October 20, 2009

Traditional period

End of 19th century until after WWII Benjamin Lee Whorf uses term

‘contrastive linguistics’ in his article ‘languages and Logic’ (1941)

Inauguration of structuralism : Ferdinand de Saussure The Prague Circle Strong interest in the study of phonology

... Main works reflect that interest 1892. Grandgent, Ch. German and English Sounds 1892. Roorda, P. Dutch and English Compared 1894. Viëtor, W. Elemente der Phonetik des

Deutschen, Englischen und Francözischen 1906. Passy, P. Petite phonétique comparee des

principales langues européennes 1908. Soames, L. An Introduction to English, French

and German Phonetics 1933. Yuen Ren Chao A Preliminary Study of

English Intonation (with American Variants) and its Chinese Equivalents.

The Prague Circle 1926 – 1936 agile activity of the Prague

Circle Work on ‘linguistic characterology’ by

Mathesius, Trnka and Vachek 1964 . Mathezius, V. On Linguistic

Characterology with Illustrations from Modern English ; promotes the idea of synchronic comparison of non-related languages for the purposes of systematic work on linguistic typology

USA Field work by American structural linguists;

description of native American languages ; comparisons with Indo-European languages

1941. Whorf B.L. Languages and Logic ...’might be termed contrastive linguistics. This plots

the outstanding differences among tongues – in grammar, logic and general analysis of experience..’ (Whorf:1941)

Points to the difference between comparative and contrastive linguistics

Leonard Bloomfield points to the importance of contrasting categories of different languages

more in Europe Henry Sweeet, Jan Baudouin de

Courtenay, Otto Jespersen, Charles Bally Summary of the traditional period Initially CA focused on main european

languages , then broadened interest to native American and Chinese languages

Focus on phonology/phonetics still haphazard activity, no programme

Classical period in CL

1945 – 1965 CA becomes systematic, scientific,

practical and academic discipline In US particularly, development of

second language learning and teaching, studies of bilingualism, language planning influence the direction of CA

... Main works: Fries, C. Teaching and Learning English as

a Foreign Language: The most efficient materials are those

that are based upon a scientific description of the language to be learned, carefully compared with a parallel description of the native language of the learner."(Fries 1945: 9, Teaching and Learning English as a Foreign Language. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.)

... 1948. Reed, D. Lado, R.and Yao Shen: The

Importance of the Native Language in Foreign Language Learning

1949. Fries, C.and Pike, K. Co-existent Phonemic Systems

1953 Weinreich, U. Languages in Contact. Introduces the notion of INTERFERENCEInterference, or negative transfer, represents the

instances of mother tongue influencing the learning/use of second/foreign language, thus causing mistakes/errors

1953. Haugen, E. Norwegian Language in America

Defining language differences Formal attempts to define language

differences 1954. Harris, Z. Transfer Grammar B= A + (B-A) rules of transfer The description of grammar of language

B can be represented as a sum of the rules of language A grammar and the difference between the language B and A rules (rules of transfer)

Focal moment

1957. Lado, Robert. Linguistics across Cultures . Inauguration of modern contrastive analysis!!!

1962-1965. Ferguson, C. The Contrastive Structure Series: results of systematic comparison of English paired with 5 languages at the levels of phonology and grammar. Thus 10 publications

Modern period 1965 to this day A large number of contrastive projects

all over the world Bibliographies and selected

bibliographies First serious critical views Many large international conferences

that marked the development of the discipline

Conferences

1968. Washington, Georgetown University. 19th Annual Round Table: Contrastive Linguistics and its Pedagogical Implications

1971. Honolulu-Hawaii Pacific Conference on Contrastive Linguistics and Language Universals

1970. Zagreb Conference

Projects Estonian – English (Taru, Estonia) Finnish – English (Jyvaaskyla, Finland) Dutch-English (Luven, Holland) English – Hungarian (Budapest,

Hungary) PAKS – German (Stuttgart, Germany) Polish- English (Poznan, Poland) YSCECP – English – Serbo-Croat Spanish, Romanian, Sweedish ..

CoLLaTECOntrastive Linguistics and LAnguage Typology in Europe

CoLLaTE is an international research network set up in 1996 with funds from the Flemish National Science Foundation (FWO) to

bring together, promote and co-ordinate fragmented research efforts in the field of contrastive linguistics

bridge the gap between theoretical and applied research so that (fundamental) contrastive research is put into practice, e.g. in language teaching and NLP and MT applications

archive bibliographical and other data and make them accessible.

These objectives will be developed and aimed at through yearly organised thematic symposia and/or workshops , the exchange of materials and know-how between the participating research units;

making available a bibliography on contrastive linguistics

the preparation of joint Flemish and/or European research projects.

The research units participating in CoLLaTE are

Core research unit:

The CONTRAGRAM group

Flemish partners: The 'Psychopedagogical Studies of Language and Language

Acquisition' research unit of the University of Gent (head: Prof. M. Spoelders)

The Centrum voor grammaticaal en lexicaal betekenisonderzoek/Centre de Sémantique Grammaticale et Lexicale of the University of Leuven (Prof. L. Melis)

The core research unit and its two Flemish partners constitute the steering committee of the network.

Other Belgian partners: The Centre for English Corpus Linguistics of the University of Louvain

(Prof. S. Granger) The 'Unité d'études néerlandaises' of the University of Louvain (Prof. L.

Beheydt) The Ecole de Langues Vivantes of the University of Namur (Prof. P.

Kelly) The Department of Germanic Languages of the Free University of

Brussels (Prof. P. Van de Craen)

International partners: The Corpus Linguistics Group of the University of Birmingham (U.K.) (Prof. J. Sinclair) The INTERSECT Project of the University of Brighton (U.K.) (Dr. R. Salkie) The Syntaxe, Interprétation et Lexique unit of the University of Lille (France) (Prof. D.

Corbin) The Département de Linguistique française of the Université de Provence (France)

(Prof. C. Blanche-Benveniste) The Forschungsgruppe Valenzforschung of the 'Institut für deutsche Sprache' in

Mannheim (Germany) (Prof. H. Schumacher) The Odense Valency Dictionary Project of the University of Odense (Denmark) (Prof.

L. Schøsler) The Département de français of the Copenhagen Business School (Denmark) (Prof. H.

Sørensen) The Text-based Contrastive Studies in English unit of Lund University (Sweden) (Dr.

B. Altenberg ) The Institut des langues romanes of the University of Uppsala (Sweden) (Prof. L.-G.

Sundell) The research group Gramática contrastiva inglès-español of the University of Huelva

(Spain) (Prof. M. Martínez Vázquez)