writing 122 ‘5.815 Some suggestions for the teaching of how culture is | 122 ‘embedded in language 5.9 Contrastive chtorie and translation studies 123 5.9.1 Contrastive rhetoric (previously mentioned in 5.5) | 123
592 Translation studies 123
5.93 Whats translation? 123
594, Translation quality 123
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~ _ Chapter 1: SOME GENERALITIES OF CONTRASTIVE LINGUISTICS 1.1 Introduction inguistically, contrastive linguistics can also be called contrastive analysis To begin with, we would like to raise 2 general but major questions for the English language learners to think and to give answers if possible: “Is contrastive linguistics/ contrastive analysis the same as comparative linguistics/ analysis? How are they different?”
It is clearly known that to “contrast” means to compare people or things so that differences are made clear; or to show differences when compared So, contrastive analysis can be used interchangeably with the above mentioned contrastive linguistics or differential linguistics, but linguists tend to use contrastive analysis to refer to the contrastive purpose to highlight any differences or dissimilarities when/ if they can be compared
It is also clearly indicated that to “compare” means to examiné people or things to see how they are alike and how they are different Thus, comparative analysis is used to show similarities and differences; but contrastive analysis — to show differences rather than similariie
Tn sum, contrastive: linguistics! analysis is not the same as comparative linguistics/ analysis, but it is a sub-section of comparative linguistics In order to now more about what some generalities of contrastive linguistics are, we would like to deal with some major focuses such as what contrastive analysis is, the psychological basis of contrastive analysis, the linguistic components of Contrastive analysis, microlinguistic and macrolinguistic contrastive analysis, and some basic procedures commonly used in contrastive analysis
1.2 What is contrastive analysis?
1.2.1 The place of contrastive analysis in linguistics
The course book is concerned with a branch of linguistics called contrastive linguisties/ analysis From now on, we will use “‘contrastive analysis” to refer to the contrastive purpose.Where is contrastive analysis located in the field of linguistics? That is the first question to raise
‘As we all know, the term “linguist” can refer either to a person who is professionally engaged in the study and teaching of one or more languages usually not his own nor that of the community in which he works); or a polyglot ‘who ean speak several languages, or who might work as a translator or interpreter ‘The term “linguist” can also refer to someone who is interested in language families or language history; or to someone with philosophical interests in language universals or the relationship between language and thought or truth That is not exhaustive, namely not very thorough or complete, but is representative Rather than making a list of everything we have known, we would feel better to evolve a way of classifying types of linguistic enterprise Such a ‘classification will involve 3 criteria! dimensions as follows:
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1) Its pointed out that there are 2 broad approaches to linguistics: the generalist ‘and the particularist (criterion 1) “On the one hand, linguists treat individual languages On the other hand, they consider the general phenomenon of human language, of which particular languages are examples.” (Sampson, 1975:4, cited by James, 1980) It is claimed that it is largely a matter of personal taste which approach one favours In general, particularists tend to be anthropologists or philologists while generalists seem to have more philosophical interests
2) The second dimension called “linguistic typology” (criterion 2) has established Classificatory system for the languages of the world into which individual languages can be slotted according to their preferred grammatical devices such as synthetic (for example: Russian), analytical (English, for instance), inflectional, agglutinating/ agglutinative (a language in which various affixes may be added to the stem of a word to add to its meaning or to show its grammatical function Sometimes, agglutinating lenguages and inflecting languages are called synthetic languages), tone/ tonal language (for example: Vietnamese; but typically, ‘Vietnamese is considered to be an isolating language) (cited by James, 1980),
3) The third approach is that used by F.De Saussure (cited by James, 1980) to inguish 2 sciences of language: diachronic and synchronic (criterion 3); “Everything that relates to the static side of our science is synchronic; everything that has to do with evolution is diachronic.” For example, in criterion 2, we mentioned “linguistic typology”: the approach here is synchronic in which languages are typologically grouped according to their present-day characteristics, no reference being made to the histories of the languages, not even to their historical relatedness
In short, there are so many definitions about what contrastive linguistics is, even though they are not clear-cut According to James, contrastive analysis is neither ‘generalist nor particularist, but somewhere intermediate on a scale between the two extremes It is not concemed with classification, and, as the term ‘contrastive’ implies, more interested in differences between languages than in their likeness Then, itis neither diachronic nor synchronic, The term “diachronic” is used in the sense of ontology, or change with the human individual, for instance, there is the study of language acquisition in infants Since the child progresses from zet0 knowledge of the language spoken around him to adequate mastery by the age of five, and since there is only one language involved, the child language study is not strictly speaking a form of interlanguage study The study of second language or foreign language learning is concemed with a monolingual becoming a bilingual: two languages are involved So, we have here @ true case of interlingual diachronic study Contrastive analysis seems to be hybrid (composed of unrelated parts) linguistic enterprise In terms of three criteria discussed above, we might venture the following provisional definition: contrastive analysis is a linguistic enterprise aimed at producing inverted (in the opposite order, that is to say, contrastive, not comparative) two-valued typologies (a contrastive analysis is always concerned
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with a pair of languages), and founded on the assumption that languages can be compared According to other linguists, contrastive linguistics ~ regarded as a sub- section of comparative linguistics — is concemed with pairs of languages that are socio-culturally linked when/if (1) they are used by a lot of bilingual or ‘multilingual speakers; and when/if (2) phrases, sentences, paragraphs, texts are translated from one language into another But more broadly defined, contrastive linguistics can also be used for comparative analysis of small groups rather than just pairs of languages, and does not require a socio-cultural link among the Tanguages investigated According to “Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics” (1997), contrastive linguistics is considered to be the comparison of the linguistic systems of two languages, for example, the sound system or the grammatical system The detailed differences which have been shown by linguists between comparative linguistics and contrastive linguistics can be listed as follows: ‘Comparative linguistics, Contrastive linguistics
1) Generally speaking, comparative | linguistics makes a diachronic study
with a view to reconstructing forms in their lost parent languages, or
classifying languages into families
T) In general, conttastive linguistics makes a synchronic study It studies
languages belonging to the same period, ‘without paying much attention to their histories or language families 2) The subjects of comparison are 2) The subjects of comparison may be
of the historical development
s parent language its parent or not parent language 3) Comparative linguistics aims at the | 3) Contrastive linguistics aims at the homogeneity of the languages heterogeneity of the languages
compared compared
4) The languages compared are not | 4) In general, the languages compared
limited are limited to apairoflanguages |
5) Comparative linguistics is intended | 5) Contrastive linguistics provides a to penetrate and to make clear the laws | practical use in language teaching, dictionary compiling, translation,
intemational communication
'6) Comparative linguistics shows not only the similarities, but also the differences between or among
Janguages compared
6) Contrastive linguistics focuses on the
differences rather than the similarities between pairs of languages if or when
compared,
1.2.2 Contrastive analysis as interlanguage study
‘There are other branches of lingui ‘cs that are more specialised, and which are
concentrated on parts of whole languages Phonetics, for example, is a branch of linguistics which “is concerned with the human noises by which the message is actuali
id or given audible shape: the nature of those noises, their combinations,
Trang 12and their functions in relation to the message.” (O’Connor, 1973:10, cited by James, 1980; O'Connor, 1977) Interlanguage study is a branch of linguistics that is interested in the emergence of the languages rather than the finished product 'Contrastive analysis belongs to interlanguage study According to F.De Saussure (Eited by James, 1980), contrastive analysis is to be viewed as diachronic rather than synchronic in orientation However, interlanguage study is diachronic in a slightly different sense of the term than that intended by F.De Saussure because he thought of language evolution in the historical sense, which pertains (ie, is connected with or relevant to) to change which’ spans (extends over or across) ‘generations and centuries But Carl James uses the term “diachronic” in the sense of “ontology” , or change within the human individual Here is an example that can make it clear There is the study of language acquisition in infants (Brown, 1973, cited by James, 1980) Since the child progresses from zero knowledge of the language spoken around him to adequate mastery by the age of five, and since there is only one language involved, child language study is not strictly speaking @ form of interlanguage study But the study of second language or foreign language earning is concemed with a monolingual becoming a bilingual: 2 languages [language 1 (L1) and language 2 (L2)] are involved So, we have here a true case of interlingual diachronic study
