7. Contrastive studies of languages
Any human language is characterized by three types of constitutional features: universal (pertaining to all or to the majority of languages), typological (characteristic only of a certain group of languages, creating a language type) and individual (found only in one language). To reveal the mentioned features is possible only with the help of comparison or contrasting (пор1вняння чи зютавлення).
The method of comparison or contrasting is not a new one and is employed as a major one by a number of linguistic disciplines, namely: the comparative-historic linguistics (пор1вняльно-юторичне мовознавство), studying the genetic kinship of languages in their
development; the areal linguistics (ареальна лшгвютика), dealing with languages of a particular geographic area despite their genetic relations with respect to their mutual influence of one language upon the other; the typological linguistics (типолопчна лшгвютика), which on the basis of studying similarities and differences within languages classifies languages according to certain types; and, finally, the contrastive linguistics (зютавне мовознавство чи контрастивна лшгастика). But the matter is that the contrastive linguistics has not yet found its final position within the system of linguistic disciplines. Debatable remain issues whether this discipline belongs to general or special linguistics, synchronic or diachronic one. To define the status of contrastive linguistics it seems expedient to clarify its connections with other mentioned linguistic disciplines.
The correlation of contrastive linguistics with comparative-historic linguistics is in the fact that both of them compare languages. Nevertheless the aim of such a comparison is different. The comparative-historic linguistics is oriented towards defining the degree of kinship, the common origin of languages, reconstructing the proto-language (the common linguistic parent or the language as a basis from which the related languages developed), as well as defining laws according to which this development followed. In its turn, the contrastive linguistics aims at revealing differences and similarities in language structures, in ways of expression the same meanings and in differentiating functions of one-type elements of a language structure.
Unlike contrastive linguistics the areal linguistics has as its task to characterize the territorial division of language peculiarities, to define the areas of language interaction, to research the processes of language convergence that is to give the territorial characteristics of language peculiarities of the languages being in contact on a certain territory [11; 15-16].
The principle of contrasting is just as well used by the two linguistic disciplines: contrastive typology and contrastive linguistics. Since contrastive linguistics employs a lot of data accumulated by typological linguistics, it is of interest to look closer at their correlation.
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Typology
as
a branch of linguistics aims at establishing similar general
linguistic categories serving as a basis for the classification of
languages of different types, irrespective of their genealogical
relationship.
Contrastive typology (CT) represents a linguistic subject of typology, based on the methods of comparison or contrasting. Like typology proper, CT also aims at establishing the most general structural types of languages on the bases of their dominant or common phonetic, morphological, lexical and syntactic features Apart from this the CT may equally treat dominant or common features only, as well as divergent features only, which are found both in languages of the same structural type (synthetic languages, analytical, etc.) as well as in languages of different structural types (synthetic and analytical, etc.). The object of contrastive typology may be bound with separate features and language units or phenomena pertained to both living and one or two dead languages. Consequently, the object of investigation may involve an extensive language area or the restricted object of investigation. Due to this there are distinguished several branches of contrastive typological investigation often referred to as separate typologies. The main of these typologies are the following:
Universal typology investigates all languages of the world and aims at singling out in them such phenomena, which are common in all languages. These features are referred to as absolute universals. Their identification is carried out not only on the basis of the existing living languages but also on the basis of dead languages like Sanskrit, ancient Greek or Latin.
Special typology, in contrast to universal typology, usually investigates concrete languages, one of which is, as a rule, the native tongue. The language in which the description of isomorphic and allomorphic features is performed is usually referred to as metalanguage. In our case the meta-language is English.
General typology has for its object of investigation the most general phonetic, morphological, lexical syntactic or stylistic features. At the same time the partial typology investigates a restricted number of language features, for example, the system of syntactic level units.
Contrastive typology as a branch of linguistics employs some terms and notions of its own. The principal and the most frequently occurring are the following ones:
Absolute universals (абсолютт або noBHi ушверсалп) i. e. features or phenomena of a language level pertaining (вщносно, у вщношенш) to any language of the world, e.g. vowels and consonants, word stress and utterance stress, intonation, sentences, parts of the sentence, parts of speech, etc.
Near universals (неповт або частков1 ушверсали) i. e. features or phenomena common in many or some languages under typological investigation.
- Typologically dominant features (типолопчш домшанти) are features or phenomena dominating at the language level or in the structure of some of the contrasted languages. Dominant in present- day English are known to be analytical means: rigid word order in word groups and sentences, the prominent role of prepositions and placement as means of connection and expression of case relations and syntactic functions (e.g. books for my friends and books by my friends). The change of placement of the part of the sentence may completely change its sense. Compare (cf.) The hunter killed the hare. - The hare killed the hunter. In Ukrainian the change of placement of the main parts of the sentence usually does not change the meaning of the sentence, as in the same sentence in Ukrainian: Мисливець застртив зайия. Зайця застришв мисливецъ. In Ukrainian everything is just on the contrary: case, gender and number categories are expressed by means of inflexions: 6pamoei книжки - братових кнцжок; вт cnieae, вона ствола, дитя ствало. Consequently, the dominant (and typical features) of a language predetermine its structural type as analytical, synthetic, agglutinative etc.
Isomorphic features ^зоморфш риси) are common features in languages under contrastive analysis. Isomorphic in English and Ukrainian are, for example, the categories of number, person, tense, as well as parts of speech, the existence of sentences etc.
Allomorphic features (аломорфш риси) are observed in one language and missing in the other, for example the gerund and analytical verb forms in English, which are missing in Ukrainian [10; 13-15, 17-19].
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