Comparitive

Linguistics
3 APPROACHES TO
STUDYING LANGUAGES


General Linguistics

• Definition: a study of natural languages.

• Its focus areas of research include:
➢Linguistic processing
➢Regional, social, situational and stylistic linguistic
variation
➢Historical linguistic change and its reasons
➢The relationship between language and thought
➢The differences between human language and other
sign or communication systems

General Linguistics

• Research can be divided into fields :

- In accordance with the levels of linguistic structure:
➢ Phonology
➢ Morphology
➢ Syntax
➢ Semantics
➢ Pragmatics
- In accordance with several specialties: Language typology , Historical
linguistic, Sociolinguistics, Discourse analysis , ...

Descriptive Linguistics

• Definition: Descriptive linguistics is a branch of

linguistics that studies how languages are
structured.
Linguistic description >< linguistic prescription
• Larry Andrews describes descriptive grammar is
the linguistic approach that studies what a
language is like.

Descriptive Linguistics

A linguistic description is considered descriptively adequate if it

achieves one or more of the following goals of descriptive linguistics:
•A description of the phonology of the language in question.
• A description of the morphology of words belonging to that
language.
•A description of the syntax of well-formed sentences of that language.
•A description of lexical derivation.
•A documentation of the vocabulary, including at least one thousand
entries.
•A reproduction of a few genuine texts

Comparative Linguistics
Comparative-Historical Linguistics

– Definition:
Comparative historical linguistics is a branch of linguistics
that compare languages and their historical development
to determine the genealogical relationships between them.

Note: Languages which belong to the same language family

are genetically related to one another; this means that
these related languages derive (or ‘descend’) from a single
original language, called a proto-language.



Comparative-Historical Linguistics

– Aims:
i. Recover and reconstruct as much as possible of the
ancestor language (the proto-language).
ii. Determine the changes in the various languages
that developed from the proto-language.

– Comparative Approach: Diachronic ( studies the

evolution of languages through history)

Comparative-Historical Linguistics

– Basic Technique:
Comparative historical linguistics would attempt to
reconstruct the sound system first; this leads to the
reconstruction of the vocabulary and grammar of the proto-
language.

Note: The reconstruction must be done by working

backward and reconstructing the immediate ancestral forms
of those languages which are most closely related, and then
extending to the less closely related dialects.

Comparative-Historical Linguistics

– Example:
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the linguistic
reconstruction of the common ancestor of the Indo-
European languages. PIE was the first proposed proto-
language to be widely accepted by linguists. The Indo-
European family includes most major current languages
of Europe, and parts of Western, Central and South
Asia.
Some other major language families: Niger-Congo,
Austronesian, Sino-Tibetan…

Typological Linguistics

– Definition:
Typological linguistics studies the similarities and differences in languages
with the aim to establish linguistic categories for language classification.

– Comparative Approach: Synchronic

(It only focuses on comparing the structural characteristics of the
languages at a specific point of time, regardless of their genealogical
relationship.)
➔ Typological linguistics could compare a wider range of languages
than comparative-historical linguistics.

Typological Linguistics

– Sub-disciplines:
1. Typological classification: Compares all basic components of
language structure (phonology, morphology, syntax, and
semantics) to classify languages into different groupings.
EX: Word order typology classifies languages according to their basic
order of Subject, Verb, Object in a sentence. The majority of
languages falls into one of 3 main groups:
SOV (Japanese, Tamil, Turkish…),
SVO (Chinese, English…),
VSO (Arabic, Welsh…)

Typological Linguistics

– Sub-disciplines:
2. Typological generalization: “The study of patterns that
occur systematically across languages”. These
typological patterns are called ‘language universals’ .
EX: “If a language is spoken, it has consonants and
vowels.”;
“All languages have pronouns.”
3. Theoretical Typology: Provides an explanation
(theoretical framework) for the distribution of patterns
in languages.

Contrastive Linguistics

– Definition:
Contrastive linguistics is a sub-discipline of linguistics
which studies two or more languages in order to
determine both the differences and similarities
between them on all levels of language structure
(phonological, morphological, syntactic, lexical-
sematic).
Note: Contrastive linguistics can compare any two or
more languages regardless of whether they are
genealogically or typologically related or not.

Contrastive Linguistics

– Comparative Approach: Synchronic

– Applications:
1. Theoretical:
Contrastive linguistics’ tasks are to give detail description of the
similarities and differences in languages and to find out the
reasons behind them.
➔ Helps verify tentative universals.
➔ A very useful tool for linguists in the development of general
theories of language.

Contrastive Linguistics

2. Practical:
Applied contrastive analysis draws on the
theoretical findings for whatever necessary
information to use for a specific purpose.
Therefore, contrastive linguistics is “an interface
between theory and application”.
Contrastive analysis is used in some applied
disciplines such as foreign language acquisition
and translation studies…

Contrastive Linguistics

2. Practical:
In the field of Second Language Acquisition (SLA), when using a
foreign language, mistakes in pronunciation, grammar, etc. are made
because of influence, or ‘interference’ of the mother tongue.
The basic steps to overcome them are:
i. Systematically compare the mother tone /L1/ with the foreign
language /L2/.
ii. Identify and explain the difficulties in acquiring language.
iii. Use the analyzed results to improve the teaching materials for
language learners.

Comparison
Comparative-Historical
Typological Linguistics Contrastive Linguistics
Linguistics
Similarities and
Genealogical language
Scope of Study Language types differences between
family
two or more languages
(1) Compares all basic
(1) Recover and components of language
reconstruct as much as structure to classify
possible of the ancestor languages into different Apply the findings into
language (the proto- groupings. the development of
Aims language). (2) Establish linguistic linguistic theories and
(2) Determine the changes universals across language. into practical uses in
in the various languages (3) Provides a theoretical disciplines such as SLA,
that developed from the framework for the translation,…
proto-language. distribution of patterns in
languages.
Comparative
Mainly diachronic Mainly synchronic Mainly synchronic
Approach

Comparison
Connection
1. Contrastive Linguistics vs. Comparative-Historical Linguistics
o CL and CHL both compare languages and their studies may overlap
if two genetically related languages are compared and contrasted.
o In order to trace backwards the historical development of
languages, scholars must first start examining their shared and
contrasted features at a certain point in time. Thus, contrastive
analysis sets the foundation for further diachronic research in CHL



Comparison
Connection
2. Contrastive Linguistics vs. Typological Linguistics
o These two disciplines both examine languages for similarities and
differences. While TL only establish the most major generalizations across a
wide variety of languages, CL studies compare only 2 (or very few) languages
but with a higher degree of details, as it takes into account all grammatical
areas of those languages.
o CL can use the findings of TL as basis to further explore the contrasts and
properties of languages.
o A contrastive study revealing detailed, striking differences between two
languages could provide much more in-depth data for a comprehensive
typology study, particularly in determining linguistic universals and language
groups.