Lingüística comparada: inglés-español

Topic 1
Prof. Gema Chocano

TOPIC 1: INTRODUCTION TO TYPOLOGICAL CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS

1. Comparing languages: historical comparative linguistics, typological linguistics, and

contrastive linguistics.

2. Comparative syntax: Chomsky’s (1981, and subsequent work) “Principles and

Parameters” (P&P).

Bibliography:

Dryer, Matthew S. & Haspelmath, Martin (eds.). 2013. The World Atlas of
Language Structures Online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary
Anthropology. (Available online at http://wals.info).
*Ke, Ping. 2019. Contrastive Linguistics. Singapore: Pekin University Press &
Springer. Chapter 1, section 1.1.1.
König, Ekkehard and Volker Gast. 2008. Understanding English-German
Contrasts. 2nd edition (revised). Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag.
König, Ekkehard. 2012. Contrastive linguistics and language comparison.
Languages in Contrast 12.1: 3-26.
*Roberts, Ian. 2007. Diachronic Syntax. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Chapter 1, section 1.1.
Santorini, Beatrice & Anthony Kroch. 2007. The syntax of natural language: An
online introduction. https://www.ling.upenn.edu/~beatrice/syntax-textbook.
Dryer, Matthew S. & Haspelmath, Martin (eds.). 2013. The World Atlas of
Language Structures Online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary
Anthropology. (Available online at http://wals.info).
*Moravcsik, Edith A. 2013. Introducing Language Typology. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. Chapter 1.

1. Comparing languages.

Synchronic Diachronic
Intralingual (A) Synchronic intralingual (B) Diachronic intralingual
comparison. comparison.
Interlingual (D) Synchronic interlingual (C) Diachronic interlingual
comparison. comparison.
(from Ke, 2019: 4).

(A) Synchronic intralingual comparison.

(1) a. leave /li:v/ vs live /lɪv/.

b. ten /tεn/ vs den /dεn/.
 Lingüística comparada: inglés-español
Prof. Gema Chocano
Topic 1

(2) a. rats /ræts/ vs mugs /mʌgz/.

b. rats /ræts/ vs children, oxen.

(3) Have you seen him? vs *Saw you him? (Did you see him?).

(B) Diachronic intralingual comparison.

(4) a. OE, ME hus /hu:s/ vs PDE house /haʊz/.

b. OE bec ‘books’ vs PDE books.
c. OE þæt he his stefne up ahof.
that he his voice up raised
‘that he raised up his voice.’ (*that he his voice up raised).

(C) Diachronic interlingual comparison: historical comparative linguistics (Verner,

Rask, Bopp, Schleicher, among others). The aim of comparison is to establish “genetic
families” of language groups, which sometimes includes the reconstruction of the proto-
language or common ancestor of a group of languages.

(5)
Latin Greek Sanskrit Gothic Old English
pedem poda padam fotus fot ‘foot’
pecus -- pacu faihu feoh ‘cattle, money’
piscis -- -- fisks fisc ‘fish’

Latin Greek Sanskrit Old Norse English

tres treis trayas þrír three
tenuis tanaos tanu þunnr thin
tu tu tvam þú thou (Old English þu)

Latin Greek Welsh Gothic English

cordem kardía craidd hairto heart
centum -katon cant hund hund(red)
decem deka deg taihun ten (lost between vowels)

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 Lingüística comparada: inglés-español
Topic 1
(6) Not all Indo-European languages are shown. Prof. Gema Chocano

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 Lingüística comparada: inglés-español
Topic 1
Prof. Gema Chocano

(D) I. Synchronic interlingual comparison: typological linguistics. The aim of

typological linguistics is to map out the space and limits of variation between languages
irrespective of their genetic affiliation. In this respect, the main claim of typologists is
that, against the view of structuralist linguists like Joos, languages do not vary
randomly and without limits. As far as the number of compared languages is
concerned, the scope of typological studies is unlimited, i.e. panchronic. However, the
features analyzed in typological studies are generally very reduced: at a syntactic level,
they are mostly connected to sentential and phrasal word order.

(7) a. Tone (the possibility of using pitch for the expression of lexical and grammatical
meanings): tonal languages (Chinese, Vietnamese) vs non-tonal languages
(English, Spanish).
b. Affixes (presence / absence, and the kind of information encoded in them):
isolating languages, where there are no affixes or they are very limited (Chinese);
agglutinative languages, where affixes denote single categories and appear next to
each other with little or no phonological alternation (Turkish; Finnish);
inflectional languages, which use affixes that usually encode several grammatical
categories and present phonological alternations (Latin, but, to a much lesser
extent, also English and Spanish).
c. Position of the object relative to the verb: OV languages (German, Japanese) vs
VO languages (English, Spanish). As shown by language typologists, a number of
other traits are correlated with OV and VO order: in OV languages adpositions
follow their complements, and auxiliaries follow lexical verbs ([XP Adp], [VP
Aux]); in VO languages, adpositions precede their complements, and auxiliaries
precede lexical verbs ([Adp XP], [Aux VP]). These kinds of correlations, first
observed by Greenberg (1963) are usually known as implicational universals,
since they are often stated in the form of logical implications, i.e. ‘if a language
has property A, then it has property B.’

