English-Polish Contrastive Grammar

Introduction and basic concepts 1

What is Contrastive Grammar (aka Contrastive Linguistics):

CG is defined as a systematic comparison of at least (and usually) two (typologically
unrelated) languages so as to uncover their similarities and differences.

The conditions for language comparison: when can different languages be compared?
To carry out a contrastive analysis of two or more languages,
 descriptions of the languages to be compared must be available, and
 the descriptions on which the comparison will be made must be based on the same
model of language analysis (e.g. traditional, structural) to ensure methodological
consistency.

What aspects of language can be compared?

A complete contrastive description of two (or more) languages should include all the levels of
language analysis that fall under the notion ‘grammar.’
What is grammar (generally speaking)?
 the set of rules that underlie the production and interpretation of sentences of a
language.
On this view, a contrastive grammar must be concerned with all the rule-governed
components of the compared languages:
 phonology,
 rule-governed word derivation (morphology),
 syntax,
 semantics.
Does this does not mean that CG is microlinguistic in nature and that only the aspects internal
to the linguistic system can or should be compared?
No, in fact, there have been various comparisons of the pragmatic, sociolinguistic and socio-
cultural aspects of language (macrolinguistic contrastive studies).

Phonology
A contrastive analysis of the phonology of two languages involves comparing their phoneme
inventories, the sets of allophonic rules and restrictions on phoneme (co-)occurrence (i.e. so-
called phonotactic restrictions).
Consonants
 English inventory (24 phonemic consonants):
LABIAL DENTAL ALVEOLAR POST- PALATAL VELAR GLOTTAL
-ALVEOLAR
stops/affricates p t ͡ tʃ k
b d d͡ʒ ɡ
fricatives f θ s ʃ h
v ð z ʒ
nasals m n ŋ
liquids lr
glides w j

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  Polish (28 or more (the number of phonemes depends on the analysis))
LABIAL DENTAL ALVEOLAR ALVEOLO- PALATAL VELAR
-PALATAL
stops/affricates p t ͡ ts ͡ tʃ ͡ tɕ k
b d dz ͡ ͡
dʒ d͡ʑ ɡ
fricatives f s ʃ ɕ x
v z ʒ ʑ
nasals m n ɲ
liquids lr
glides w j
NOTE: Phonetically, palatalized versions of some of these consonants exist, namely
[pj bj fj vj mj] as well as three palatal consonants [c ɟ ç]; their phonemic status is
controversial.
On the one hand, there seem to exist (near) minimal pairs like:
/bada/ : /bjada/
/vata/ : /vjata/
/mawɨ/ : /mjawɨ/
This suggests that palatalization is a phonemic feature in these consonants. On the
other hand, the word on the right in each pair could be analyzed as having a glide
before the vowel, e.g.:
/bjjada/
and this is actually the direction in which the pronunciation of these sequences is
evolving in contemporary Polish. In this analysis, palatalization would be considered
to be allophonic, triggered by the presence of the following glide. Other palatalized
consonants (e.g. tj dj) are purely allophonic.
Systemic differences that may result in substitution:
 lack of /θ ð/ in Polish => often substituted with /t d/, /s z/ or even /f v/:
e.g. through *[tru sru fru] for [θruː]
this *[dis zis vis] for [ðɪs]
cf. also adaptation of borrowings: thriller [trjilɛr], Smith [smjit] ~ [smjis] ~ [smjif]
 Polish dental /t̪ d̪ s̪ z̪ n̪/ vs. English alveolar /t d s z n/
 Polish alveolar /t͡ʃ d͡ʒ ʃ ʒ/ and alveolo-palatal /t͡ɕ d͡ʑ ɕ ʑ/ vs. English post-alveolar /t͡ʃ d͡ʒ
ʃ ʒ/
(the differences here are both in terms of where the tongue touches the roof of the
mouth and what shape the tongue assumes)
 Polish velar /x/ vs. English glottal /h/
Differences in allophonic rules. Selected examples:
English aspiration:
 unless preceded by /s/, English /p t k/ are aspirated syllable-initially before a stressed
vowel as well as word-initially, i.e. [ph th kh], whereas there is no aspiration in Polish.
This causes overuse of the non-aspirated variants by Polish learners.

