What is contrastive analysis in linguistics?

Contrastive analysis in linguistics is a method used to compare two or more languages to identify their similarities and differences, particularly in terms of their structure, grammar, phonology, or vocabulary. This approach is often used in second language acquisition (SLA) research to understand how learners’ first language (L1) may influence their learning of a second language (L2). The assumption behind contrastive analysis is that the areas where the two languages differ might cause difficulties for learners, leading to potential errors, while areas of similarity might be easier for them.

There are two main forms of contrastive analysis:

Traditional Contrastive Analysis: This involves systematically comparing languages based on their linguistic structures and predicting potential areas of difficulty for language learners. It was especially popular in the 1950s and 1960s as part of behaviorist learning theories.

Error Analysis: Later developments showed that contrastive analysis alone couldn’t account for all learner errors. This led to a focus on studying actual learner errors to understand the learning process better.

Overall, contrastive analysis helps to highlight the role of L1 transfer in learning an L2 and is still used in areas like language teaching, translation, and computational linguistics.