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Journal of Applied Linguistics and Language Research
Volume 4, Issue 6, 2017, pp. 165-173
Available online at www.jallr.com
ISSN: 2376-760X
* Correspondence: Islam NamazianDost, Email: e.namazi75 yahoo.com
© 2017 Journal of Applied Linguistics and Language Research
A Review of Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis with a
Phonological and Syntactical view: A Cross-linguistic Study
Ehsan NamazianDost *
Department of English Language Teaching, Ahvaz Branch, Islamic Azad University, Ahvaz, Iran
Abstract
Although contrastive analysis has often been questioned for its inadequacy to predict the
transfer errors that learners will make in actual learning contexts it cannot be easily denied
that “such interference does exist and can explain difficulties” (Brown, 1994, p. 200), especially
in the phonological aspects of second/foreign language learning. In this line, the present
research is trying to shed light on the concept of contrastive analysis hypothesis by focusing
on the background and origins of the concept, then the procedures and its different versions.
In addition, the current study will discuss the differences and similarities in the phonology and
syntax of two languages, namely Persian and English in order to be able to find the areas of
possible difficulty for L2 learners of English.
Keywords: contrastive analysis hypothesis, phonology, syntax, Persian, English
INTRODUCTION
Two of the general hypothesizes concerning second language acquisition are identity
hypothesis and contrastive hypothesis (Klein, 1986, p.23).The identity hypothesis asserts
that the acquisition of one language has little or no influence on the acquisition of another
language. Many scholars accept an "essential identity" of first and second language
acquisition (e.g., Jakobovits, 1969; Ervin-Tripp, 1974). On the other hand, the contrastive
hypothesis states that the structure of the first language affects the acquisition of the
second language (Lado, 1957; Fries, 1945). The term "contrastive hypothesis" refers to
the theory itself while "contrastive analysis" focuses on the method of implementation of
the hypothesis. On the other hand, "contrastive analysis hypothesis" emphasizes both the
theory and method simultaneously.
Background of Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis
Contrastive analysis hypothesis (hereafter simply CAH) was made when the structural
linguistics and behavioral psychology were dominant in the sixties. Therefore, the
linguistic model of CAH is structuralism which was expounded by Bloomfield (1933),
elaborated by Fries (1945) and Lado (1957). Structuralism assumes that is a finite
A Review of Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis with a Phonological and Syntactical view 166
structure of a given language that can be documented and compared with another
language. Esser (1980, p.181) suggests that contrastive analysis belongs to applied
linguistics in that the analysis may yield practical instructional materials.
Behavioral psychology associated with Skinner was the basis of CAH. Any kind of learning
is viewed as habit formation. At the cross road one associates the red stop sign with the
need to slow and stop the car. Learning takes place by reinforcement. These are
concerned with skinner's Stimulus-Response Theory. Associationism and S-R theory are
the two psychological bases of CAH (James, 1985). CAH is also founded on the assumption
that L2 learners will tend to transfer the formal features of their L1 to their L2 utterances.
As Lado (1957, p.2) claims, "individuals tend to transfer the forms and meaning and the
distribution of forms and meanings of their native language and culture to the foreign
language and culture". This notion of "transfer" means "carrying over the habits of his
mother-tongue into the second language" (Corder, 1974, p.158). Ellis (1965) also
suggests that the psychological foundation of CAH is transfer theory, substituting the first
language for the prior learning and the second language for the subsequent learning.
Foreign language teachers have always thought of the sources of learners’ errors in their
written productions. In order to prove such a thing they tried to write down the sources
of these errors by contrasting their native language and the target language through their
observations of the students’ performance (Kelly, 1969). Jespersen (1912), Palmer
(1917) and especially Fries (1945) assume that native language influences the second
language acquisition.
The notion of “transfer” has created some difficulties itself since it is a controversial
notion. It was defined differently by different people. Lado (1957) and Fries (1945)
defined transfer as the imposition of native language information on a second language
utterance or sentence, but for Odlin (1989) it refers to cross-linguistic influence.
Schachter (1983, 1992) has considered the fact that learners may have imperfect
knowledge of the second language and she even proposed that transfer is not a process
at all, but rather a constraint on the acquisition process. Odlin (1989, p.27) has brought
some observations about what transfer is not and concluded that “Transfer is the
influence resulting from similarities and differences between the target language and any
other language that has been previously (and perhaps imperfectly) acquired”. And then
he stresses that it is only a working definition. Even recently, Pavlenko and Scott (2002)
as cited in Ahmadvand (2008) argued that transfer is not unidirectional but bidirectional
and simultaneous that is shown by paradigmatic and syntagmatic categories. All this
indicates the degree of the complexity of the notion of transfer without any consensus.
