READING TASK ESTUDIOS CONTRASTIVOS INGLÉS-ESPAÑOL 2010-11

STUDENT NAME: Martínez Pérez, Mónica

GUIDED READING (chapters 1-3)

The paper by Hymes is a milestone in modern linguistic research, Selinker’s is crucial in the
discipline of foreign language learning and focuses on the topic from a learning perspective,
Halliday’s puts forward for the first time the main outline of Systemic-Functional Grammar, one
of the most widely known schools of language description today and Altenberg and Granger´s
contribution give us an excellent overview of the state-of-the-art in Contrastive Lexicology.
Read the papers carefully, making sure you understand the ideas in each paragraph. The
following questions should help you extract essential information from these readings.

Hymes, D.H. 1972: “On communicative competence”. J. Pride & J. Holmes (eds)
Sociolinguistics. Harmondsworth: Penguin. 207-242.

1. What are the two possible views of competency that Hymes suggests?

As opposed to Chomsky’s linguistic competence, Hymes provides us with what he calls

communicative competence. He argues that ignoring the effect of sociocultural features has on
speakers of a language isa very hard task to undertake, since all the knowledge we have on
language, we have gotten from experience, i.e. its use.
Hymes undertook ethnographic exploration of communicative competence that included
communicative form and function in relation to each other.

2. What are the two factors on which competence depends, according to Hymes? Explain
briefly.

3. Define the concept of interference and give at least one example.

The problems that might arise when interpreting manifestations of one system in terms of
another.
A clear example of something similar could be the South American variant of Spanish, in formal
speech, the form ‘usted’ is the equivalent in Castilian of ‘tú’, but a native speaker of Castilian,
would not help but hear ‘usted’ and immediately think they were being treated very formally.

4. In which ways is communicative competence relevant for CA?

Selinker, L. 1972: “Interlanguage”. D. Nehls (ed.) Interlanguage Studies. Heidelberg: Julius

Groos. 11-34.

5. What do you think is the main goal of the paper?

To define and explain what exactly happens in the brain of a FL learner, why some mistakes are
difficult or impossible to eradicate, and how, our MT structures are so ingrained in our minds, we
cannot help but reccur to them when producing new items in the TL.
READING TASK ESTUDIOS CONTRASTIVOS INGLÉS-ESPAÑOL 2010-11

STUDENT NAME: Martínez Pérez, Mónica

6. Define: Interlanguage, Fossilization

Interlanguage is the kind of language produced by second language learners and foreign
language learners, who are in the process of acquiring a new TL.
It could be regarded as a state of language between the MT and the TL, that is characterized for
its recurrent borrowings from the MT patterns, and the repeating of structures that are well
known in the TL falling thus into repetitive and poor language skills in the TL.
Interlanguage is a process formed by a series of attempts (more or less succesful) and mistakes
in the TL, that, with time and effort, would lead to an expert mastering of the TL.

Fossilization is a phenomenon characterized by the unconscious keeping of certain structures

belonging to the MT, that are shifted are random into the IL of the speaker, even if they are
aware of the correct form/structure in the TL.
Fossilizable items are latent in the brain of the IL speaker, and reappear in different situations,
especially in those where the speaker´s attention is not completely focused upon the
conversation, also in a stressing situation, or being exposed to a linguistic environment
unfamiliar to them.
At some point, our IL knowledge fossilizes, the level of achievement in certain areas stops at
some point, and stops gathering new information, especially related to grammar.
7. In which way(s) is interlanguage important for CA?
Interlanguage is very useful when it comes to CA, since it helps us understand the relationships
between the structures of the two languages, in our case between Spanish and English.
If a native speaker of English produces the utterance “Yo ser contento” we can readily see that
the problem with their utterance is, firstly, that Spanish has two verbs (‘ser’ and ‘estar’) to mean
both ‘to be’ in English. And, secondly, that English lacks verb conjugation, so the English
speaker might as easily get rid of the conjugated form he does not recognize as being
necessary.
It is a powerful tool to help us be more aware of the differences between the two languages, and
it is interesting for it shows us what would be the ‘instinctive’ equivalents for the TL (be it
Spanish or English) when learners produce speech units.
Halliday, M.A.K. 1970: “Language Structure and Language Function”. J. Lyons (ed.) New
Horizons in Linguistics. Harmondsworth: Penguin. 140-165.