(D) II. Synchronic interlingual comparison: contrastive linguistics. The focus of

contrastive linguistics is the study of (generally) two languages synchronically with the
aim of discovering their similarities and especially their differences. The goal of
contrastive linguistics is to analyze, in the most fine-grained way, as many features of
variation in those two languages as possible. König (2012) refers to this property of
contrastive studies as “fine granularity”. An example of ‘fine granularity’ is shown in
(8) and (9) below and illustrated in (10) (König & Gast 2008: 195).

(8) a. Who did Charles think [that he saw <who> in our garden]?
b. The man [who Charles thought [that he saw <who> in our garden]] was my
brother.

(9) a. *Wen glaubte Karl, [dass er in unserem Garten <wen> sah]?

who thought Karl that he in our garden who saw
‘Who did Karl think that he saw in our garden?

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 Lingüística comparada: inglés-español
Topic 1
Prof. Gema Chocano

b. *Der Mann, [den Karl glaubte, [dass er in unserem Garten <den> sah]], war mein
the man who Karl thought that he in our garden who saw was my

Bruder.
brother
‘The man who Karl thought that he saw in the garden is my brother.’

(10)

(11) The ‘D approach.’

Synchronic
Interlingual I. Typological linguistics: II. Contrastive linguistics:
Many languages. Two (or three) languages.
A relatively small number of As many features as possible.
features.

2. Comparative syntax: Chomsky’s (1981 and subsequent work) “Principles and

Parameters” (P&P).

(12) One of the goals of linguistic theory is to develop a general theory of linguistic
structure that goes beyond simply describing the structures of individual languages (see
Chomsky (1957: 50)).

(13) Universal Grammar (UG): the innate set of grammatical principles which both
make human language possible and define a possible human language. Therefore, UG
embodies the essential invariant parts of the structure of language. UG has mental
reality in an aspect of the mind, the language faculty. UG is thus our theory of the
language faculty, the mental faculty which both facilitates and delimits the nature of
grammar.

(14) Parameters: associated with the invariant principles of UG there may be certain
innate limited options that remain open, to ‘be filled in’ by experience (the primary
linguistic data the child is exposed to). Options, i.e. parameters, are always binary
(‘either/or’ options). Not deciding is not an option, which means that the ‘either/or’
value of the parameter must be obligatorily set. Parameters may be able to define
clusters of covarying properties, i.e. clusters of properties dependent on each other.

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 Lingüística comparada: inglés-español
Topic 1
Prof. Gema Chocano

(15) P&P and historical comparative linguistics. Differences between the languages
coming from the same ancestor and the ancestor itself are due to changes in the setting
of specific parameters. Proto-Germanic, the common ancestor of Germanic languages,
is considered to be an OV language (Lehmann, 2007, among others). However, only
just few of its descendants (German, Dutch, Frisian, West Flemish, and
Luxembourgeois) remain so. If, as proposed in the P&P framework, OV and VO orders
are the manifestation of a parameter, VO in Germanic languages is the product of the
resetting of the OV/ VO parameter: OV is reset to VO.

(16) P&P and typological linguistics. The frequent observation in typological studies
that languages do not vary randomly or without limits is perfectly compatible with
the idea that languages share an innate set of invariant grammatical principles. On
the other hand, the mere existence of language types can be straightforwardly connected
to the P&P notion of parameter. Furthermore, if, as in most recent versions of the P&P
framework, parameters must be conceived of as clusters of properties, implicational
universals could be also accounted for.

(17) a. OV/ VO respectively correlate with [XP Adp], [VP Aux], and [Adp XP], [Aux
VP].
b. The Head Parameter: for all heads H, the structural complement of a head H
either precedes or follows H in overt order.

(18) P&P and contrastive linguistics. Comparison between two languages makes sense
only if we compare similar phenomena, features, etc.: we must compare English verbs
with Spanish verbs, English adjectives with Spanish adjectives, etc. In contrastive
linguistics this “background of sameness” (Ke, 2019: 32) has been traditionally been
known as tertium comparationis (TC), ‘the third element in comparison.’ (Discussion
based on Santorini & Kroch 2007).

(19) a. *Did Charles think [that he saw who in our garden]?

b. *Glaubte Karl, [dass er in unserem Garten wen sah]?

(20) a. *Who did Charles think [who that he saw who in our garden]?
b. *Wen glaubte Karl, [wen dass er in unserem Garten wen sah]?

(21) a. Who did Charles think [who that he saw who in our garden]?
b. * Wen glaubte Karl, [wen dass er in unserem Garten wen sah]?
c. * Wen glaubte Karl, [wen dass er in unserem Garten wen sah]?
d. Wen glaubte Karl, [wen dass er in unserem Garten wen sah]?

(22) a. * I’ve just met the man who that bought the Irish castle.
b. I’ve just met the man who bought the Irish castle.
c. I’ve just met the man that bought the Irish castle.

(23) He which that hath the shorteste shal biginne (Chaucer, CT, 8389.