2211ENGL1415 Contrastive Linguistics (Eng-Vie) – Ms Hoa Ninh

WEEK 7

GRAMMATICAL CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS

 The big picture 1: How does the author structure Chapter 5? What might be the reasons for such a structure?

____________________________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________________________

I. The Concept of Grammar

 The big picture 2: What are the two different ways of defining ‘grammar’?
 The specific sense refers to a description of the morphological structure of a language and the way in which
linguistic units such as words and phrases are combined to produce sentences in the language. In this sense,
grammar is presented as just one branch of the overall structure of language, distinct from phonology and
semantics.
 The general sense of the term, as proposed by Noam Chomsky, covers all aspects of sentence patterning.
While introducing the term “syntax” as the more specific term for grammar in its traditional sense,
Chomsky’s framework of grammar includes phonology and semantics.
2211ENGL1415 Contrastive Linguistics (Eng-Vie) – Ms Hoa Ninh
II. The Contrastive Analysis of Inflectional Morphology

 The big picture 3: What are the three theoretical models for grammatical analysis that involve morphemes?
What are grammatical categories?
 Three models for grammatical analysis:
The American linguist Charles Hockett (1916–2000) (1954) proposes three theoretical models for grammatical
analysis:
(1) Item-and-process (IP), which stresses the process of variation and is hence regarded as a sort of generative
model.
(2) Item-and-arrangement (IA), which best suits the analysis of agglutinating languages, whose word forms may
be easily analyzed into a group of morphemes.
(3) Word-and-paradigm (WP), which applies most successfully in the analysis of inflectional languages, whose
word-forms may not be so easily analyzed into a group of morphemes (Xu, 1992, pp. 162–164).

 Grammatical categories:
2211ENGL1415 Contrastive Linguistics (Eng-Vie) – Ms Hoa Ninh

 A closer look:
1. What are eight types of inflectional morphemes in the English language?

Nouns Verbs Adjectives

1.Plural number 3. Third person singular 7. Comparative

2. Possessive case 4. Past tense 8. Superlative

- 5. Present participle -

- 6. Past participle -

2. Fill in the table with key points about each grammatical category.

Category Definition/Explanation/Example
1. Aspect Aspect indicates how the event described by a verb is viewed, such as whether the action
happens once or repeatedly, is completed or still continuing.
Example:
She sang. [action happening once]
She sings [action happening repeatedly (e.g. as a job)]
She has sung. [action completed]
She’s singing. [action continuing]

2. Case Case shows the grammatical functions of a noun or noun phrase (agency, possession, naming,
location, motion towards or from, etc.) in a sentence.
2.1. Nominative The nominative, which marks a noun or noun phrase as the subject of the verb, and which is
known in English as the “subjective case”.
2.2. Accusative The accusative, which marks a noun or noun phrase as the direct object of the verb.
2.3. Dative The dative, which marks a noun or noun phrase as the indirect object of the verb.
2.4. Genitive The genitive, which marks a noun or noun phrase as in a possessive relation with another noun
2211ENGL1415 Contrastive Linguistics (Eng-Vie) – Ms Hoa Ninh
or noun phrase.
2.5. Vocative The vocative, which marks a noun or noun phrase as being addressed.
2.6. Ablative The ablative, which marks a noun or noun phrase as being removed or directed from some
place or deprived of something, or indicating source, cause, agency, etc. It is the form of a
noun, pronoun, or adjective that you use in some languages when you are talking about who
something is done by, what something is done with, or where something comes from
(expressed by “by”, “with”, or “from” in English) (In classical Latin, this case is a
mingling of the original ablative, instrumental and most of the locative cases in Proto-Indo-
European.
3. Gender Gender, in some languages, is a grammatical distinction in which words such as nouns, articles,
adjectives, and pronouns are marked according to a distinction between masculine, feminine,
and sometimes neuter.
Example:
The French sentence Je suis arrivée, for example, tells us that a woman is speaking apart from
the information that she arrived either just now or sometime ago (Cf. Je suis arrivé).
Je suis arrivée => Speaker is a woman
Je suis arrivé => Speaker is a man
4. Mood Mood expresses the speaker’s or writer’s attitude to what is said or written.
Typical contrasts are made between the indicative (indicating factuality), the subjunctive
(indicating possibility or uncertainty, its use now being restricted to formulaic phrases or very
formal situations), and the imperative (expressing a command or exhortation).
Example:
The birds are singing. (indicative)
If I were you, I would take the gift. (subjunctive)
Do the exercises! (Imperative)
5. Number Number distinguishes nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc. according to whether they are singular or
plural, and countable or uncountable.