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Word-final obstruent devoicing:
 word final obstruents are fully devoiced in Polish, but they are only partially devoiced
in English, i.e. in English the contrast between the two series is maintained, whereas in
Polish it is neutralized, e.g. P: kot, kod [kɔt] vs. E: cot [kɒt] : cod [kɒd̥]
Voicing assimilations in consonant clusters in Polish
 regressive devoicing as in krowa [krɔva] > krówka [krufka] leads to mispronunciations
such as e.g. handful *[hɛntful] for [hændful], ragtime *[raktajm] for [ræɡtaɪm]
 regressive voicing as in prosić [prɔɕit͡ɕ] > prośba [prɔʑba] leads to mispronunciations
such as e.g. disgrace *[dɨzɡrɛjs] for [dɪsɡreɪs], matchbox *[mɛd͡ʒbɔks] for [mæt͡ʃbɒks]
Vowels
Inventories
English (RP) vs. Standard Polish
12 monophthongs (5 long + 7 short) 6 monophthongs (no length contrast)

+ 8 diphthongsː aɪ aʊ eɪ əʊ ɪə ʊə eə ɔɪ + 2 nasal diphthongs /ɛw͂/ and /ɔw͂/

NOTE: True nasal vowels (as those in French tain /tɛ͂/ ‘silvering’ or ton /tɔ͂/ ‘tone’) are
not attested in Polish and these are better analysed as [ɛ ɔ] followed by a nasalized
labial glide [w͂], as in tężec [tɛw͂ʒɛt͡s], wąs [vɔw͂s]. Furthermore the former may be
realised with a nasalized palatal glide in front of an alveolo-palatal consonant, as in gęś
[gɛj͂ ɕ]. Finally, in many positions orthographic <ą ę> are realised as sequences of [ɛ ɔ]
followed by a nasal or – in the word-final position – as [ɛ] and [ɔw] respectively, cf.
kędy [kɛndɨ], kędzior [kɛɲd͡ʑɔr], rękę [rɛŋkɛ], kąt [kɔnt], kącie [kɔɲt͡ɕɛ], mąką
[mɔŋkɔw].
Some systemic differences which tend to cause substitutions:
 usually the number of vowels in a given area of vowel space is greater in English than
in Polish, which results in neutralization of vowel contrasts towards the closest Polish
vowel; the typical mappings are:
E /uː ʊ/ → P /u/
E /æ ʌ ɑː/ → P /a/
E /e æ ɜː/ → P /ɛ/
E /ɔː ɒ/ → P /ɔ/
 while each language has two high unrounded vowels, i.e. P /i ɨ/ vs. E /iː ɪ/, both
English vowels are usually merged as [i] by Polish learners (as in the pronunciation of
hit); however, occasionally E /ɪ/ is substituted by P /ɨ/ in borrowing adaptation, as in
pronunciations like Smith [smɨs])
 no vowel length contrasts in Polish leads to vowel length often being disregarded by
Polish learners.

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Phonotactics
Example 1. Different distribution of [ŋ]
 Polish [ŋ] is an allophone of /n/ occurring only before velars (sometimes as a free
variant of [n] itself): stęka [stɛŋka], wstęga [fstɛŋɡa], spinka [spiŋka ~ spinka], bank
[baŋk ~ bank], bingo [biŋɡɔ ~ binɡɔ], ring [riŋk ~ rink]
 English /ŋ/ and /n/ are separate phonemes; /ŋ/ only occurs morpheme medially before
velars and morpheme finally; this leads to mispronunciations like king *[kɪnk ~ kɪŋk]
for [kɪŋ], singer *[sinɡɛr ~ siŋɡer] for [sɪŋə]
Example 2. Consonant clusters
 with the sole exception of /ʃr/ (as in shred), a word-initial consonant cluster of the
C1C2(C3) form cannot contain /ʃ/ in C1 in English native vocabulary,
 no such restriction is found in Polish, e.g.:
English *shpring, *Shprite, *shtake, *shpeak, etc.
Polish szczotka, szprotka, szkło, etc.
NOTE: There do exist words in English like: schlock, Schleswig, schwa, Schweppes,
schnook, Schnapps, schmuck, Schmalz, but all of them are (partly) unadapted loanwords
from German or Yiddish.
Stress
 word stress is typically fixed on the penultimate syllable in Polish,
 in English, it is potentially potentially free.
This often leads to mistakes that Poles make speaking English:
 stress shift to the penult: e.g. Canada *[kəˈnædə] for [kænədə]
 occasional hypercorrection: e.g. computer *[ˈkɒmpjuːtə] for [kəmˈpjuːtə]

