contrastive analysis

MAX

There are three dimensions in which a linguistic enterprise can be classified into:

First, we have a particularist approach and a generalist approach. Particularists focus on individual languages, while generalists consider the general phenomenon of human language.

Along the second dimension, languages can be studied in isolation, meaning attending to the specific features or particularities of a single language. On the other hand, they can be studied in a comparative basis, proceeding from the assumption that all languages have enough in common to be compared and classified into types.

Finally, the third dimension is that used by De Saussure: synchronic and diachronic. He explains it as "everything that relates to the static side of our science is synchronic; everything that as to do with evolution is diachronic."

                                  MAX

Now, our next topic of discussion is "Interlanguage study," which just as Phonetics or Dialectology, it is another branch of Linguistics that studies human language.

According to the notes we have, Interlanguage study is interested in the emergence of the language that comes into being when two languages are involved. In other words, what we are talking about here is a combination or blending between two languages; a language called interlingua. [MAX It usually happens when someone is learning a second language, as characteristics of the first are inadvertently incorporated into the second one. Another context where interlingua thrives is translation theory, where in the process of converting the source text into the target text some parts - whether it is words, grammar structures, etc - have traces of the source text - again inadvertently - passed into the target text.]