6. Person Person marks pronouns and, in most languages, corresponding verb forms, according to
whether the pronoun represents or includes the person or persons actually speaking or writing
(“first person”), whether the pronoun represents or includes the person or persons being
addressed (“second person”), and whether the pronoun represents someone or something
other than the speaker/writer or the listener/reader (“third person”).
7. Tense Tense indicates the relationship between the form of a verb and the time of the action or state
it describes. Typical contrasts are made between the present, the past (preterite), and the
future.
8. Voice Voice expresses the relationship between a verb and the noun phrase(s) which are associated
2211ENGL1415 Contrastive Linguistics (Eng-Vie) – Ms Hoa Ninh
with it. Typical contrasts are made between the active, the passive, the middle (reflexive) (a
form of the verb by which its subject is represented as both the agent (doer) and the recipient
(object) of the action, that is, as performing some act to or upon oneself, or for one’s own
advantage, e.g. the classical Greek didaskomai “I get myself taught”), and the causative.

III. Syntactic Contrastive Analysis

 The big picture 4: What are the three major approaches to syntactic contrastive analysis? Do they examine the
surface or deep structure?
 Three major approaches to CA are worthy of special attention; these are the Structural approach, the
Transformational Grammarian (TG) approach, and the Case Grammarian approach, the latter two being
known collectively as the Generative approach in combination with a few other approaches.
 Contrastive analysis based upon the structural approach is surface structure-oriented while contrastive
analysis based upon the generative approaches is deep structure-oriented.

 A closer look:
3. The Structural Approach (Surface-Structure Contrasts)
a. What is the name of the analytic technique employed in this approach?

The analytic technique developed by the structuralists is known as Immediate Constituent (IC) analysis.
2211ENGL1415 Contrastive Linguistics (Eng-Vie) – Ms Hoa Ninh
b. What does the concept of ‘distribution’ refer to? Give one example.

No reference is made to the meaning of a construction or the ICs

 Depends on distribution (what naturally “goes with” what)

For example, the phrase light house keeper is capable of two analyses (AB + C or A + BC) and the decision as to which
analysis is appropriate is determined by what goes with what.

c. What does the concept of ‘omissibility’ refer to? Give one example.

Analysis made based on the basis of omissibility: the property of being omissible without impairing the syntactic
acceptability of a sentence or clause.

The decision for rather nice girl, e.g. is made on the basis of omissibility: if I omit nice, I am left with the non-
construction rather girl, whereas omission of rather leaves the grammatical nice girl. In other words, the fact that
Adj + NP is a construction while Adv + NP is a non-construction in English.

d. What ‘formal devices’ can a contrastive analysis using the structural model examine?

To conduct a contrastive analysis on the structural model, we examine how the two languages being contrasted
employ these four devices. Usually languages show preferences for the use of some formal devices rather than
others―hence the distinction between the so-called “analytic” and “synthetic ” languages.

Also, we are likely to discover that L1 expresses a certain meaning by

one device, while L2 conveys the same meaning by another device.
Thus English uses function words called “articles” (the and a) to
signal the contrast between definite reference and indefinite
reference while Russian, like Chinese (cf. Sect. 1.1 “What is
Contrastive Linguistics?”), achieves the same contrast through word order.
2211ENGL1415 Contrastive Linguistics (Eng-Vie) – Ms Hoa Ninh
e. Where does the weakness of the structural approach lie?

1) She is a beautiful dancer.

2) The clever boy missed the prize.

3) John is easy to please.

4) John is eager to please.

 Distribution (identity of position) is no guarantee of identity of function => Cannot resolve ambiguity =>
Weakness of the Structural Approach
 Relative position of linguistic items => Surface structure
 Functional relations between constituents => Deep structure
4. The Generative Approaches (Deep-Structure Contrasts)
a. What is the goal of generative grammars?

b. How does Transformational Grammar (TG) define the term ‘grammar’?