‘There are 3 branches of 2-valued (2 languages are involved) interlingual linguistics: translation theory (that is concened with the processes of text conversion), error analysis, and contrastive analysis There is one interlingua for each pair of texts By contrast, it is suggested by error analysts that the leamer, in progressing towards mastery of the foreign language, develops a series of approximative systems (Nemser, 1971, cited by James, 1980) or transitional dialects (Corder, 1971; cited by James, 1980), which are successive and intersecting Each stage has its unique features as well as features that it shares with the immediately preceding and the immediately succeeding approximative systems
1.2.3 Contrastive analysis as pure or applied linguistics
‘According to James, it seems that one important dimension was overlooked: the distinction commonly drawn between pure and applied linguistics Since the difference between these two is widely appreciated, we shall not make an attempt to define what they are like or how they are different from each other, but merely refer the reader to Corder’s extensive account of the field to take the opposite view as follows:
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Also according to James, he would like to take his different view to argue that there is a science of applied linguistics, so endorsing (giving one’s official _ approval or support to a claim/ statement ) Malmberg’s statement below:
“The applications of linguistics can, and should, be looked upon as sciences in their own rights We must be very careful not to mix up practical applications with purely scientific research.” (Malmberg, 1971:3; cited by James, 1980)
‘A further reason why James thinks it necessary to postulate (accept something, as true, especially as a basis for reasoning or argument) the existence of a science that is called applied linguistics is slightly paradoxical: applied linguistics is a hybrid discipline, constituted not only of linguistics but also of psychology and sociology, In assessing the relevance of any pure linguistic statement, the applied linguist must assess not only its linguistic validity, but also its psychological and/ or sociological validity As James states that he cannot name one single branch of applied linguistics that relies exclusively on pure linguist
‘An undeniable fact for James, and of course for us is that the answer to the question “Is contrastive analysis a form of pure or of applied linguistics?” is — of both But while pure contrastive analysis is only a peripheral (of secondary or minor importance) enterprise in pure linguistics, it is a central concem of applied linguistics From now on, we shall intend applied contrastive analysis whenever we use the term contrastive analysis
1.2.4, Contrastive analysis and bilingualism Contrastive analysis has been characterized as being a form of interlingual study or interlinguistics (cited by James, 1980) As such, and in certain other respects, it has much in common with the study of bilingualism which, by definition, is not the study of individual single languages, nor of language in general, but of the possession of two languages If it is the possession of two languages by a single community, we speak of community bilingualism If we study the person who has competence in two languages, then we deal with individual bilingualism The concem of contrastive analysis is with the second category Bilingualism refers to the possession of two languages by an individual or society, whereas contrastive analysis is concerned with how a monolingual ‘becomes bilingual Here, we might call this difference between the two a concern ‘with extant (sill in existence) bilingualism on the one hand, and with incipient (in its early stages) bilingualism on the other hand (James, 1980:8) ‘That is why contrastive analysis is very important in language teaching and/or ‘raining in general
1.3.-The psychological basis of contrastive analysis tis clearly stated by James (1980) that contrastive analysis is a hybrid drawing, on the sciences of linguisites and psychology Also, linguistics is concemed with the formal properties of language and not directly with learning, which is a psychological matter Since contrastive analysis is concemed with foreign language learning, it needs a psychological component,
Trang 141.3.1 Transfer in learning psychology
It's stated that one of the concerns learning psychologists is the effects of one Teaming task on a subsequent one The observation that prior learning effects subsequent learning leads to the hypothesis of “transfer”, which Ellis (1965; cited by James, 1980) refers to as “perhaps the single most important concept in the theory and practice of education” Ellis supplies a definition of transfer: “The hypothesis that the learning of task A will affect the subsequent learning of task B.”, Here, we can substitute for “task A”, “task B” in the first language and the second language respectively Similarly, most of educationists assume that transfer of training will be pervasive As a result, what is learnt at school will be relevant in later life; successive steps in a course will be associated through transfer from ‘earlier to later steps; gains made in one skill, for example, will effect gains in other skills, for instance, writing It becomes obvious that the psychological foundation of contrastive analysis is transfer theory (James, 1980)
Everybody can realize that learning involves of two entities The two entities associated in a learning task are a stimulus and a response So, when we deal with the psychology of contrastive analysis, we usually deal with the stimulus — response theory, which is epitomised in the behaviourist explanation of how language leaming is consummated (cited by James, 1980) Therefore, we can be justified in saying that the psychological basis of contrastive analysis resides in the two psychological enterprises mentioned above, namely Associationism and ‘Stimulus — Response theory (James, 1980)
1.3.2 Some problems of definition
1) In non-verbal learning involving the conditioning of certain responses, that is to say, their association with certain stimuli, the responses are assumed to be available to the learner, already part of his/ her repertoire: it is not these as such that he has to learn, but their association with a stimulus In the second language earning, the responses themselves have to be learnt as well as with which stimulus they are to be associated
2) Contrastive analysis is concerned with teaching rather than learning, ‘The former involves the predetermination and conventionalization of what stimuli and responses are to be associated, whereas the latter does not: the decision can be quite arbitrary In other words, the responses of foreign language learners have to
be appropriately associated to set stimuli
3) What constitutes a stimulus or a response in foreign language learning? In ‘general, a stimulus is the least elusive of definition According to Richterich (1974, cited by James, 1980), a stimulus should be understood as a communicative need
4) A response in language behavior is the utterance itself, the study of which is the
proper concem of linguistics “Linguistic descriptions which eim at accounting for Tanguage as a system deal with sentences, not utterances.” (Corder, 1973:162; cited by James, 1980) There is a one-to-many relationship between sentences and utterances: one sentence underlies many concrete utterances, for example:
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Sentence _ [Pronoun Auiiay [Web ‘Noun phrase/ Object
Utterances | @) He Căn Make Cake
Gi) We Shall Sing ‘Songs
(ii) You Should Send Flowers
Games, 1980)
Therefore, in specifying responses in language, we must limit ourselves to their abstract form, as sentences, rather than their substance as utterances
1.3.3 Transfer theory and contrastive analysis
Contrastive analysis is founded on the assumption that foreign language or second language leamers will tend to transfer to their foreign language uttermces the formal features of their mother tongue/ first language, that, as Lado puts it “individuals tend to transfer the forms and meanings and the distribution of forms and meanings of their native language and culture to the foreign language and culture.” (cited by James, 1980)
In order to have more detailed information on transfer theory which is closely related to contrastive analysis that is what we are most interested in, let us present some information on the transfer paradigms restated by James (1980) as follows:
‘The transfer paradigms
[Paradigm [Taski — ]Task2 Task 3 [Transfer value
A SI—RI S2—RI SI-RI +T
B SI=RI SI=R2 SI=RI -T
€ SI=RI — [§2=R2 SI=RI -T
Notes: S (Simulus); R (Response); T (Transfer); + (positive); - (negative); +T (positive transfer or facilitation); - T (negative transfer or interference)
Trang 16the second language upon performance in the first language (or “backlash” restated by James, 1980); (2) It is concemed with forgetting because it can help us to explain why first language is not usually forgotten when a second language is Jeamed Here, in (2), we are only concerned with proaetion
In the transfer paradigms, stimuli and responses carry scripts which refer to the {identity and non-identity of stimuli and responses in consecutive successive tasks ‘The amount of “+1” or *- T" generated by each paradigm will depend upon/ on how similar stimuli are with identity of responses or how similar responses are ‘with identity of stimuli “Where stimuli are functionally identical and responses are varied (as in paradigm B), ne transfer and retroactive interference are obtained, the magnitude of both decreasing as similarity between the responses increases.” (cited by James, 1980)