Procedures of CAH
Whiteman (1970, p. 191) breaks the contrastive analysis down to a set of component
procedures. The four steps are (1) taking the two languages, L1 and L2, and writing
formal descriptions of them, (2) picking forms from descriptions for the contrast, (3)
making a contrast of forms chosen, and (4) making a prediction of difficulty through the
contrast. To describe the prediction stage stockwell et.al (1965) propose a “hierarchy of
Journal of Applied Linguistics and Language Research, 2017, 4(6) 167
difficulty” based on the notion of transfer (negative, positive, and zero). When the
structure of the given two languages are similar, positive transfer will occur while with
those that are different, a negative transfer will take place. When there is no relation
between those structures of the two languages, zero transfer will occur. Stockwell et al.
used the following criteria to establish the ‘preferred pedagogical sequence”: (1)
Hierarchy of difficulty, (2) Functional load, (3) Potential mishearing, (4) Pattern
congruity.
Three Different Versions of CAH
In view of predictability, CAH is classified into strong, moderate and weak versions.
Wardhaugh (1970) classified the strong version of CAH as the version that claims ability
to predict difficulty through contrastive analysis. The assumption is that the two
languages can be compared a priori. Wardhaugh (1970, p. 126) notes that contrastive
analysis has the intuitive appeal and that teachers and linguists have successfully used
“the best linguistic knowledge available … in order to account for the observed difficulties
in second language learning.” He called such observational use of contrastive analysis the
weak version of CAH. Here, the emphasis shifts from the predictive power to the relative
difficulty to the explanatory power of observable errors. This version has been developed
into Error Analysis (EA). CAH is a theory or hypothesis while EA is an assessment tool.
Weak version focuses not on the a priori prediction of linguistic difficulties, but on the a
posteriori explanation of the sources of errors in language learning.
Oller and Ziahosseiny (1970) proposed a moderate version of CAH based on their study
of spelling errors on the dictation section of the UCLA placement test in English as a
second language. They found that the strong version is too strong while the weak version
is too weak. Here they focused on the nature of human learning and proposed the
moderate version which is summarized as “the categorization of abstract and concrete
patterns according to their perceived similarities and differences is the basis for learning;
therefore, wherever patterns are minimally distinct in form or meaning in one or more
systems, confusion may result” (p.186).
From the strong version too the moderate version, the popularity of contrastive analysis
has been reduced drastically by criticism and new evidence against CAH. However, some
scholars continue to make an effort to consider and assess the merits and demerits of
CAH. In the present study, we are going to shed a light on the contrastive analysis
hypothesis from a phonological and syntactical view, making more outstanding the
differences between Persian and English in this respect.
LITERATURE REVIEW
In spite of the fact that CA was found to be successful in foreign language teaching, but
because of its limitations it was not practiced much; however it is still alive and a lot of
advocators have adhered to it and pursued its goal. Despite the fact that some research
has been carried out in the realm of contrastive analysis on Persian learners of English,
there are still some gaps which need further investigations. Numerous studies of different
A Review of Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis with a Phonological and Syntactical view 168
language pairs have already been carried out, in particular focusing on learners of
English.
Duskova (1969) investigated Czech learners of English in terms of various lexical and
syntactical errors; the production of English relative clauses by Persian, Arabic, Chinese
and Japanese students has been analyzed by Schachter (1982). She found that Chinese
and Japanese produced fewer relative clauses than did the Iranian and Arab students. The
reason was because of the differences between Chinese and Japanese on the one hand
and English on the other. Schachter (1982) also did a study and considered the presence
of pronouns in the English inter-language of Persian speakers as transfer, and Mohamed
et al. (2004) targeted grammatical errors of Chinese learners in English.
Among these studies, commonly observed syntactic error types made by non-native
English learners include subject-verb disagreement, noun-number disagreement, and
misuse of determiners. There are many other studies examining interlanguage errors,
generally restricted in their scope of investigation to a specific grammatical aspect of
English in which the native language of the learners might have an influence. To give some
examples, Vassileva (1998) investigated the employment of first person singular and
plural by another different set of native speakers – German, French, Russian, and
Bulgarian; Slabakova (2000) explored the acquisition of telicity marking in English by
Spanish and Bulgarian learners; Yang and Huang (2004) studied the impact of the
absence of grammatical tense in Chinese on the acquisition of English tense aspect system
(i.e. telicity marking).