8. Halliday defines grammar as ‘a system of available options’. What does the speaker do
when using language?
When a speaker participates in language production, he/she makes choices. Every time
we utter a sentence or take part in an act of speech, what we do is we select from the
vast array of options available for us the one that is more suitable according to the
situation we are subject to. Very much like Chomsky’s idea of a baby learning their MT,
who turns switches on and off in his mind, depending on the specifics of his/her own
language, Halliday remarks that we do something similar when exposed to certain
READING TASK ESTUDIOS CONTRASTIVOS INGLÉS-ESPAÑOL 2010-11

STUDENT NAME: Martínez Pérez, Mónica

linguistic environments, where we are to make choices on what we want to express and
how we want to do so.

9. Briefly define the three main functions of language according to Halliday.

There are three major functions of language:

-The Ideational: It is that part of the linguistic system which is concerned with the expression of
‘content’, with the function that language has of being ABOUT something.
-The Interpersonal: It is the component that is concerned with the social, expressive and
conative functions of language, with expressing the speaker’s ‘angle’: his attitudes and
judgements, his encoding of the role relationships in the situation, and his motive in saying
anything at all.
-The Textual: It is the text-forming component of the linguistic system. This comprises the
resources that language has for creating text, in the same sense in which we have been using
the term all along: for being operationally relevant, andd cohering within itself and the context of
the situation

10. What is the basic unit of language from the perspective of use, according to Halliday?
Halliday regards the clause as being the basic unit of language, (GOOGLE!)
Altenberg, B. & Granger, S. 2002. “Recent trends in cross-linguistic lexical studies”. B.
Altenberg & S. Granger. Lexis in Contrast: Corpus-based Approaches. Amsterdam/
Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 3-48.

11. Briefly define comparable and translation corpora.

A comparable corpus selects similar texts in two languages if it is a bilingual corpus, and more
than two if it is a multilingual one, and matches them as accurately as possible, depending on
the type of text, subject matter and communicative function. These types of corpora can be
restricted to one specific domain, or be large ‘balanced’, providing a wide range of text types.
12. What do you understand by tertium comparationis?
Tertium comparationis is the quality that is shared by two things that are being compared with
one another. In order to compare two things, a sine qua non prerequisite is that these two things
have something in common, in the case of linguistic items, it could be the meaning (to a certain
extent), their function… two linguistic items from two different languages that are to be
compared will never be absolute equivalents, but the percentage of equivalence can be wider or
narrower.

13. Why is diverging polysemy more commonly studied than overlapping polysemy in
contrastive lexicology?
In the case of overlapping polysemy, items in two languages have roughly the same
meaning extensions, this is relatively uncommon as opposed to the frequent occurrence of
READING TASK ESTUDIOS CONTRASTIVOS INGLÉS-ESPAÑOL 2010-11

STUDENT NAME: Martínez Pérez, Mónica

diverging polysemy, so the latter is preferred. A consequence of diverging polysemy is that

words that are treated as translation equivalents in dictionaries, often have different
extensions, and therefore do not appear to be equivalents after consulting the corpora.

14. How can bilingual and multilingual dictionaries be improved?

Bilingual and multilingual dictionaries confection would be very much improved upon
with the use of corpora of various kinds. Corpora are a very useful tool in order to come
across accurate translation equivalents, and would reasonably improve the helpfulness
of the dictionary itself, and would as a result be a very successful instrument in
translation.

15. How can Contrastive Lexicology contribute to the improvement of MT and MAT?

Contrastive Lexicology can help improve both MT and MAT in as much as they both are in
serious need of data that can improve their effectiveness. Lexical databases that include
comprehensive description of syntactic and lexical items have proven most necessary if we
want MT and MAT to be precise and accurate tools for research.