And now, let us take each paradigm and state its relevance to contrastive analysis In each case, we'll have at our disposal two types of behavioural interpretation: one a model of language production, and the other of language reception We may view responses as utterances fitting some communicative intent (intention/ purpose), or responses as meanings or interpretations assigned by the leamer to utterances (stimuli) produced in the second language by his interlocutor In the first case, stimulus and response issue from the same person, while in the second case, stimulus and response issue from two persons: a speaker and a hearer are involved 1) Paradigm A ‘According to James (1980), Paradigm A can be designed as follows: [Paradigm A’ First language ‘Second language | SI=RI S2-RI
In production by the leamer, responses are utterances" with certain formal characteristics, by which we mean such linguistically-specified formal devices as Subject — Verb inversion; reflexivisation of object pronouns; equi-noun phrase, etc Paradigm A obtains where the first language and the second language use/ employ the same formal device, but to serve different communicative purposes in the firs language and the second language Interestingly, the first language is English; the second language is Welsh! Although their formal device is Auxiliary — Subject - ‘Verb — Object, in English it signals a question, while in Welsh — a statement, fo example:
[Language] Responses are utterances ish | Is she speaking German? Sentence structure
Welsh | Mae hi'n siarad Almaeneg
(Li.:is she in speak German) (Ht)
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Games, 1980)
From the above-mention example, we can realize that the English first language speaker is familiar with the formal device, so he! she will not have to learn it; but can transfer it to the second language as what we have already seen His/ Her problem will be to associate it with a new meaning in Welsh According to James (1980), the magnitude of the problem reduces as the functional or semantic discrepancy between identical formal devices in the first language and the second = language decreases until we reach a position of absolute first language It can be indicated as the first language (S1 —R1) and the second language (S1 — Rl) 2) Paradigm B And now, in tum, we can deal with Paradigm B also designed by James (1980) as follows: Paradigm B First language SI-RL Second language Si=R2
Also in production by the learner, this paradigm defines translation equivalence, namely, in the first language and the second language, there is sameness of meaning accompanied by difference of formal devices An example for illustration is where the first language and the second language employ different formal devices for questions German uses Subject ~ Verb inversion, whereas Polish employs an interrogative particle “czy” as shown below:
‘Stimulus [Response used inlanguage | Sentence pattem | Meaning
Question | Ri (German): Kenvten Sie iin? | V—Subj — Obj | Do you know him? “R2 (Polish): Czy pan go zna? | Particle — Subj — (Lit: If _you him know) (!!)| Obj - V Games, 1980)
Trang 18“ordinary learning” or “practice” because in effect no leaming needs to take place
Ifthe second language structure itself and the meaning which it is associated with are the same in the second language, they are known Tt is a case of what the Teamer has already known because it is the same as in his first or native language (estated by James, 1980) Thus, a conclusion from the mentioned claim is that if all languages have something in common — the linguistic universals — each of us knows at least parts of languages, then we have never even heard or read, Teaching and learning are not coterminous The learner may at least gain confirmation that the first language and the second language structures are identical So, the leamer ‘usually thinks that he needs to experience positive transfer if relevant learning is to
take place (James, 1980) 3) Paradigm C Last but not least, we are going to deal with Paradigm C also designed by James (1980) as follows: Paradigm C First language Second language SI=R1 S2—R2
Let us have a look at Paradigm C and then we can come to realize that this paradigm is of little interest to contrastive analysis because of the non-identity of
both stimuli and responses in the two mentioned-above languages That is the reason why there is no comparison In other words, there is no constant, only variables 13.4 A scale of difference
‘Now, we would like to return to,the previously mentioned paradigms (A, B, C)
in subsection 13.3 (Transfer theory and contrastive analysis) for further information on a scale of difference we are interested in here Instead of talking of identity or non-identity of stimuli and responses used in the first language and the second language, we shall consider degrees of similarity It is psycholinguistically indicated that ordinary leaming is the case of greatest similarity or identity of stimuli and responses in the first language and the second language In this case, it is not so difficult to have language transfer Let us take two examples for illustration: Responses | English —— [Wiemamee 1) 1 go to school 1) Téidihoc —”””” 2) I can play football 3) Tôi có thê đá bóng
But, in other cases, if the degrees of differences between the first language anc the second language are so great, it will be more difficult to leam or acquire thị second language Let us take some examples for illustration here:
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Responses | English ‘Vietnamese
1) Does John offen play ./ootball? (ising intonatien) | không? (lene) 1) John có thường hay đã bồng,
@ (Subject — Adverb — Verb ~
second: inversion — Adverb — | Object?) Verb — Object?) 2) Although he was tired, he |2) Mặc dù anh ta més, nhưng anh still went to work (without | ta van di lam (“nhưng” susually “but") used.) 3) Tense aspects: so difficult 3) Tense aspects: not so difficult to | : to master master
| 4) Others (used for 4) Others (used for-contrastive: | contrastive analysis) analysis)
According to James (1980), from particle languages to inversion Janguages, we have, in tum, a scale of difference as shown below:
Particle] 1) languages | Japanese D Russian |English |German_ |languages a 5 Tnvenion
Final Particle | “Do” No
particle second, | initial, | particle Verb= |Subjeet
Subject | second
pase —_ |order L I
The point to make is that we must be prepared to quantify degrees of difference between responses in the two languages under contrastive analysis This is the linguist’s task A further task, which falls to the contrastive analyst, is to establish the relationship between degree of linguistic difference and degree of leaming
difficulty
1.3.5 Contrastive analysis and behaviourist leaming theory
‘The psychological basis of contrastive analysis is transfer theory, elaborated ‘and formulated within a stimulus — response (behaviourist) theory of psychology ‘According to Corder (cited by James, 1980), the second language leamer usually ‘carries over the habits of his native language into the second language Thatis why ne of the explanations of the second language errors usually appears in the second language acquisition, Clearly, this explanation is psycholinguistically related to a ‘view of language as some sort of habit-structure,
‘Let us examine two recently proposed putative altemative explanations for what the contrastive analyst would consider to be the first language transfer: Cross- association and Ignorance hypothesis:
1) Cross-association
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‘The mechanism is proposed by George (1972; cited by James, 1980) who reconstructs the mental process of induction (method of logical reasoning which ‘obtains or discovers general laws from particular facts/ examples) and generalization which the first language German leamer of English seems to bt subject to At first, he learns that the word “woman” means “female human adult” (On this basis, he equates the word “woman” with the word “frau”, But, the word “frau” has another meaning “female spouse” On the basis of the association set up, the word “Woman” attracts the second meaning of the word “frau” also, As a result, the German habitually says the inappropriate “The man met his woman and children in the park” (James, 1980) This underlies what is usually meant by
mother tongue interference and further direct interference from mother tongue is not a useful assumption (George, 172: 41-45) Here, George prefers to invoke the redundancy of the second language as one of the direct causes of such errors The fact that English has two words “woman” and “wife” for the one German word “Frau” So, the redundancy of English will only constitute a learning problem (for the first language German leamer of English) if the first language does not show a corresponding redundancy 2) The ignorance hypothesis
This is another cognitive alternative proposed by Newmark and Reibel to the first language transfer to explain the second language leamers’ errors The adult ‘can want to say what he does not yet know how to say (in the second language), and he uses whatever means he has at his disposal This seems sufficient explanation of how interference comes about It might be considered as a notion of ignorance or a precondition for a leamer applying a language acquisition strategy when he realizes that he has no linguistic/ language competence with regard to some linguistic aspect of the target language (cited by James, 1980) This reveals that ignorance is not an altemative to interference, but a precondition for it tis stated that if the first language and the second language formal devices for a ppatticular function are identical — the ordinary leaming sub-paradigm ~ the leamer ‘will fully transfer the first language item to the second language use, and he might be successful On the contrary, he/ she might not, because that is where language interference easily appears, for instance, instead of saying “Put on shoes”, he says “Go shoes” (!!!) as he usually thinks and expresses it from Vietnamese into English!
