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Contrastive Linguistics

Contrastive linguistics was born around the fifties in response to these shortcomings in the teaching of foreign languages. Scholars and linguists (Fries, Ladd, Politzer, Ferguson, Stockwell, Carol, etc..) Attempted to find the best way to remedy these deficiencies. Initially, the studies did not interest specialists, but they seemed to offer new solutions to "a major obstacle to learning a foreign language, the interference caused by the difference in structure between the native language students and foreign language. " (Ferguson)

Contrastive linguistics is to contrast two different linguistic systems in order to identify interference manifesting or second languages. It aims to facilitate the transition from one language to another. His initial ambition was "a term by term comparison rigorous, systematic languages, especially their structural differences" to allow methods to achieve better adapted to the specific difficulties encountered in studying a foreign language, a school population of a given language.

This language also known as differential will focus on differences of language contact. It immediately places a language both compared to a language one, in that it considers that the problems encountered during the acquisition of a language are different from those encountered in learning a language foreign. In this sense, it refers to a specific and differentiated teaching foreign languages.

She initially assumed that the languages are different but that is a theory of language, (it is true that there is a diversity of languages, but there is a theoretical tool metalinguistic and to account for these different objects). It will provide, describe, explain the errors and difficulties due to the influence of language on a language both. He uses in his study of descriptive linguistics, in a situation of bilingualism or multilingualism. This is a linguistics applied to teaching a foreign language. However, contrastive analysis differs from comparative linguistics insofar as it compares the elements of two languages with emphasis on differences rather than similarities. It was developed with a view to implementing the teaching of languages, comparative linguistics cons is a more fundamental, more theoretical.

Thus she differs from the comparative linguistics is a branch of linguistics that seeks to compare the structures of two or more languages , related or not. It is a technique used to demonstrate the genetic relationship between some languages. She tries to prove that two or more languages are descended from a single proto-language by comparing a list of terms. Through REGULAIR sound correspondences established and REGULAIR sequences of sounds, the proto-language can be reconstructed from the languages descents. Also, the findings of contrastive linguistic research may have applications in the language teaching or translating.

Developed in the ^nineteenth century through the study of Indo-European languages , the comparative method is the standard from which linguists believe if two languages have evolved from a common language.