At the interface between Contrastive Analysis and Learner Corpus Research: A parallel contrastive approach

Hilde Hasselgård,Signe Oksefjell Ebeling

doi:10.35360/njes.438

Abstract

This paper presents a model for combining contrastive analysis and interlanguage analysis. It can be seen as an extension of Granger’s (1996) Integrated Contrastive Model, but it explicitly requires a bidirectional parallel corpus for the contrastive analysis and matching learner corpora for the (multiple) interlaguage analysis. Thus, the model operates at the interface between Contrastive Analysis and Learner Corpus Research. Within the model, the contrastive, cross-linguistic, analysis produces hypotheses for learner behaviour in the languages involved. Hence the learner corpus study of L2 data includes a cross-linguistic interlanguage analysis, based on comparable data produced by (at least) two learner groups (with different L1s and different L2s). As an illustration of the model, the English noun people and its typical Norwegian translation correspondences (folk and menneske) are studied, with particular attention to postmodification patterns. The proposed Parallel Contrastive Model is shown to have the potential to throw new light on the cross-linguistic relationship between languages and interlanguages in a common framework.

Highlights

Contrastive analysis and interlanguage analysis are both fields of research in their own right
In the suggested Parallel Contrastive Model we explicitly bring Johansson’s parallel corpus model into the Contrastive Analysis (CA) part of Granger’s Integrated Contrastive Model, while in the CIA part we suggest a combination of Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis (CIA) and Parallel Interlanguage Analysis (PIA), the latter by analogy of the parallel corpus model in which comparable data in two L2s, rather than two L1s, are compared and contrasted
3.4 Findings of the parallel contrastive study To illustrate the Parallel Contrastive Model we focused on a frequent English noun—people—and its Norwegian correspondences as evidenced through a bidirectional analysis based on the English-Norwegian Parallel Corpus (ENPC)

Summary

Introduction

Contrastive analysis and interlanguage analysis are both fields of research in their own right. 3.2 From CA to PIA The contrastive analysis performed above has uncovered a lot of similarity in the uses of English people and Norwegian menneske*/FOLK, including cases in which the nouns are postmodified.

Results

Conclusion