The ignorance hypothesis is vulnerable (that is to say, the ignorance hypothesis may show some weak points) in other ways that we shall list three major ‘weaknesses (cited by James, 1980) as follows:
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ignorant by self-evaluation This decision on the learner's part usually comes before he resorts to the first language or! and before he utters a word, even an erroneous word Thus, “ignorance by self-evaluation” usually inyolves the learner deciding that he is ignorant of a second language form, so that he is unable to produce it The question is how he can make that decision so easily Another | question can also be who supplies the particular second language form for him to assess his ignorance of it If he can supply the form himself, then how can he be said to be ignorant of it in the first place?
) The second major weakness is that it is possible for different leamers to be equally ignorant of a given second language structure as it is often the case where the two leamers have different mother tongues or first languages As a result, each leamer can be ignorant of the given second language That is why their learning difficulties and errors are likely to be different For exemple, a Vietnamese learner of English usually makes a mistake when he uses the English structure “Although + a clause, a clause.”; but a Russian leamer of English does not It doesn’t mean that a Russian leamer of English is not ignorant of the English language More ‘examples can be taken here for illustration
6) The third major weakness is that those proposing the ignorance hypothesis conceive of leamers being called upon to produce the second language pattems of which they have no knowledge, It lies in the fact that when this demand is made,
the leamer cannot but use “whatever means he has at his disposal” because no language-teaching theory has ever envisaged asking leamers to perform the second language items specifically before giving them some reasonable access or exposure to the second language items in question Here, we are concerned with the second language acquisition rather than simply the second language learning because “acquisition” takes place in naturalistic, untutored setting, whereas “leaming” implies teaching The contrastive analysis hypothesis rests on the observation that with equal degrees and intensities of teaching, the leamer gains control of some second language items more easily than of others though he could be equally ignorant of them all at the outset
Linguistically, “transfer” is the psychological comer-stone of contrastive analysis The concept of transfer originates in behaviourist psychology, which has bbeen superseded by cognitive psychology It appears that attempts to accommodate contrastive analysis under cognitivism are not very profitable because thinking in terms of strategy of transfer seems to add little to the understanding of the mechanisms involved
The contrastive analyst is said to be not, and need not to inspire to become, a psychologist because it is his duty to chart the linguistic or structural elements/ routes in the second language leaming, It becomes obvious that his findings will be complementary to the ones of the psychologist, but their instruments and methods will be greatly different because the psychological basis of contrastive analysis
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should be as simple as possible For this reason, we would like to tum to some ` linguistic components of contrastive analysis
1.4 The linguistic components of contrastive analysis ‘According to James (1980), contrastivists sees it as their goal to explain certain aspects of the second language leaming because they consider their means are descriptive accounts of the leamer’s first language and second language to be leamt, and techniques for the comparison of these descriptions In other words, it should be understood that the goal belongs to psychology whereas the means are derived from linguistic science In fact, this demarcation of goal and means through their allocation to two different sciences, which disqualifies contrastive analysis from becoming subsumed under the rubic of the hybrid discipline called “Psycholinguistics” Here, we can say that some of the misunderstanding surrounding contrastive analysis has arisen from the mistaken view that contrastive analysis is a form of psycholinguistics Let us reiterate at this point that contrastive analysis is ¢ form of linguistics
1.4.1 Levels of language
In general, it is stated that there are three levels of language: a level of phonology (about the sound system of the language), a level of lexis/ lexicology,
and a level of grammar; or there are four levels of language: a leve! of phonology, a level of lexis, a level of morphology, and a level of syntax There is also another level of language called a mixing level which is allowed and sometimes found to be necessary to account for some facts of language “Mixing levels” is that of levels of language that can be used together for the linguistic purposes performed by the speaker in a certain situation or context, for example: “He's a student.” (fall), and “He’s a student?” (Fise) (The two sentences) utterances are differentiated through INTONATION which is linguistically called phonology-to- grammar level shift) Contrastive analysis likewise observes the principles of linguistic levels In ‘other words, we can discuss in turn phonological, lexical and grammatical contrastive analysis if we like Basically, any contrastive analysis involves two steps: (1) there is the stage of description when each of the two languages is
described on the appropriate level, (2) the stage of juxtaposition for comparison 1.4.2 Categories of grammar According to James (1980), linguistic descriptions are organized withi framework of categories Halliday (cited by James, 1980) suggests that there are for such fundamental categories: unit, structure, class, and system, which are universal because they are necessary and sufficient as a basis for the description of ‘any language — which adds to their attractiveness for the contrastive analyst Only ‘these four are required because they are needed to account for the data, that is to say, to account for all grammatical patterns that emerge by generalisation from the data,
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1) Unit: morpheme — word ~ phrase — clause — sentence (from the “smallest” to the “largest” or sentence — clause — phrase — word — morpheme (the “largest” to the “smallest”, As everybody knows the units of grammar that enter into the description of English and any related language are morpheme — word — phrase — clause — sentence Here they are arranged as a scale from the “smallest” to the “largest” or from the “largest” to the “smallest”, It totally depends on the style, habit or way of any language researcher when he deals with units In other words, if we start from the “largest” to the “smallest”, the scale can imply that any unit consists of one or ‘more instances of the next lower unit, and vice-versa, namely any unit is a direct constituent of the next higher unit, for example, sentences consists of clauses, clauses consists of phrases, and so on
2) Structure: A structure is an arrangement of elements ordered in “places” according to a certain structural approach of the language The elements making up the structure of the unit “clause” in English are the subject (S), predicator (P), complement (C), and adjunct/ adverb/ adverbial modifier (A), as in:
His black cat caught a big mouse last Saturday night
6i 2e Gì c A
According to James (1980), a nominal phrase, such as “the green shed outside” hhas the structure: “the” (determiner, D), “green” (epithet, E, ie, an adjective or a descriptive phrase that refers to the character or most important quality of a person/ thing), “shed” (headnoun, H), and “outside” (qualifier, Q), each of which is a word ‘The structure of the nominal phrase mentioned above can be shown as follows:
‘The green shed outside Whereas, morphemes being the smallest units on the level of grammar, have no DE HQ grammatical structure They are composed of phonological units On the level of phonology, we would say the words “end” /end/ and “put” /put/ have the structures ‘VCC and CVC respectively where C means consonant and V means vowel
3) Class: There are restrictions on which units can operate at given places in structures There is one class of the unit phrase which can fill the predicator slot (ie, narrow opening) in the clause: we call this the “verb phrase” (VP) “Next Friday” exemplifies a unit phrase that typically occurs as adjunct (Wwe may call this an instance of the class “adverbial phrase”) An interlingual class contrast at clause rank is indicated in English “London is foggy”, but can be expressed in Russian “In London is foggy (11!) because in Russian, a locative prepositional phrase can
‘occupy subject position, but not in English (James, 1980)
4) System: Each language allows its speakers choices from sets of elements, which are not determined by the place which the element is to occupy in the structure “Choice” here means “the selection of one particular term at one particular place ‘onthe chain in preference to another term or other terms which are also possible at that place” (cited by James, 1980) For instance, We must use a nominal class
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=
phrase (a singular nominal phrase, or a plural nominal phrase) to fill the subject ˆ
‘slot in the clause But when we come to the predicator slot, we must employ a verb -
phrase; but we are free to choose between past, present, future tense forms, and
simultaneously between perfect or non-perfect tense aspects, as well as between: progressive or non-progressive tense aspects in English In other words, we can si “Tense indicates the time at which an action takes place We usually speak of tenses as representing past, present, or future, but in English each of these tenses ‘also has perfect and progressive forms.” (Jeffrey Coghill and Stacy Magedanz,
2010: 72) Or, according to Dave Willis (2006: 116) when the author deals with the present tenses, we can also say, for example, “There are four present tenses — present simple, present continuous, present perfect, and present perfect
‘continuous.” For instance, in English, we have Subject + Predicator, in which:
+ Subject: personal pronouns, a nominal class phrase (a singular nominal phrase, or a plural nominal phrase)
+ Predicator: a verb phrase (past/ present/ future tense forms (16 tense aspects
in the active voice, and 12 tense aspects in the passive voice/ form)
Verb | Auxiliary | Modal (“can, may, will, should” followed by a base form)| phrase Perfect (Forms of “have”, followed by P2)_
‘Continuous/ progressive (forms of “be”, followed by PI) Passive (forms of “be”, followed by P2)
‘Support Auxiliary (forms of “do”, followed by a base form) Main verb (“teach, walk, work, ”
‘Systematically, each language has its own language system and their systems
‘operate over the domains of units: systems of sentences, of clauses, of phrases, of ‘words, and of morphemes For the system “number”, for example, we normally recognize two terms in English: singular and plural, whereas in some languages, like Arabic, there isa third term which is called “dual” A typical system at clause rank is mood and its mood system can offer a choice between indicative and
imperative If we select indicative, a second choice is open to us between
declarative and interrogative, and so on A sentence whose main verb is indi
is called a declarative sentence A sentence whose main verb gives a command is
ân imperative sentence An interrogative sentence asks a question Interrogatives
always end in a question mark Here, we can take the mood system in English which is divided into three subcategories as follows:
‘Mood | Indicative (eg Peter can do that.)
