Contrastive analysis

The brief history of contrastive

analysis
• USA: 1950s -> books of comparison of languages, bilingualism

• 1953: Haugen
• 1957: Robert Lado-Linguistics Across Cultures -> the beginning
of contrastive analysis
• 1957: Chomsky-Syntactic Structures
• 1951, 1961: Lado’s Performance Tests

• 1959: Charles A. Ferguson-Contrastive Studies Series

Study of bilingualism (Haugen)

• The mother tongue and the foreign language influence each

other in a different degree
Some definitions (Weinreich)
• BILINGUALISM: „ The practice of using two languages”

• BILINGUAL: „The persons involved”

• INTERFERENCE: „Deviation from the norms of either language
which occur in the speech of bilinguals as a result of their
familiarity with more than one language, e.g. phonetic system,
morphology, syntax and vocabulary.”
Differences between bilinguals
and foreign language learners
(Weinreich)
• In a bilingual speech many lexical items go from one language
to the other:
• Pista, ki ne ranolj a fjuelből! Inkább állj meg! (English lexical
items to the Hungarian)
Lado
• Language learners have to face with new usage during
learning a foreign language
• Children neglect those language phenomena that are absent
from their mother tongue
• There are blind spots in their semantic map

• These factors are very important in effective language

teaching
Lado
• With the comparison of languages and cultures we can predict
those phenomena that cause problems and those which are
not problematic during language learning
• Grammatical structures->habitual
• We make structures habits->e.g. when children speak they
seldom pay attention to the grammar
• During the usage of a foreign language this habit dominates
Receptive and productive
activities
• When a language learner reads or listens to the foreign
language he tries to find the equivalent grammatical form from
his mother tongue
• When he writes or speaks, he choses meanings and produces
language structures that have similar meanings in his mother
tongue

• Lado: Theoretical Comparative Analysis

 Bibliography
• Dr. Budai,László.  Az Anyanyelv Változó Szerepe Az
Idegennyelv-oktatásban. Budapest: Nemzeti Tankönyvkiadó
Zrt., 2010.