The Place

Of Contrasive Analysis
In Linguistics
Group 1
 01
“Where CA is located in the
field of linguistics?”
Answering the question
 "Linguist" can refer either to a person who is
professionally engaged in the study and teaching of
one or more languages or is interested in language
families, history and universality and relationship.
 02
Linguists are classified into
three dimensions
Done by following different approaches
 The first dimension
The particularists the generalists

Particularists Generalists
Tend to study language in isolation. Interested in studying
languages in groups.
 — So is CA the particularists or the
generalists?

Contrastive analysis is neither generalist nor

particularist, but somewhere intermediate on a scale
between the two extremes
 The second dimension
The way of studying languages

Isolation Comparative
Studying the properties of a language away Studying languages with
from other languages. comparison to each other.
 — Linguistic typology

For example: in terms of synthetic, analytic, inflectional,

agglutinating and tone languages and more…
 — So is CA concerned with
immanence or comparison?

It is not concerned with classification, and, as the term

'contrastive' implies, more interested in differences between
languages than in their likeness.
 The third dimension
Diachronic and synchronic

Synchronic Diachronic
The study of one language (one aspect The study of one language (or
of a language) in just one specific one aspect of a language) at
point of its history. different times of its history
 — So is CA diachronic or synchronic?

The term "diachronic" refers to change in the human

individual or with ontology, as in the study of infant
language acquisition
 To sum up
There are so many definitions,even though
they are not clear-cut
03
 1
CA is a linguistic enterprise aimed at producing inverted (ie. contrastive, not
comparative) two-valued typologies (a CA is always concerned with a pair of
languages), and founded on the assumption that languages can be compared.

2
CA is a branch of applied linguistics that is concerned with studying and finding the similarities and
differences between a pair of languages or more based on the assumption that languages can be
compared then applying these findings to the area of teaching and learning languages.
 Our team

Nguyễn Thanh Hiền Nguyễn Thanh Hiền Nguyễn Thùy Linh

Nguyễn Thục Chi Nguyễn Thị Kiều Hiếu Lã Phương Chi