Amperative Do it! Don't do that!
Subjunctive (eg If Peter did that, he would Become a millionaire, ‘If he had done that, he would have become a millionaire; ot
Had he done that, he would have become a millionaire.)
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‘Once again, in this section, what we would like to focus on is that contrastive analysis hinges on the notion of contrast that might be defined as “difference seen against a background of sameness” Difference is the variable which contrastive analysis is concemed with
1.4.3 Language models for contrastive analysis on the grammatical level According to James (1980), there are as many models for use in contrastive analysis as there are descriptive models Here, we shall deal with only four, such as Structural or ‘Taxonomic’ model; Transformational Generative Grammar; Contrastive Generative Grammar; and Case Grammar,
1.4.3.1 Structural or “Taxonomic” model
“Taxonomic” detives from “Taxonomy” that is of scientific process of classifying things or classification of items into classes and sub-classes ‘Taxonomic approaches have been used in Phonology, Syntax, Semantics , for example, in taxonomic Phonology, the distinctive phonemes of a language are classified as vowels and consonants, the consonants are classified as stops, fricatives, nasals , the stops are classified as voiced and voiceless, and so on
With the help of the structural model, we can not only measure the difference in grammatical structure but also establish what is the maximum difference or the maximum similarity between any two language systems The analytic technique developed by the structuralisis is known as Immediate Constituent (IC) analysis The claim is that any grammatical construction which is not so simple that it may consist of only one element In fact, it can be reduced to pairs of constituents Thus, a construction like “disgraceful” is analysed into “disgrace”+“ful”, while “cungraceful” reduces to “un”-+"graceful” In other words, given a construction made up of the parts ABC, it will be analysable as cither AB+C or ABC For example, “nice young lady” can split into “nice”+*young lady” [A (adjective) + BC (adjective noun), but “very young lady” has the two ICs “very young”+“lady” {AB+C) Now, we have another example for illustration of the structural model “John is the nicest boy who can speak French.” The sentence has two ICs: the main clause (John is the nicest boy) and the dependent/ subordinate clause (who can speak French), The main clause breaks down into the subject (John) and the predicate (is the nicest boy) while the subordinate clause is constituted of the subject (who) and the predicate (can speak French) Then, we can proceed in similar manner to analyse each predicate into the verb and the complement, or the predicative (We can analyse any sentence or phrase either syntactically, morphologically )
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Structurally, these categories lend themselves not only to interlingual comparison, but also to contrastive analysis However, we should be more aware the fact that there are some weaknesses in the structural model Let us consider the following examples suggested by James (1980) for illustration:
(@) She is a beautiful dancer :
(b) The clever boy missed the prize (©) John is easy/ eager to please
Each of (e) and (b) contains ambiguity that is not resolvable by drawing an immediate constituent boundary The ambiguity from (a) is “Is she a beautiful gitl ‘0 behold (ie, to see, to enjoy seeing), or is she an ugly girl perhaps, who can dance ‘beautifully?” Whereas the ambiguity from (b) is “Did the boy miss the prize because he was clever, or didn’t his cleverness play a part in his missing it?” In other words, does (b) relate to (b1) or (b2) below:
(b1) The boy who was clever missed the prize (b2) The boy, who was clever, missed the prize
In (b1), we have a restrictive relative clause; but in (b2), a non-restrictive relative clause: no redrawing of immediate constituent boundaries in (b) can tell the reader which type of clause the adjective before “boy” is related to In (c), We have two sentences, each containing an adjective It appears that the selection of either one has grammatical repercussions for the rest of the sentence, as the following paraphrases show:
(cl) John is easy to please, = It is easy to please John, (2) John is eager to please, = It is eager to please John
‘These examples indicate that identity of position or distribution is no guarantee of identity of function because in (c1), “John” stands in an Object — Verb relation to “please”; whereas in (c2), “John” stands in a Subject ~ Verb relation to “please” Here, we may say that observations made on the basis of relative position in the structure refér to the surface structure; whereas observations concerning the functional relations between constituents refer to the deep structure (Chomsky,1969) Structural models usually confine themselves to observations
about surface structure
1.4.3.2 Transformational generative grammar
Transformational generative grammar was proposed by Chomsky ~ the American linguist in 1957 Transformational generative grammar can be also understood as transformational grammar/ generative transformational grammat/ generative transformational theory The salient/ important/ main features of such a grammar are that it recognizes a level of deep structure and a level of surface structure, which are greatly related by sets of transformations The syntactic component of the grammar is “generative”, while the semantic component is “interpretative” The term “generative” has been explained by Lyons (1968:1553 cited by James, 1980) as combining two senses: (1) predictive! projective, and (2) explicit/ clearly and fully expressed Such a grammar is projective in which it
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| sentences This model consists of four main parts below: ~ the base component, which produces or generates basic syntactic structures called
deep structures
establishes not only actual sentences, but also potential ones In other words, a ‘transformational generative grammar tries to show — with a system of rules ~ the knowledge that a native speaker of a language uses in forming grammatical |= the transformational component, which changes or transforms these basic
structures into sentences called surface structures
- the phonological component, which gives sentences a phonetic representation s0 | that they can be pronounced
- the semantic component, which deals with the meaning of sentences
Chomsky and other linguists felt that not only the base component, but also the transformational and phonological components had some effect on the semantic interpretation of a sentence And now, itsstill remains true
‘One reason for using transformational generative grammar in contrastive analysis is the same as that for using it in unilingual description For each step in deriving surface from deep structures, an explicit rule must be formulated Furthermore, some other reasons are particularly attractive to contrastive analysis (1) deep structures universal/ common to all languages, so it is a common point of departure for contrastive analysis; (2) the transformations applied to deep structures are taken from a universal stock called the formal universals, so we have ‘a second criterion for comparison Let us take some exemples of doing contrastive analysis for illustration: i) In English:
Deep structure [He has a cat The cat is black AE =
Surface structures |a)Hehasacai whichis black | a) Relativisation b) He has a cat black |b)Wh-deletion ) He has a black cat adjective shifting ii) In Vietmamese Cấu trúc chìm [Anh ấycócon mèo, Con mèo đó | mau den i ‘Cau trúc nỗi/ T4) Anh ấy có con mèo mà con mèo | a) Có mệnh đề quan hệ bể mặt đó mâu đen a i
b) Anh ấy có con mèo (miu) den |b) Ân mệnh đề quan hệ
) Anh ấy có con mèo (mầu) đen |c) Chuyên đỗi trật tự
tính từ iii) In English:
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Deep structure | He has a wife His wife is a teacher|
of English sẽ
‘Surface structures | a) He has a wife who is teacher |) Resrtictive clause | of English,
| b) He has a wife, who is a teacher | b) Non-restrictive
Pe | of English clause
iv) In Vietnamese:
'Cấu trúc chìm ‘Anh ta có vợ Vợ anh ta là giáo :
viên tiếng Anh
'Cũu trúc nỗi 3) Anh ta có một người vợ là giáo |3) Sử đụng mệnh đẻ _ [ viên tiếng Anh (và có vợ không _ | quanhệ xác định (có phải là giáo viên tiếng Anh) dau phiy)
Ð) Anh ta có vợ là giáo viên tiếng | b) Sử dụng mệnh đề
‘Anh (khong có người vợ thứ hai) | quan hệ không xác định | vì đó là duy nhất
T&hông có dâu phẩy)
Reference to deep structure can help us explain different surface structure possibilities between languages Thus, from (i) and (i), from (iii) and (iv), we can do some contrastive analysis for illustration to show the big differences between English and Vietnamese Examples might vary
In brief, the transformational generative grammar approach can provide the contrastive analyst with some kind of measure of degree of difference between ‘compared constructions in the first language and the second language We have suggested that deep structure is common to all languages, and that languages differ ‘most in their surface structures The difference between the structural model and this approach in contrastive analysis is that instead of looking for surface structural
