Notas

Lingua Americana
Año VII Nº 13 (2003) 147 - 154

Contrastive Linguistics
and Contrastive Grammar

Angela Bartens
Universidad de Helsinki, Finlandia
angelabartens@helsinki.fi

The roots of Contrastive Linguistics (CL) go back to the late

19th and early 20th century, especially Baudouin de Courtenay
(1902) and de Saussure (1916). In the 1920s, Mathesius and ot-
her members of the Prague School came to consider “analytical
comparison” as a tool for unearthing linguistic universals as first
outlined by Baudouin (1902:320). These theoretical considera-
tions found pedagogical applications from early on (cf. Fisiak,
1983:12). The Saussurean tradition of CL was continued by Bally
(1932) and after him by scholars in Francophone universities.
The scope of the third, American current of early CL was clearly
applied (cf. Fries 1945; Lado, 1957; 1964). This eventually led to
CL being relegated to foreign language teaching pedagogy in Ame-
rican academia while the European research paradigm always re-
mained wider.
In spite of efforts to bring theoretical CL (TCL) and applied
CL (ACL) closer together, the division is an inevitable product of
the different underlying motivations of TCL and ACL (James,
1980:143; Fisiak, 1983:19). While the former aims at revealing
universal structures and the essence of language (e.g. Wandrusz-
ka, 1971:135), ACL seeks to contribute to the pedagogy of the tea-
ching of specific language pairs.
It is possible to conceive of a theoretical Contrastive Gram-
mar (CG). However, this would be an immense endeavor for any
language pair (and even for any language) considering that the
ideal CG would be bidirectional (i.e., the analyses would be appli-
cable in both directions), descriptive and contrastive (i.e., a des-
cription of both language systems must precede their comparison
and contrasting) and as comprehensive as possible (Czochralski,
148 / Angela Bartens

1966:20-23). Therefore, CGs which tend to be what Czochralski

(p.c.) terms as unidirectional, descriptive-contrastive (i.e., des-
cription and confrontation occur simultaneously), and selective
can usually be attributed to the domain of ACL (but cf. Filipovic’
proposal of intermediate types; 1986:8, 10). It is of utmost impor-
tance that CGs be based on theoretical contrastive studies of
parts of the language system, i.e., that TCL continue to inform
ACL.
The rise and fall of different linguistic theories has been re-
flected in CL. For example, generative grammar has had many ad-
herents in CL (cf., e.g., Krzeszowski, 1979). The lack of models for
(pedagogical) CGs is noted e.g. by Marton (1982) and Kuhlwein
(1984). While a specific theoretical model has indeed been cho-
sen as the predominant model for some CGs, e.g. Verbal Depen-
dency Grammar in Engel et al. (1986; 1999), there seems to be a
fairly strong consensus on the fact that the old structural-func-
tional model is the most suitable for applied CGs (Coseriu,
1972:43) or that the writer of an applied CG should be eclectic in
her use of theoretical models (which may amount to the same;
Wekker & Aarts, 1987).
Early ACL hoped that the method of Contrastive Analysis
(CA) would indicate the main areas of difficulty in learning a spe-
cific language and thence help designing optimally pedagogical
teaching materials. By consequence, ACL drew heavily on Error
Analysis. In the meantime, it has become clear that even CA and
Error Analysis combined fail to predict all error types as a multi-
tude of psychological, cultural and educational factors have to be
taken into account (Mukattash, 1984:333; Sajavaara 1981)1.
While foreign language pedagogy still constitutes the primary
field of application of CL, Translation Didactics has gained in im-
portance as the still relatively young field of Machine Translation
stands to profit from applied CA. Grammars like Salkoff (1999)
which aim at presenting the formal rules for translating from one

1 While there are still defendants of a priori CA (combined with Error

Analysis and other methods), e.g., Schachter (1983), it has also been
suggested that a posteriori CA be employed to explain recurring errors
(Wardhaugh 1983). Note that a CG is not meant to replace course de-
sign but it is intended as a tool which will (hopefully) sharpen the tea-
cher’s eye for diagnosis of learners’ errors (Kühlwein 1984:323).
 Contrastive Linguistics and Contrastive Grammar / 149