PROBLEM STATEMENT
According to the contrastive analysis hypothesis formulated by Lado (1957), difficulties
in acquiring a new (second) language are derived from the differences between the new
language and the native (first) language of a language user. Amongst the frequently
observed syntactic error types in non-native English which it has been argued are
attributable to language transfer are subject-verb disagreement, noun-number
disagreement, and misuse of determiners. Also, Avery and Ehrlich, (1992, cited in Ohata,
2004) believe that the foreign accent of non-natives can be due to the influence of their
native languages. It is also stated that the pronunciation errors made by second/foreign
language learners are not random errors to produce unfamiliar sounds, but rather
reflections of the sound inventory, rules of combining sounds, and the stress and
intonation patterns of their first languages (Swan and Smith, 1987, cited in Ohata, 2004).
Although contrastive analysis has often been questioned for its inadequacy to predict the
transfer errors that learners will make in actual learning contexts (Whitman and Jackson,
1972), it cannot be easily denied that “such interference does exist and can explain
difficulties” (Brown, 1994, p. 200), especially in the phonological aspects of
second/foreign language learning. In this sense, the significance of contrastive analysis is
not necessarily in the predictability of transfer errors, but in the explanation of learner
errors that teachers may face in their daily practices (Celce-Murcia and Hawkins, 1985,
cited in Ohata, 2004).
Journal of Applied Linguistics and Language Research, 2017, 4(6) 169
DISCUSSION
Syntactic Features
For the present study, only the three major syntactic error types named above are
explored and are used as the syntactic features for classification learning.
Subject-verb disagreement: refers to a situation in which the subject of a sentence
disagrees with the verb of the sentence in terms of number or person. An example can
demonstrate such an error: *If the situation become worse . . . /If the situation becomes
worse . . . .
Noun-number disagreement: refers to a situation in which a noun is in disagreement
with its determiner in terms of number. This example demonstrates such an error: *they
provide many negative image . . . /they provide many negative images. ….
Misuse of determiners: refers to situations in which the determiners (such as articles,
demonstratives, as well as possessive pronouns) are improperly used with the nouns
they modify. These situations include missing a determiner when required as well as
having an extra determiner when not needed. This example demonstrates such an error:
*Cyber cafes should not be located outside airport. /Cyber cafes should not be located
outside an airport.
All three syntactic errors exist in non-native English spoken by Persian learners. The
plausibly ore annoying errors are phonological errors as most English Native speakers
believe that as soon as ESL/EFL learners such as speak, their foreign accents are
recognized. Likewise, the sound patterns or structures of their native languages can affect
the speech or production of their second/foreign languages. This is the problematic area
we are turning to then.
Phonological features
Vowels
Comparing the Persian vowel system with that of English reveals a significant difference
in the number of vowels. There are six vowel sounds in the Persian language. Three of
them are long and the other three are short. The three long vowels are [i:], [u], and [a];
the three short vowels are [æ], [e], and [o]. The English language has eight diphthongs
each of which is a combination of two mono-phthongs one gliding into the other and
naturally longer than a pure vowel, whereas, there are only two diphthongs in Persian.
All of the Persian vowel sounds are the same or very similar to English vowels; however,
English has several vowels that do not exist in Persian which is the cause of difficulty.
The Persian learners of English are often tempted to use the more general items for the
more specific ones, thus producing deviant expressions. Furthermore, to use the well-
known three-circle metaphor (Kachru, 1992), Iranian people do not belong to the inner
circle; most of them are in the expanding circle and some in the outer circle who do not
get opportunities to hear and speak English. Consequently, unlike people who fall within
A Review of Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis with a Phonological and Syntactical view 170
the inner circle, expanding circle members are primarily visual learners, not auditory
learners. Learners remain as shy at the exit level as they were at the entry level. Another
reason why Iranian students, for example, do not try to speak English is their constant
fear of instant teacher correction. As teachers we need to understand and remember the
importance of indirect and positive feedback. Clearly, such feedback has encouraging
effect on the learners and instills confidence in them. In short, the first priority in such a
situation is to make the learners feel comfortable with the language and eradicate the fear
of making mistakes. Once the learners are at ease with the teacher and the language, half
the battle is won.