correspondence, we look for correspondence between transformational rules (Nickel and Wagner, 1968; cited by James, 1980) There are several types of difference in rule application as follows:
a) One of the languages applies the rule, whereas the other either does not, or does so less generally It is stated that there is a rule involved in generating “that clause” jn German, but not in English, for example: J know it + They see him =I know (that) they see him
'b) One rule might be obligatory in a language but optional in another (or vice versa) For example, the rule of object relative pronoun insertion is optional in English, but not in German (for instance: That was the novel (which/ that) he read), ot in English, retention) use of the coordinator is optional, but not in Spanish (for example: an attractive, intelligent lady = an attractive and intelligent
lad),
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¢) Transformations are extrinsically ordered, or apply in a certain fixed order in ~ English, but might not in others In English, reflexivisation is a rule that can only be applied after pronominalisation, for instance:
Peter shaves Peter (1) (the two “Peters” being coreferential) Peter shaves him (= Peter), (2)
Peter shaves himself (3)
Here, we can easily recognize that (1), then (2) are the steps which lead to (3) 4) Some transformations are less specialized, or have a broader scope, than others
Therefore, it may appear that two transformations which are recognized as the same though they operate in two different languages are different in their scope The copula-insertion (that is to say, the insertion of the forms of “be” in English "and of “byt” in Russian) rules of English and Russian are a case in point, for instance:
Russian (phonetically recognized) — | English
1) Moj brast student (zero copula) [T) My brother (isa) student
2)Moj brast byV/ budit studentom | 2) My brother was/ will be student _
Here, itis easily shown that copulas can help to indicate tense aspects, but when zero copula is used in Russian, it means that it is in the present tense aspect
) A fifth advantage of the transformational generative grammar approach is that it yields significant generalisations when two different areas of the grammar call for the application of one and the same transformational rule It is known that English and German relative clauses containing adverbs or prepositional objects exhibit certain differences because in English the preposition can either precede the relative pronoun or appear at the end of the relative clause, for example:
+ The problem about which he thought + The problem which he thought about
But in German, the expression of “The problem which he thought about ” is not allowed
£) Not only do some transformational rules strictly precede or follow others as we hhave seen: some rules in English can imply others as follows:
+ We believe that he is a clever boy (1) + We believe him to be a clever boy (2)
+ He is believed (by us) to be a clever boy (3)
Linguistically, a structure like (2) is non-existent in German Thus, an English leamer of German will tend to produce German forms similar to (2) As a result, the English leamer of German can easily make such a mistake This sequence of linguistic events shows how language leamers tend to transfer transformational potential from the first language to the second language with resultant errors ‘These are also definite advantages in conducting contrastive analysis within a transformational generative grammar model
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1.4.3.3 Contrastive generative grammar Grammatically, generative grammar is called a type of grammar that attemps to define and describe by a set of rules all the grammatical sentences of a language This type of grammar is said to generate or produce grammatical sentences The most important grammar of this type is transformational generative grammar
We have already assumed a procedure whereby each of the two languages (or parts of each language) involved in the contrastive analysis has been analysed independently beforehand, After that, the two resulting analyses are juxtaposed for purposes of comparison The contrastive analysis would seem to involve two, phases: the first being that of independent description, and the second being that of comparison A more satisfactory procedure would be one whereby the first language and the second language structures were generéted from some common base, and were compared and contrasted during this process of generation ~ @ single phase contrastive analysis actually This is why it is called contrastive generative grammar According to Krzeszowski (cited by James, 1980), classical contrastive analyses of the kinds we have been discussing are essentially horizontal in nature Since the respective phenomena have been analysed in advance of the contrastive analysis, the only way in which the contrastive analysis can be effected is through cross-referencing or movement from the first language to the second language and vice versa Obviously, it is the analytic procedures that are horizontal Horizontal contrastive analyses are limited to statements of three kinds of interlingual relationship: those existing between (1) the first language and the second language systems; or (2) strictures; or (3) transformational rules Krzeszowski’s altemative, manifest in contrastive generative grammar is a vertical contrastive analysis with the following two defining characteristics:
1) It is not based on the confluence of two monolingual grammars, as classical contrastive analysis is, but it is a single bilingual grammar Krzeszowski attempts to justify this preference with the argument that the function of a contrastive analysis is precisely to render an account of the intuitions of an ideal bilingual about the relatedness of the two languages This claims that a psycholinguistic model of a bilingual and 2 modet for contrastive analysis are one and the same thing is dubious, As previously pointed out, contrastive analysis is not much concemed with extant bilingualism as with certain forces that prevent a person from becoming a bilingual: the term we use here means “bilingualisation” Thus, if ‘we mention “bilingual”, we would like to mean “balanced bilingual”, that is, one whose command of two languages is equal, there would seem to be little of relevance in-an individual’s intuitions about the first language and the second language relatedness To be a balanced bilingual is to have solved not only the problems of mismatch between the first language and the second language, but also the ones of the dominance of one of the two languages over the other
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ii) Contrastive generative grammar proceeds in its derivations from universal semantic inputs to language specific surface structure outputs in five stages as
follows:
Stage 1: It isthe level of category-neutral INPUTS, of a universal semantic,
Stage 2: Each language categorises (namely, puts items into categories or groups according to their nature or use: for instance, verbs may be categorised into jouns into animate and inanimate nouns ) the configurations (je, arrangements of the parts of the languages into each possible language type) introduced at stage 1 in ways which are characteristic of, but not necessarily all unique to it: some categories may be universal, others shared by language types, some unique
Stage 3: Syntactic rules apply here, arranging the categories or words into permissible orders in actual sentences Function words are introduced here,
Stage 4: In accordance with language-specific possibilities, lexical entries from the dictionary are inserted into the syntactic frames specified at stage 3 This is mjor lexicalisation
Stage 5: Pom- lexical or “cosmetic” transformations are applied, providing OUTPUTS with inflections and word boundary markers
1.4.3.4 Case grammar
Case grammar, which stresses the semantic relationships in a sentence, is a type of generative grammar In case grammar, the verb is regarded as the most important part of the sentence, and has a number of semantic relationships called cases with various noun phrases Let us take two sentences for illustration:
i) A policeman killed a bank robber with arevolver ii) This revolver killed the bank robber
Linguistically, “with a revolver” and “This revolver” have different syntactic function, but their semantic relationship with the verb “tilled” is the same in both sentences The revolver is the instrument with which the action of the verb is performed, So, “with a revolver” and “This revolver” are said to be in the instrumental case The instrumental case is one of the cases associated with the verb “killed” Other cases are “agentive” (je, the performer of the action ~ “A policeman”), and “dative” (namely, the receiver of the action — “a bank robber”)
‘As the examples show, case relationships can be indicated in different syntactic structures Accordingly, case grammar is deep structure and has been used not only for the grammatical description of languages, but also for the description of child Tanguage acquisition,