 Transformational Grammar applies the term “grammar” in its broadest sense, assigning to it all aspects of
sentence patterning, including not only syntax but phonology and semantics as well.
 Grammar is defined in TG as a mechanism that generates all and only grammatical sentences of a
language. By “mechanism” is meant a set of rules. By “generate” is meant the specification of the
grammaticality of an unlimited number of sentences of a language and the accurate description of the
internal structure of these sentences
2211ENGL1415 Contrastive Linguistics (Eng-Vie) – Ms Hoa Ninh
c. Examine Fig. 5.6 on p. 122 and read section 5.3.3.1. Briefly explain the figure based on what you
have read.
2211ENGL1415 Contrastive Linguistics (Eng-Vie) – Ms Hoa Ninh

d. Read sample contrastive analysis of adjective shifting on pp. 123-124. How does it relate to the
Vietnamese language?

____________________________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________________________

e. What does a contrastive analysis using the TG approach attempt to do (p. 125)?
(1) Explicitness of its methodology. One reason for using Transformational Grammar in contrastive analysis is
the same as that for using it in unilingual description―its explicitness. For each step in deriving surface
structures from the deep structures, an explicit rule must be formulated.
(2) Universality of its basic theoretical constructs. It has been claimed that:
a) Deep structures are universal: common point of departure for CA
b) The transformations applied to deep structures are taken from a universal stock
(3) Providing identical means for resolving syntactic ambiguities in different languages. An added bonus of TG
is that it provides the languages being contrasted with identical means for explaining in an explicit fashion
the nature of sentential ambiguities.
(4) Providing a measure of the degree of difference between L1 and L2 constructions. The TG approach
provides the contrastive analyst with some means of measuring the degree of difference between compared
constructions in L1 and L2.
 Structural approach to CA => surface-structural correspondence
 TG approach to CA => correspondence between transformational rules
2211ENGL1415 Contrastive Linguistics (Eng-Vie) – Ms Hoa Ninh
f. What branch of linguistics is Case Grammar (CG) based on?

TG => more transformational rules => more complicated grammar

“Deep structure” was believed to be not deep enough

 Semantics-based models for grammatical analysis developed (1960s)

 CASE Grammar: focus on the semantic roles of the elements of a sentence.
g. What is the premise of CG?

According to Chomsky (1965, p. 28), the theory of semantic universals “… might assert that each language will
contain terms that designate persons or lexical items referring to certain specific kinds of objects, feelings, behavior,
and so on.” The linguist credited with having developed the theory of a universal semantic base of languages is
Fillmore, and his model is known as Case Grammar (Fillmore, 1968). Case grammar aimed to describe the ubiquitous
semantic relationships in languages.

 Case Grammar is a theory of syntax and semantics in which nouns in deep structures are said to be
related to verbs in cases such as agent, object, dative, instrumental, and so on. (Wardhugh, 1997)
h. Fill in the table with key points and examples for each type of language universals.

Formal universals Substantive universals Semantic universals

Definition: “Formal” universals, Definition: “Substantive” universals, Definition: Semantic universals.
which refer to the type of rule that which are actual elements and Semantic relations, i.e. the
the grammars of all languages must constructions in languages. The relationships between action and
have. To talk of formal universals is substantive universals are seen as a agent, between action and
to claim, among other things, that common set of linguistic categories recipient, between action and
all grammars employ such as Noun, Verb, Noun Phrase, result, etc., are universal in all
transformations, which are ordered Subject, and so on. human languages. According to
and may be cyclically applied. All Chomsky (1965, p. 28), the theory of
languages, e.g. have devices for semantic universals “… might assert
converting verbals or sentences into that each language will contain
adjectives (cf. singing kettle, kettle terms that designate persons or
that sings). lexical items referring to certain
specific kinds of objects, feelings,
behavior, and so on.”
2211ENGL1415 Contrastive Linguistics (Eng-Vie) – Ms Hoa Ninh
Examples: Examples: Examples:

i. Which of the types of language universals above does CG try to describe?

Case grammar aimed to describe the ubiquitous semantic relationships in languages.

 Semantics universals
j. How many different types of case are mentioned on p. 127 and p. 129?

In his original theory, Fillmore (1968, p. 24) posited six cases (as we listed above): Agentive, Instrumental, Dative,
Objective, Locative and Factitive.

Fillmore himself added the cases of Experiencer , Source, Goal, Time, Path, and Result, while others have suggested
the need for Reciprocal and Comitative cases.

k. Read sample contrastive analysis of the subjectivization of a NP on p. 128. How does it relate to the
Vietnamese language?

Subjectivization of a NP in English has the consequence of deleting the case-marking preposition from the noun
phrase.

l. What are the advantages and disadvantages of CG?

2211ENGL1415 Contrastive Linguistics (Eng-Vie) – Ms Hoa Ninh