ENGLISH 4263-001 Linguistics and Language LearningSpring 1997
TR 02:00 - 03:20 p.m., 202 Fretwell Bldg., UNCC
[overview by Kristina Schuster, UNCC]
keywords: [second vs. foreign language] [Uriel Weinreich] [bilingualism] [Contrastive Analysis] [negative transfer] [positive transfer] [interference] [contrastive study projects] [contrastive phonology] [Leonard Bloomfield] [system of habits] [Noam Chomsky] [Language Acquisition Device] [interlanguage] [Larry Selinker] [S. Pit Corder: errors vs. mistakes] [competence vs. performance] [predictability of transfers]
This is to present Lado's Contrastive Analysis as one of the important theories/principles/issues in the field of second language teaching. Before explaining this model, some additional words about Weinreich are helpful in order to present Lado's theory. To avoid confusion, some short explanations about the difference between foreign language and second language will be given. This may help to understand Contrastive Analysis, a key trope/word introduced by Lado. At the end, the limitations and contradictions of this theory will be explained.
It might be helpful to make a distinction between foreign language and second language. Wolfgang Klein uses foreign language and guided acquisition on the one hand, and second language and spontaneous acquisition on the other hand. A foreign language is a language acquired where it is normally not in use and, when acquired, is not used by the learner in routine situations, for instance Latin. A second language is one that becomes another tool of communication alongside the first language, for instance English in Hong Kong, or French among the German speaking Swiss population.
Weinreich discusses how two language systems relate to each other in the mind of the learner. His key concept is interference, defined as those instances of deviation from the norms of either language which occur in the speech of bilinguals as a result of their familiarity with more than one language (Weinreich, 1953, p. 1). For instance,German learners of English produce Yesterday came he, modeled on the equivalent German sentence Gestern kam er.
A second aspect of Weinreich s work was the relationship of the two languages in the individual mind. His example is the concept/word (signified/signifier) relationship between the English word book and the equivalent Russian word kniga. One possibility is that bilingual speakers have two separate concepts in the mind corresponding to the two separate words. The two language systems coexist side by side which is called coordinate bilingualism . Another possibility is that bilinguals have a single concept of a "book" that is related to the two different words /kniga/ and /buk/, which is called compound bilingualism. The third possibility is that the concept leads, not to the L2 word directly, but to the L2 word via the L1 word. This type is called the subordinative bilingualism.
Lado's theory in some ways complements Weinreich. Lado has the overall objective of helping language teaching. His system of Contrastive Analysis is based on a rigorous step-by-step comparison of the first and second language (L1 and L2). This comparison covers the area of phonology, grammar, writing system, and culture. The fundamental assumption of this theory is transfer: Individuals tend to transfer the forms and meanings, and the distribution of forms and meaning of their native language and culture to the foreign language and culture (Lado, 1957, p. 2).
One of the examples given by Lado is how Spanish learners add an /e/ before (English) or (German) consonant clusters starting with /s/ so that school /sku:l/ becomes /esku:l/ in order to conform to the syllable structure of Spanish. Another example shows the Chinese leaner of English who finds the man with a toothache difficult because modifying phrases such as with a toothache come before the noun in Chinese. Negative transfer causes Germans to say it if they talk about a child because the grammatical gender of child is neuter in German.
Lado concluded that the most difficult areas of the L2 are those that differ most from the L1. Consequently, according to Lado, the areas that are most similar to the native language are the easiest ones. Thus, the learner will concentrate on the differences and not on the similarities of both languages. Language teaching will concentrate on the points of difference. This also means that parts of the second language are not taught at all. This might have consequences which still are to be examined.
The basic view of Lado's theory is that language learning consists mostly of the projection of the system of the first language to the system of the second language. Thus, language learning will be successful when the two languages happen to be similar. Some linguists call this positive transfer. For instance English learners of German or German learners of English, or all the learners of romance languages, or the learners of Dutch and German, will have a positive transfer. Language learning will be unsuccessful when the second language happens to be very different, like for example many of the Asian languages compared to English and vice versa.
While Weinrich was interested in interference between two language systems, Lado sees benefits as well as disadvantages coming from the first language system.
Extensive research has been done on Contrastive Analysis, especially by comparing English and other languages, for example Stockwell, Bowen and Martin (1965). Research started with the description of the two languages. Doing this, a prediction could be made or should be possible to be made on the learner's behavior, difficulties anticipated. Structures of both languages were compared pattern by pattern.