Syllable structure. Main differences:

 Polish syllable is weight-insensitive in the sense that it does not have long vowels and
its diphthongs reduce to vowels in word-final positions, e.g. piszę,
 Polish does not have syllabic consonants (as in English bottle); as a result it has
unusually complex consonant clusters in all word positions, which may cause present
problems to syllabification , e.g. tratwa:

[pstr] pstry
[krw] krwawy
[rstw] warstwa
[ntrk] mędrkować
[mpstf] przestępstwo

Syntax
A comparison of languages at the syntactic level aims at finding out:
 if the languages in question have the same lexical and syntactic categories (i.e. classes
of lexical items and types of phrases and clauses)
 if they have the same syntactic rules
 if there are differences, the aim is to find out what the differences consist in.

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Lexical and syntactic categories
The inventory of lexical categories (and the syntactic categories that these lexical categories
are heads of) largely coincides in English and Polish, both languages having Ns/NPs, Vs/VPs,
As/APs, Ps/PPs, etc.
However,
 Polish, unlike English, does not have particles that combine with the verb, but are not
part of the verbal lexeme’s stem, e.g. Put the phone down / Put down the phone.
Syntactic rules
English and Polish share a fair number of syntactic rules, including rules for building
declarative, imperative and interrogative sentences, but there are also differences.
Selected examples
Yes/No questions
 English has subject-auxiliary inversion in yes/no questions
 Polish uses a question particle (czy) and not inverted constituent order to form
interrogative yes/no sentences:

(1) Does your fiancée like pizza?

(2) Czy twoja narzeczona lubi pizzę?

Does this mean that the structure shown in (2) is not available in English at all?
 no, the syntax illustrated in (2) is found in English yes/no interrogative clauses, but
only in embedded contexts, in which there is no subject-auxiliary inversion, as
illustrated in (3) below:

(3) I want to know whether your fiancée likes pizza. (cf. * I want to know whether
does your fiancée like pizza; Chcę się dowiedzieć, czy twoja narzeczona lubi
pizzę.)

What this shows is that even if languages share a certain type of syntactic structure, the rules
deriving the structure can work differently in them:
 in English, an embedded yes/no interrogative clause is derived with the help of an
interrogative complementizer (the word whether)), but not a main yes/no interrogative
sentence, which is derived via inversion,
 in Polish, there is no difference between main and embedded interrogatives: neither
type of yes/no interrogative clauses is derived via inversion.
Relative clauses
 in English relative clauses, the relative pronoun can be omitted under certain
conditions,
 in Polish, on the other hand, a relative pronoun is an obligatory element of a relative
clause regardless of the details of relative clause structure:

(4) The men (that) Tom saw yesterday spoke Chinese.

(5) Mężczyźni, *(których) Tom widział wczoraj, mówili po chińsku.

Passivization
Another example is the rule that forms passive sentences. Although passive is analytical in
both English and Polish, a passive participle combining with a dedicated passive auxiliary,
and it typically involves transitive (dynamic) verbs, there are still differences e.g. in the type
of internal argument of a verb that can become the subject of a corresponding passive
sentence:

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 (6) They showed John two pictures.
(7) John was shown two pictures.
(8) Oni pokazali Janowi dwa obrazki.
(9) *Jan został pokazany dwa obrazki.

 as (6) shows in contrast to (9), in English, an indirect object can become the subject of
a passive sentence, whereas in Polish, it cannot.
Semantics. Comparing the lexical resources (contrastive lexicography and contrastive lexical
semantics studies)
Contrastive lexicography
 compares and contrasts the ways in which similar ideas or concepts are expressed,
 has a rich literature,
 usually aims at finding out whether the lexical items that express the same ideas in the
two languages have the same lexical meanings or not.
English vs. Polish: example
As the table below shows, one word in one language may have two or more senses, each
rendered with a separate word in the other language:

Lexical fields
Languages can be compared at the semantic level also:
 to find out whether the same concepts are lexicalized,
 and whether the lexical fields are structured in the same way.
Example: the field of kinship terms
 English and Polish have words that belong to this field that are the same, but there are
also differences:

The data above show that:

 the lexical field of kinship terms is organized with respect to the types of family
relationships and with respect to sex distinctions,

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  within a given family relationship, e.g. immediate ancestor (parent), a further
distinction is made to encode differences in sex,
 differences in sex can be captured with the feature [female], e.g. father and mother
differ in meaning only in that father encodes the feature [−female] while mother
encodes the feature [+female],
 there is a high degree of similarity between the English and Polish fields of kinship
terms, but there are also differences.
 cousin is [female] in English, but in Polish, kuzyn is [−female] while kuzynka is
[+female], which means that unlike in Polish, the concept ‘the child of one’s uncle or
aunt’ is lexicalized with a single lexical item in English, which does not encode the
sex difference.
But:
 compared with English and Polish, Dutch does not map the concepts of ‘nephew’ and
‘cousin’ onto distinct words:
English Dutch
cousin (male) cousin (female) neef (male) nicht (female)
nephew (male) niece (female) neef (male) nicht (female)

ContrastiveMacrolinguistics
 The syntactic, semantic and phonological components of language analysis dominated
early Contrastive Linguistics, especially in the 1950s-1970s.
 Later, contrastive studies became increasingly concerned with what Carl James (1980:
98ff) calls macrolinguistic aspects, i.e. issues that relate to the properties and
organization of language in discourse and within texts, i.e. above the level of the
sentence.
 Macrolinguistic contrastive studies are concerned with, for example, the question of
how particular speech acts (e.g. complaining, apologizing, requesting etc.) are
expressed in the compared languages, and how politeness conventions determine the
choice of language in distinct communicative settings/discourses.
Example. Forms of address used in formal letters/communication:
English Polish
Dear Mr. Kowalski, *Drogi/Szanowny Panie Kowalski,
*Dear Mister, *Drogi Panie,
Dear Sir, Szanowny Panie,
Dear Doctor/Professor Jones Szanowny Panie Doktorze/Profesorze
Dear Doctor/Professor Szanowny Panie Doktorze/Profesorze Kowalski

Don’t address your mails to your (university) teachers using:

*Dear Professor/Doctor
Use Dear Professor Kowalski/Dear Doctor Kowalski instead
Comparability
Equivalence
 an issue of fundamental importance in contrastive studies in we can compare and
contrast languages as long as they have (some) linguistic means for the expression of
similar meanings,
 but the linguistic means need not be the same.
Example
 a language need not have a grammaticalized category of tense (e.g. Hopi, an
AmerIndian language; also Vietnamese and Thai), but this does not mean that it
cannot be compared with English or Polish or any other language with a

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 grammaticalized category of tense,
 although the verb form does not vary to encode the difference between
past/present/future, tenseless languages (i.e. languages that do not grammaticalize
tense distinctions on the verb) has numerous lexical means supporting the temporal
interpretation of sentences, including adverbials of time referring to
past/present/future, aspectual markers, etc.
To make possible comparing of languages whose linguistic means available for the
expression of some content can be quite different, most contrastive studies have used a
translation-based concept of equivalence to establish cross-linguistic relationships.
According to James (1980: 178):
… translation equivalence … is the best available TC [Tertium Comparationis] for CA
[Contrastive Analysis].
In other words, a cross-linguistic relationship can be established as long as the compared
languages offer ways for the linguistic expression of the same or very similar meanings:

 Equivalent linguistic expressions are expressions which are mutually translatable.

Congruence
Equivalent expressions (phrases, clauses and sentences) are also congruent if they are
formally (morphosyntactically) identical, i.e. if they have the same structural analysis (and
differ only at the lexical level).
In other words, for two sentences to be congruent, they must have the same grammatical
formatives in the same order. In still other words, two sentences in the compared languages,
L1 and L2, are congruent if they have a common syntactic representation and the only
difference is in the lexical items that lexicalize the particular nodes in the syntactic tree.
Example
 English John loves Mary has a congruent counterpart in Jan kocha Marię, but Marysię
kocha Jan is not a congruent counterpart of John loves Mary. Also Ten film mi się
podobał and I liked this film are equivalent, but they are not congruent. Also John
loves Mary and Jan Marię kocha are not congruent.
Could the sentences in (10) and (11) be considered congruent?