Consonants
There are 23 consonant sounds in Persian, most of which are also found in English. The
velar fricatives [x] and [q] are the only Persian consonants that do not occur in English.
Conversely, there are four English consonants that do not exist in Persian. In the case of
initial consonant clusters they insert a vowel in the beginning (epenthesis) and
pronounce [st] as in street as [estri:t].
Stress Pattern
Stress means prominence in pronunciation normally produced by four factors: ‘loudness’
of voice, ‘length’ of syllables, ‘pitch’ related to the frequency of vibration of the vocal folds
as well as to low/high tone and ‘quality’ of vowels functioning individually or in
combination (Roach 2000). English words in isolation or in connected speech naturally
receive stress that eventually results in intonation carrying information over and above
that which is expressed by the words in the utterance. Hence, English is a stress-timed
language possessing a speech rhythm in which the stressed syllables recur at equal
intervals of time (Richards et al. 1985).
Word stress in Persian is progressive and consequently the stress falls on the final
syllable of a word. The only exception is for words that their final syllable is a clitic which
means an unstressed word that normally occurs only in combination with another word.
Phrase stress, however, is regressive; therefore, the stress is on the initial syllable in
verbs. For example, the stress of the compound noun baz-kon, which means ‘opener’, is
on the last syllable, while the stress in the verb phrase baz kon, which means ‘open’, is on
the first syllable. The Persian speaking learner confronts considerable problems in
assigning stress within English words or sentences because; the degree of predictability
of word stress is very low in English especially if we compare it with Persian. A very good
example in point is the stressed word in wh- questions in Persian: ch'era mi-xandi? (Why
do you laugh?) Which is chera.
However, in English the stressed word in the sentence how are you? is the to be verb. This
is the reason most of the Persian learners of English cannot locate the correct stressed
word. Furthermore, English stress placement varies according to grammatical categories,
for example, ‘conduct’, ‘perfect’, ‘present’, ‘produce’, and so forth as verbs receiving stress
on the second syllables and as nouns on the first, and on the other, he/she is used to
Journal of Applied Linguistics and Language Research, 2017, 4(6) 171
assigning stress almost invariably on the first syllable of every word in his/her first
language.
Unlike the Persian language, the English language has strong and weak forms, such as
articles (a, an, the), pronouns (he, she, we, you, him, her, them, us), auxiliaries (do, does,
am, is, are, have, has, had, can, shall, will), prepositions (to, of, from, for, at), and
conjunctions (and, but), which are usually unstressed in connected speech. For example,
the /ðe/ is pronounced /ðT/ before consonants and /ð / before vowels in connected
speech if it is not stressed for some specific reasons. As the Persian speaking learner is
not accustomed to using such forms in his/her mother tongue, he/she certainly finds
them problematic in both production and reception.
Intonation Contours
Intonation, the rises and falls in tone that make the ‘tune’ of an utterance, is an important
aspect of the pronunciation of English, often making a difference to meaning or
implication. Stress, for example, is most commonly indicated not by increased volume but
by a slight rise in intonation.
Stress and intonation are two essential aspects of the pronunciation of English words and
utterances since they perform phonological functions. Intonation, part of the supra-
segmental phonology of English, is basically constituted of the rising tone: a movement
from a lower pitch to a higher one, e.g. yes /´jes/ uttered in a questioning manner, and
the falling tone: one which descends from a higher to a lower pitch, e.g. yes /`jes/ said in
a definite, final manner, and plays varied unavoidable functions in the English language,
such as attitudinal function, i.e. conveying emotions and attitudes, accentual function, i.e.
the placement of the tonic syllable indicating the focus of the information, grammatical
function, i.e. the link between the tone unit and units of grammar, and discourse function,
i.e. attention focusing and the regulation on conversational behavior, which have little
relevance to the Persian language. It is clear that the Persian speaking learners of EFL
face difficulty in mastering English intonation due to their mother tongue interference
and inadequate training, and their speech then sounds unnatural and even unintelligible.
CONCLUSION
The above analysis, interpretation and exemplification between the two languages have
clearly revealed that the Persian speaking EFL learners encounter diverse syntactic,
phonetic and phonological problems resulting from two basic causes: (a) the differences
between the mother tongue and the target language, and (b) mother tongue interference
(MTI). If that is the case, then all the components of the teaching process have to take care
of the factors that will help the learners overcome their syntactic phonetic and
phonological problems and improve their written, oral and auditory ability.
A Review of Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis with a Phonological and Syntactical view 172
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