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2.1.8 Contrastive Analysis
Contrastive Analysis CA, Finegan 2004: 574 explains, is a method of analyzing languages for instructional purposes whereby a native language and a
target language are compared with a view to establishing points of difference likely to cause difficulties for learners. CA can be portrayed from different
aspects such as the following:
2.1.8.1. Historical Perspective
Sir William Jones is a linguist widely considered as the pioneer of a systematic language comparison. Declaring his research finding in a formal
speech in 1786, he said: “Sanskrit bears a resemblance to Greek and Latin which is too close to be
due to chance, shows rather, that all the three,’have sprung from some common source which, perhaps, no longer exists and Gothic that is,
Germanic and Celtic probably had the same origin” Alatis, 1968. Following the historic speech, linguists all over Europe began to be involved in an
open competition for researches in comparative linguistics. They wanted to find out if some languages were so similar that they could be put together under one
language family. However, they started to compare and contrast languages for pedagogical purposes only much later. This new comparison and contrast for the
betterment of teaching and learning a foreign language would be known as Contrastive Analysis henceforth referred to as CA.
CA was born when descriptive-synchronic linguistics began to make a name for itself. Advancement in descriptive-synchronic linguistics is marked by the
publication of Language Sapir, 1921 and Sound Patterns in Language Sapir, 1925 in which Sapir says:
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“I found that it was difficult or impossible to teach an Indian to make phonetic distinctions that did not correspond to ‘points in the pattern of
his language’ however these differences might strike our objective ear, but that subtle, barely audible, phonetic differences, if only they hit the
‘points in the pattern’ were easily and voluntarily expressed in writing.” p. 62
In Sound Patterns in Language 1925, Sapir explains that the habits of a native speaker are part of a system which is orderly organized. He also underlines
the importance of phonemes points in the pattern which are different from phones phonetic entities. Sapir’s view paved the way for the introduction of
structural linguistics. Fries brought Sapir’s views into his classroom activities, paying special
attention to his students’ mistakes, both in pronunciation and in writing. After a series of observations, he came to a conclusion that a certain group of students had
a tendency to make similar mistakes. He noticed that the students who spoke Spanish, for example, could not pronounce certain English words correctly. They
pronounced speak as [espik], study as [estadi] and school as [eskul]. Students from the Philippines also made mistakes, but they showed different patterns. They
pronounced the three words above by inserting [e] between the consonant sequence. Thus, speak became [sepik], study became [setadi] and school became
[sekul]. Then, Fries related ‘the patterns of mistakes of his students’ to the ‘points in the pattern’ of Sapir. The result is an idea which gave birth to the so-called
contrastive analysis.
2.1.8.2 Purposes of CA
Comparative Linguistics and Contrastive Analysis have one thing in common: both attempts to compare languages. However, there is a basic difference between
the two. Comparative Linguistics tries to group languages into language families, PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
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