(10) John bought a car.

(11) Jan kupił samochód.

As Polish does not have a lexical (in)definite determiner co-occurring with a singular count
noun, unlike English, the answer actually depends on the representations that we postulate for
nominal structures in English and Polish. If the analysis of a car is as in (12) or (13), and its
counterpart, samochód in (11), is analysed as in (14), (10) and (11) are not congruent, because
there is no D in the structure of the NP samochód in (11), but there is an item of the category
D in English, whether the structure is as in (12) or in (13):

(12) [DP [D a] [NP[N car]]]

(13) [NP [D a] [N car]]
(14) [NP [N samochód]]

On the other hand, if it is correct to analyse the structure of English and Polish NPs in the
same way, e.g. as in (15) or (16), and to claim that Polish has zero-articles encoding
definiteness as well as indefiniteness, the structure of the Polish NP and of the English NP
does not differ and (10) and (11) can be considered congruent. In particular, the formatives,
i.e. categories, are the same and they come in the same order in the noun phrase, the only
difference being that although Polish represents the category D in the syntax, the morphology

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does not ‘spell out’ D with any phonetic material, i.e. that it zero-realizes D:

(15) [DP [D Ø] [NP[N samochód]]]

(16) [NP [D Ø] [N samochód]]

Which of the logical possibilities given above is the correct analysis in Polish (and English) is
a question for the Contrastive Grammar of English and Polish to resolve.
To the extent that comparing languages so that we do not take a language-particular, or as
some call it, a parochial perspective on the language we analyse, can provide us with
important insights into the architecture of its grammar, language comparison is very well-
motivated.

Contrasts
At each of the levels of analysis, the contrasts uncovered are further sub-classified. For
example, syntactic contrasts, responsible for lack of congruence between the structures of L1
and L2, can be sub-classified as follows:

Type of contrast Example

Structural: when one language has a syntactic
In English, all finite clauses have a subject,
structure which cannot be generated in the e.g. He arrived late, It is early.
other language. In Polish, some finite clauses do not have a
(silent) subject, e.g. Jest wcześnie (cf. *To jest
wcześnie).
Polish has an impersonal construction like
Ucięło mu nogę ‘His leg was cut off./He had
his leg cut off.’
The meaning that the Polish sentence
expresses can be expressed with a passive or
causative structure in English, but not with an
active sentence without a subject (and thus
English does not have impersonal
constructions that Polish licenses).
Categorial: when corresponding elements of She looks [Adj/AdjP beautiful] vs. Ona wyglada
equivalent sentences in the two languages [Adv/AdvP pięknie].
have a different grammatical category.
Functional: when corresponding elements of She has lost her purse vs. Zginęła jej
equivalent sentences in the two languages portmonetka: the constituent that encodes the
have a different syntactic function. person losing something in the event is
encoded with she in English. This constituent
has the syntactic function of the subject in
English. Its Polish cognate jej has the syntactic
function of an object in the Polish equivalent.

Exercises

1. Identify the type or types of contrast (if any) in the pairs below and explain briefly the
reasons why the contrast you identify should be so classified:
1. a. I am nauseated.
b. Jest mi niedobrze.
2. a. Jack cut the bread with a knife.
b. Jacek pokroił chleb nożem.

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 3. a. They are looking for a doctor.
b. Oni szukają lekarza.
4. a. That coat was bought by Mary.
b. Ten płaszcz kupiła Maria.

References:
James, C. 1980. Contrastive Analysis. Longman.
Sussex, R., P. Cubberley. 2006. The Slavonic Languages. Cambridge University Press.
Background reading:
Willim, E., E. Mańczak-Wohlfeld. 1997. A Contrastive Approach to Problems in E&P.
Chapter 1, pp 13-16.
Fisiak, J. et al. 1976. An Introductory English-Polish Contrastive Grammar. pp 21-36.
Brown, K. 2006. Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. [see: Microvariation, Syntactic
variation, etc.]
Swan, O. 2002. A Grammar of Contemporary Polish. Bloomington: Slavica Publishers.

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