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So far, we have laid the theoretical bases for contrastive analysis, both psychological and linguistic, and now we are in a position to move forward to,
more practical considerations in the next section =
1.5 Mierolinguistic and macrolinguistic contrastive analysis
Ìa the fist: Mibsecton, we sill focus ơn be tedHỗopil maolos:L microlinguistic or “code-oriented” contrastive analysis on the three levels of Phonology, Lexicology, and Grammar In the second subsection, we shall tun our attention to the broader perspective of macrolinguistic contrastive analysis, which represents a relatively new departure in Pure and Applied linguistics, or which studies languages in certain situations/ contexts with the emphasis on ‘communicative functions
1.5.1 Microlinguistic contrastive analysis
Microlinguistic or “code-oriented” contrastive analysis can be used to express linguistic components usually without contexts or situations It is indicated on the three levels of Phonology, Lexicology, Grammar, and on general principles excluded
1.5.1.1, General principles
According to James (1980), it will be useful to outline the general principles of the procedures since repetition will be avoided and a measure of economy will be gained Executing a contrastive analysis involves two steps: description and comparison It is because the most effective materials for teaching a second Janguage 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 In other words, carrying out a contrastive analysis consists of a scientific ‘description of the first language and the second language, and then comparison of the two Remember that the two descriptions need to be parallel It means that the ‘minimum requirement of a parallel description is that the two languages should be described through the same mode! of description So much is for description Now, let us move to the second step — that is comparison Here, we might encounter a number of theoretical problems, mainly the issue of criteria for comparison To be more effective, we should concentrate on how to compare rather than on what basis to compare because the “how” and “why” are inextricable (je, so closely linked that separation is impossible) We should ‘compare “types” rather than “tokens” (namely, physical manifestations, signs, symbols), and we should not compare these two sentences, but their structures, for instance:
Structure | Personal pronoun + Auxiliary verb + Past participle (P2)
Sentence |7 have arrived
Furthermore, if the structure is a sentence, it is the basis of many utterances,
From the premise that contrastive analysis compares abstract elements rather than
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1.5.1.2 Grammatical contrastive analysis
Grammatical contrastive analyses are carried out on comparable systems of the two languages concemed with the following steps involved:
i) Step 1:
Assemble the data exhibiting the relevant systems with copula sentences designating professions in each language, for example: English ‘Vietnamese
1) Tam an engineer 1) Tối là Ki sw 2) Ï am a good engineer 2) Tái là kĩ sư gi
3) We are engineers |3) Chúng tối là Kĩ sự 4) We are good engineers 4) Chúng tôi là Ki se gi
In fact, there are @ few grammatical phenomena or systems manifested in each of the above-mentioned sentences which can be the focal point of the present contrastive analysis, namely, the systems of personal pronouns; the existential copula “be” in English, corresponding to a choice “/a” in Vietnamese; the system of word order
‘Subject ‘Complement/ Predicative
‘employed in these sentences of the two languages Then, we should concentrate on the “article” and modifier systems operating over the complement noun phrases in such sentences between English and Vietnamese
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‘We should supplement the data we have got from step 2 so that we can perceive the need to expand the rules by adding more sentences to our corpus, together with their translation equivalents if necessary
iv) Step 4:
Now, it is important to formulate the contrasts identified by the analyses of steps 2 and 3 mentioned above because this is the proper contrastive phase Here, with the explicit statement of interlingual contrast, the contrastive analysis proper is complete Further processing involving the pedagogical exploitation of the contrastive analysis can be discussed
1.5.1.3 Phonological contrastive analysis, 4) Contrastive Phonetics and Phonology:
As we all know that grammatical analysis concems itself with “types” rather than with their physical manifestations or tokens In other words, grammarians always study the functional patterns of classes of linguistic entities To begin with, ‘we should draw a similar distinction between the role of the phonerician and that of the phonologist The phonetician is always concemed with three types of physical reality when he studies the language sounds: (1) articulatory phonetics which is the study of the way the speech organs are used to produce speech sounds; (2) acoustic phonetics that is the study of the physical properties of speech sounds; and (3) auditory phonetics which is the study of the way people perceive speech sounds, or the hearing process that is brain activity Then, we should realize the fact of the language in use that speakers of the same language may speak with different accents which can be attributable to different regional, social eonditions And it is the phonetician’s task to identify and classify these variations and to specify their range Now, at this point, it is the phonologist’s task even though the phonetician and the phonologist may be one and the same person ‘The phonologist, however, i2 coneemed not so much with the finer details of
phonetic variety as with the functional identity, as tokens of type, of these variants
Such a division of the phonetic sciences into these two main branches poses problem for the contrastivist: “Is he to đo contrastive phonetics or contrastive phonology?” The former will involve him in making detailed descriptions of the sounds of a pair of languages for purposes of comparison The feasibility of the approach is guaranteed by the fact that the world’s languages tend to use sounds produced by a limited number of combinations of articulatory features The first approach to phonetics contrastive analysis or contrastive phonetics is in the comparison of the first Ianguage and the second language sounds with a shared articulatory basis The second approach is physical rather than physiological, and is associated with the acoustic properties of speech sounds Here, we can compare the initial consonants or the ending sounds between English and Vietnamese for illustrations An acoustic approach to phonetics contrastive analysis consists of comparing the first language and the second language sounds that have much in
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‘common physically and noting the differences accompanying the similarity The third type of phonetics is auditory phonetics which is concemed with what ‘message the ears can transmit to the brain Let us take a simple unilingual example in English for illustration: the first and the second consonant /p/ in “pen” /pen/ and “spend” /spend/ respectively are different because the former is aspirated, but the | latter is not Nevertheless, /p/ in /pen/ and /p/ in /spend/ are perceived as the same phoneme /p/, auditorily and mentally even though there is some phonetic 4ifference Notice that we are speaking of two allophones being tokens of the same phoneme /p/ What is an allophone? An actually pronounced speech sound is ‘always a variant allophone of a phoneme Once a speech sound has been identified as a realization of a certain phoneme, it is called an allophone of this phoneme (Nguyễn Huy Kỷ, 2016) Here, we are no longer concemed with physical or physiological reality, but with mental reality Now, our domain is functional phonetics, or in other words, it is phonology Though we have illustrated this principle intralingually, it applies equally obviously interlingually and is the
foundation for phonological contrastive analysis or contrastive phonology
Ð) Contrasting sound systems: According to James (1980), in general, there are four steps involved in carrying ‘out a contrastive analysis of the sound systems of two languages as follows:
i Steps 1 and 2: Draw up a phonemic inventory, or list the phonemes of the first language and the second language ‘The first step, called the descriptive one, is not really part of contrastive analysis A phonemic inventory is always made available by the phonologist The contrastivist’s consists in equating phonological categories across the two languages To be more specific, the consonants and vowels of the two languages can be carefully classified Their consonants can be classified according to place and manner of articulation and placed in the appropriate cell of the chart, with voiceless vs voived pairs (for example: /p/ vs /b/, // vs /d, If vs /v/ )-
For their vowels, the conventional vowel chart can be used, which allows a specification of any vowel according to the tongue position during articulation fi, Step 3
Lưu ghiaừc allophones of each phoneme of the first language and the second language