Much of the conventional criticism says that many of the predicted differences and difficulties did not turn out to be difficulties, and vice versa, many of the learners expected difficulties were not anticipated. Lado himself admitted that continuous work and research has to be done on the hypothetical problems in order to get a final validation.
Major projects have been done in Europe before Lado's theory was published. One of them compared German and English at Kiel, another one is known as the PAKS project which compared Polish and English at Posnan, and also Finnish and English at Jyvaskyla have been target of a research project.
Both Weinreich and Lado shared not just the belief in the importance of the L1/L2 relationship, but also the concept of language structure which this relationship is based on, which refers to phonology and grammatical interference (morphology and grammatical structures).
Phonology is considered as a list of phonemes and allophones. There are for example minimal Contrastive sounds such as /p/ and /b/ in pain /pein/ versus bane /bein/ and allophones, for example the initial aspirated p in /pit/ versus the final unaspirated p in /tip/. Lado represented the phonemes of the two languages on charts, say English /d/ and Spanish /d/, and compared for example the two Spanish allophones for /d/. Lado saw grammar as structures, such as the word order of questions, the use of intonation and pauses for grammatical effect, and morphology such as English third-person s. Furthermore, he related the two languages at levels of vocabulary and culture.
These ideas fall within the structuralist tradition, starting with Bloomfield (1933). This immediate constituent analysis splits the sentence into smaller and smaller segments, naming the parts of the sentences NP (Noun Phrase) and VP (Verb Phrase). There is some limitation to this type of analysis and this view of a phrase.
Another strand in Lado's theory is the model of language learning. Lado calls grammatical structure a system of habits (Lado, 1957, p. 57). Habits are based on laws of language learning such as exercise, familiarity of response. This thinking reflects the mainstream behaviorist view of language learning, prominent with Bloomfield, reaching its climax with Skinner and attacked/toppled by Chomsky. Second language acquisition (SLA) research revolted against this very point of view.
This approach posed problems about the relationship of the L1 to the L2 and about the nature of language learning. Chomsky attacked Lado's position with his concept of the independent grammars assumption. This refers to the belief that the child masters a language of his own and is not a defective speaker of adult language. This refers also to second language acquisition. Chomsky shows that there must be a Language Acquisition Device (LAD) that constructs a generative grammar of linguistic competence out of the samples of language it encounters. But how do children change their grammars into adult linguistic competence over time? There must be a hypothesis-testing in which the child first gets a hypothesis, then tests it out, and finally reformulates it.
These ideas again started new SLA research because Lado (and Weinreich) had been overly simplistic in seeing L2 learning only as a relationship between the L1 and the L2. A learner at a particular point in time is in fact using a language system which is neither the L1 nor the L2. Thus the independent grammars assumption applies to L2 learning as much as to first language acquisition. This explains why learners sometimes make mistakes which couldn't have been caused by either their first language or by the target language.
The Contrastive Analysis approach of comparing two whole languages to predict interference or transfer yields only a partial picture of L2 learning; linguists, for example Nemser, suggest to focus more on the learners approximative system, or the interlanguage (Selinker) as it develops closer to the target language.
Furthermore, Selinker postulates not only an independent grammar (Chomsky) but also a psychological mechanism for creating and using it. He sees Lado s model too simple, since Selinker asserts that Transfer is only one of at least five processes involved in interlanguage.
Another difference between Lado and other scholars of second language research is the type of evidence they are using. Lado typically discusses single-sentence examples of interference and transfer taken out of context. The current research focusses on other ways of inferring the child's or learner's knowledge of language, usually large-scale transcripts of speech, testing comprehension, and so on. This research (Corder) makes a difference between mistake and error which is related to the notion that the learner is not a defective speaker of the target language (or native language if it is a child), but using the interlanguage. Lado, on the other hand, sees in the learner someone who uses incorrectly the target language in a process in which he tries to approach the target language as much as he can.
Klein contradicts Lado in different points. In general he asserts that the results of research based on Lado's hypothesis have proved to be of less help than expected. One reason for this failure is in the fact that structural similarities and dissimilarities between two linguistic systems and actual production and comprehension are two different things. Contrastive linguistics is concerned with the linguistic systems, the structure, whereas acquisition has to do with comprehension and production. A specific second language structure may be easy to perceive but hard to produce, or vice versa.
Klein concludes in the first place that prediction of possible transfers should not be based on comparisons of structural properties but on the way in which the learner processes these structural properties.
At present, no one seriously entertains the contrastive hypothesis in its strong sense. But the existence of various forms of transfer is obvious, and we can't deny that the learner's knowledge of his first language influences the way in which he approaches and learns a second language.
Ralf Thiede - 05-01-1997