language into another are by necessity unidirectional as a reverse

grammar could only produce a subset of the rules of the language
originally being translated into (Salkoff, 1999:325).
The difficulty of presenting a bidirectional CG suggest no CG
should be attempted which involves more than two languages (cf.
Czochralski, 1966:27). There are, however, particular circums-
tances under which a CG has to include three (or even four?) lan-
guages. This is the case of the present study. However, there is no
denying the selective bias which is unfortunately likely to charac-
terize many of the contrasted structures.
Major factors contributing to the difficulty of going beyond
unidirectionality in CA are firstly the vagueness of the concept of
tertium comparationis on all levels except phonetics/phonology
and the lexicon where the tertia comparationis are substantial
(Fisiak, 1983:21; Krzeszowski, 1984; Schmitt, 1997:15-16). As a
matter of fact, different types of tertium comparationis and co-
rresponding equivalence relations are needed to contrast all le-
vels of the language/language use. For example, a statistical ter-
tium comparationis, necessary for the elaboration of pedagogical
materials, can only be provided by quantitative CA (Krzeszowski,
1984:306, 310).
Second, only fairly recently has CL started to consider the
pragmatic, sociocultural and psycholinguistic levels which are
nevertheless as integrally part of language as phonology or
syntax. Pragmatic or sociocultural constraints are usually more
difficult to master than e.g. morphological rules and must there-
fore be integrated into CL/CG (Fillmore 1984; Oleksy 1984;
Wüest 1997; Anzilotti 1983; and also Clyne 1994 and Scollon &
Wong Scollon 1995 for intercultural communication). Coseriu
(1972:54-56) emphasizes the need for CA to focus on the “Sprach-
norm”, i.e., actual usage in a community as opposed to parole;
language as produced by an individuum, while Wierzbicka (1991)
has developed a sophisticated natural semantic metalanguage - a
pragmatic tertium comparationis! - for the description of “cultu-
ral scripts”. Pragmatic CA is not always clearly delimitated from
contrastive discourse analysis (cf. Part III of Hellinger & Ammon
1996; Riley 1979). Another subfield of CL which is still in its in-
fancy and which partly overlaps with Contrastive Pragmatics is
Contrastive Sociolinguistics (Janicki 1979; Hellinger & Ammon
1996). While specific sociolinguistic situations and realities cer-
tainly have been compared before, a systematic paradigm of Con-
150 / Angela Bartens

trastive Sociolinguistics opens up interesting possibilities for

comparative (and contrastive) work, e.g. to compare code-swit-
ching behavior (Jacobson 1996).
Given the need to work with material from the “Sprach-
norm”, translations and parallel texts have been found to consti-
tute suitable sources of data for CA (Schmitt 1997:15, 27; Wan-
druszka 1971:135). Nevertheless, this (justified) bias towards ac-
tual language usage has earned CL the critique of not being “se-
rious”, i.e., theoretical enough, for not dealing exclusively with
the system level (Schmitt 1997:9-12). Bit it is precisely by analy-
zing the levels of the parole and the Sprachnorm that CL is able to
generalize to the system level (Schmitt 1997:12-15). On the other
hand, while especially generative CGs have relied on native spea-
ker intuitions in the past, there seems to be a growing consensus
on the need for a representative bidirectional corpus as data base
for a CG (Filipovic 1984).
In his concluding remarks, Czochralski raises the important
question of contrasting typologically divergent languages as op-
posed to typologically similar ones (1966:28). While learnability
hierarchies have been postulated for various language pairs (Ja-
mes 1971:32; note, however, that typological divergence is not
proportional to learnability as indicated above), it appears that
CL has not dealt extensively with the differences in per forming CA
on typologically similar vs. divergent languages. For example,
should the typological divergence of the language pair determine
the manner of presentation in a CG, e.g. descriptive-contrastive
or descriptive and contrastive? In existing CGs, Czochralski’s
descriptive-contrastive type is further divided into grammars
which present the structures as type a. interlinear versions (e.g.
Veiga, 1995; grammar notes in Dittman, 1992); type b. in separa-
te columns or on the different sides of an opening (e.g. Engel et al.
1999 and Zemb, 1978, respectively); type c. by describing a parti-
cular structure first for one language, then for the other and then
contrasting them (e.g. Damoiseau, 1999). Czochralski’s descrip-
tive and contrastive type of CGs (hypothetically type e) consists of
two separate parts. An intermediate type d. is constituted by CGs
which apply the descriptive and contrastive approach to a parti-
cular area of grammar, e.g. the NP, at a time. Engel et al. 1986 and
Cartagena & Gauger 1989 are examples of type d. CGs. If the des-
criptive and contrastive approach (type e) is not an option, will the
typological divergence of the languages not advocate the choice of
a particular descriptive-contrastive subtype? This is suggested
 Contrastive Linguistics and Contrastive Grammar / 151

by Filipovic’s observation that especially typologically divergent

languages must be described equally well before proceeding to
the CA per se (Filipovic 1984:107). By consequence, adopting
type d. or c. in the case of this endeavor seems imperative; the fact
that we are dealing with three languages excludes type b. presen-
tation2.

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2 Stockwell & Bowen (1965) and Stockwell, Bowen & Martin (1965) have
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