‘We can see some examples of this procedure, for instance, the aspirated vs unaspirated pairs of the English consonant phonemes /p,t, k/ occurring in English, but not quite in Vietnamese, or in French
~ For two equated phonemes, one of the first Janguage and one of the second Janguage, allophonic variants occur for one but not for the other An example for illustration is the allophonic variants of the lateral phoneme // in English and in ‘Vietnamese, ot /s/ in English and /r/ in Vietnamese, or in French, in Russian,
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= What is an allophone in the first language is a phoneme in the second language, where the sounds concemed are physically very similar The example of this type of contrast is the clear // of English, equated with the palatal / of Russian since the former has allophonic status, the latter has phonemic status
= This category of contrast applies to pairs of the first language and the second language sounds that stand in a one-to-one relationship, not the one-to-many, relationship
iv Step 4:
State the distributional restrictions on the allophones and phonemes of the first language and the second language
Linguistically, we can easily realize that it is possible for the two languages to have corresponding phonemes with phonetically very similar allophones, but ‘where the environments for these allophones are not identical Both English and Spanish have the two phonemes /n/ and /y/ The former (/n/) occurs before vowels and dental or alveolar consonants as well as word final position in both languages But the environments determining the occurrence of /y/ are different in English and Spanish In English, /n/ occurs as an allophone of /n/ before velars as in “sink” Jsink/, “longest” “ongist/ In Spanish, /n/ occurs before segments as /h/ and w/, for example, “estranjero” Jestranhero/ (je, foreigner), “naranja” /naranha/ (ie, orange) This phenomenon ~ the contrastive distribution of phonetically similar allophones — is probably the most formidable one that faces not only the contrastivist, but also the foreign language learner
©) Phonological models: The range of models available for syntactic analysis is large For phonological ‘analysis, we have a two-way choice between taxonomic phonology lie, one of the ‘approaches used in phonology for classifying items into classes and subclasses For example, in taxonomic phonemics (the term PHONEMICS has been used by ‘American linguists, particularly in structural linguistics Lately the term PHONOLOGY has been preferred), the distinctive speech sounds of a language are classified as vowels, consonants, and the consonants are classified as stops, fricatives, nasals then the stops are are classified as voiced or voiceless ) and generative phonology The question arises ftom the merits of these two models The taxonomic phonology has the aim of setting ont phoneme systems, ‘combinations of possibilities of phonemes in different languages Furthermore, oth language learners and language teachers or educators should realize that the ‘major value of the phoneme and allophone approach is that it can identify two categories of pronunciation problem (the first — the source of more fundamental distortions often leading to unintelligibility, and the second — merely leading to “foreign accent” without much impairment of communication) which the second language leamers may encounter The generative phonology stems from America but is rooted in Europe Like generative syntax, generative phonology assumes that surface siructure phonology derives from the deep structure phonology by means
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of transformations According to Southworth and Daswani (cited by James, 1980), “The phonological rules mediate between the systematic phonemic level (at Which all distinctive feature information is specified) and the systematic phonetic level (at which all phonetic information is specified)”, Given the choice between taxonomic and generative phonology, while accepting that the latter is probably more powerful for pure linguistic purposes, we should decide on the former for the simple reason that it is more practical and concrete; but choice is yours
| 1.5.1.4 Contrastive lexicology
According to James (1980), the layman's misconception of a second language learning is that it is purely a matter of the learner learning the lexical equivalents of the second language corresponding to his first language words Recent research on Tanguage acquisition has redressed the balance, in pointing out how reliant or reliable infants as well as adults learning a second language in the natural setting, are upon lexis for communication It is these insights, together with a renewal of interest mong linguists in problems of semantics that promise a heightening of activity in contrastive lexicology, which has been relatively neglected as one of the three branches of microlinguistic contrastive analysis As Lyons (cited by James, 1980) stated “the language of a particular society is an integral part of its culture, and the lexical distinctions drawn by each language will tend to reflect the culturally important features of objects, institutions and activities in that society in which the language operates.” Another area in which contrastive lexicology has been kept alive is that of translation Here, according to Nida (cited by James, 1980), again, cultural barriers to effective translation have been in the forefront, especially among the Bible translators And obviously, where there are second language learners and translators, there are bilingual dictionaries Thus, this ~ bilingual lexicography — is the third area in which a practical concem for, if not a theoretical commitment to contrastive lexicology has been maintained, However, ‘we must not equate lexicology with lexicography because the latter is one of several practical applications of the former Likewise, the lexicon of a language is not the same as a monolingual dictionary of that language ‘As on the other linguistic levels, the contrastive analysis presupposes the prior analysis of the lexicons of the first language and the second language To be more specific, the task we would like to set ourselves here is to characterise the kinds of relationships into which lexical items enter with each other within the same field a) Word fields:
‘The concept of word field raised here is introduced for the purpose of delimiting the lexicon into cohesive subsystems (“cohesive” derives from “cohesion” which can be used to show the grammatical and/or lexical relationships between the different elements of a text, or between different sentences, or between different parts of a sentence, for example: Is Peter coming to the farewell party? ~ Yes, he is) The dictionary by contrast is organised on the simple alphabetical principle Thus, according to Hartmann (cited by James, 1980), word
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fields which have been studied may include “offence, joy, visual perception, facial expression, colours, eating, parts of the body, vehicles, cooking ” Then, more precise specification can determine the selection of one word from its class, for example “to tell,to say, to speal
(2) “to tel?” conveys the fact that the addressee is given information, is ‘commanded, or is entertained, for example:
They told their kids to make less noise
Q) “to say” can have as its grammatical subject @ person, text or institution, for instance: His father say ‘The report (Our teaching institution
(3) “to speak” refers to the faculty and quality of oral communication, for example: ‘My father could speak three languages He could speak well
Ð) Semantic components
Linguistically, we have known how phonemes may be analysed into phonological features Similarly, lexemes can be shown to be composed of semantic features or components In other words, a lexime is understood as @ lexical item, or the smallest unit in the meaning system of a language that can be distinguished from other similar units Thus, a lexeme is an abstract unit, which can occur in many different forms in actual spoken or written sentences, and is regarded as the same lexeme even when inflected For example, in English, all inflected forms such as “sing, sings, sang, sung, singing” belong to the lexeme “sing” In a dictionary, each lexeme merits @ separate entry or sub-entry According to James (1980), a typicel native speaker has a vocabulary of about 20,000 words, and the number of semantic components needed to specify @ speaker's vocabulary will be approximately 10,000 Let us consider the following, sets of words in English:
Man Woman hil
Bull ‘Cow calf
‘Ram Ewe —— Tam,
‘Horizontally, we can see that these triads of words represent a common pattern, so that we can set up the proportions like “man, woman, child’ (1); “bull, cow, calf” (2); “ram, ewe, lamb” (3) Here, we can see further contrasts: all of the first
set (1) are human, all of the second set (2) are bovine (te, of or relating to cattle), and all of the third set (3) are ovine (namely, of or like sheep) The features We have isolated are linguistically called semantic components Bach lexeme is & complex of such components For instance, “lamb” is specifiable of this item as