2.2 The place and role of contrastive analysis in linguistics

Contrastive analysis is a linguistic branch whose main aim is to help the analyst to ascertain in which aspects the two languages are alike and in which they differ. It includes two main processes – description and comparison set up in four basic steps: a) assembling the data, b) formulating the description, c) supplementing the data as required, and d) formulating the contrasts.

CA grew as the result of the practical demands of language teaching methodology where it was empirically shown that the errors which are made recurrently by foreign language students can be often traced back to the differences in structure between the target language and the language of the learner. This naturally implies the necessity of a detailed comparison of the structure of a native and a target language which has been named contrastive analysis.

It should be borne in mind that though objective reality exists outside human beings and irrespective of the language they speak every language classifies reality in its own way by means of vocabulary units.

The central theoretical issue and the ultimate goal of contrastive studies is the question of establishing similarities and differences and, consequently, their quantification. Chesterman (1998), in addressing this issue, makes a useful distinction between ‘similarity-as-trigger’, defining it as “the notion of a particular relation existing between entities in the world, a relation that impinges upon human perception, from matter to mind” and ‘similarity-as-attribution’, which goes in the opposite direction, from mind to matter. It is essentially a subjective, cognitive process that perceives two entities as being similar. Similarity judgements, in turn, “are (…) ways of organizing and clarifying one’s mental representations of

the world” . They are also bound to be relative, variable and culture dependent.

Contrastive analysis also brings to light what can be labelled problem pairs, the words that denote two entities in one language and correspond to two different words in another language.

Contrastive analysis brings to light the essence of what is usually described as idiomatic English, idiomatic Ukrainianthe peculiar way in which every language combines and structures in lexical units various concepts to denote extra-linguistic reality.

СA deals with the meaning and use of situational verbal units, words, word-groups, sentences which are commonly used by native speakers in certain situations.

Сontrastive analysis cannot be overestimated as an indispensable stage in preparation of teaching material, in selecting lexical items to be extensively practiced and in predicting typical errors. It is also of great value for an efficient teacher who knows that to have a native like command of a foreign language, to be able to speak what we call idiomatic English, words, word-groups and whole sentences must be learned within the lexical, grammatical and situational restrictions of the English language.