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Tertium comparationis

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Contrastive Linguistics
This chapter is in the book Contrastive Linguistics
TOMASZ P. KRZESZOWSKI Tertium comparationis "To compare them would be tantamount to putting ten-ton lorries and banana skins into the same class on the grounds that neither ought to be left on footpaths!" Carl James One of the reasons why contrastive analysis (CA) continues to perform the role of Cinderella of Linguistics is the fact that its most fundamental concept remains as hazy as ever. Although such notions as semantic equivalence, trans-lation equivalence, congruence, etc., are the standard jargon of the trade and have received considerable attention from CA-theorists, tertium comparationis (TC), the concept that lies at the heart of any comparison (eo ipso at the heart of CA), remains remarkably neglected. The existing CAs implicitly involve various platforms of interlinguistic refer-ence, determined by specific linguistic models which they employ and specific levels of analysis which they embrace. Thus different TCs are used for com-parisons in lexicology, in phonology and in syntax. With the exception of the omnipresent initial assumption concerning the semantic identity or at least similarity of the compared phenomena, in few of these studies explicit men-tion of any TC is made, leave alone any attempts at justifying a particular choice. In the existing literature two types of TC have been employed and dis-cussed: formal correspondence and semantic equivalence. Due to the fact that neither concept is very sharp a peculiar schizophrenic situation emerged: while, on one hand, it was fortunate that neither TC has been consistently used in CA, it was, on the other hand, unfortunate that no satisfactory ana-lysis of the relevance of these two kinds of TC in CA has been attempted. Even a cursory glance at the wealth of the existing CAs suffices to notice that the two types of TC are not the only ones that are used in practice, even if theoretical discussions tend to be limited to just those two (e.g. Lado 1957, Spalatin 1969, Ivir 1969,1970).1 Moreover, neither of the two types of TC is based on a homogenous set of assumptions determining practical and theoret-ical status of CA.

TOMASZ P. KRZESZOWSKI Tertium comparationis "To compare them would be tantamount to putting ten-ton lorries and banana skins into the same class on the grounds that neither ought to be left on footpaths!" Carl James One of the reasons why contrastive analysis (CA) continues to perform the role of Cinderella of Linguistics is the fact that its most fundamental concept remains as hazy as ever. Although such notions as semantic equivalence, trans-lation equivalence, congruence, etc., are the standard jargon of the trade and have received considerable attention from CA-theorists, tertium comparationis (TC), the concept that lies at the heart of any comparison (eo ipso at the heart of CA), remains remarkably neglected. The existing CAs implicitly involve various platforms of interlinguistic refer-ence, determined by specific linguistic models which they employ and specific levels of analysis which they embrace. Thus different TCs are used for com-parisons in lexicology, in phonology and in syntax. With the exception of the omnipresent initial assumption concerning the semantic identity or at least similarity of the compared phenomena, in few of these studies explicit men-tion of any TC is made, leave alone any attempts at justifying a particular choice. In the existing literature two types of TC have been employed and dis-cussed: formal correspondence and semantic equivalence. Due to the fact that neither concept is very sharp a peculiar schizophrenic situation emerged: while, on one hand, it was fortunate that neither TC has been consistently used in CA, it was, on the other hand, unfortunate that no satisfactory ana-lysis of the relevance of these two kinds of TC in CA has been attempted. Even a cursory glance at the wealth of the existing CAs suffices to notice that the two types of TC are not the only ones that are used in practice, even if theoretical discussions tend to be limited to just those two (e.g. Lado 1957, Spalatin 1969, Ivir 1969,1970).1 Moreover, neither of the two types of TC is based on a homogenous set of assumptions determining practical and theoret-ical status of CA.

Chapters in this book

  1. I-IV I
  2. Preface V
  3. Contents VII
  4. List of conference participants IX
  5. Free relatives in Polish and English 1
  6. A note on inversion/conjunct ascension constructions in Polish and English 19
  7. Contrastive linguistics and text linguistics 45
  8. Ja und? - og hva' så ? - a contrastive discourse analysis of gambits in German and Danish 69
  9. What are the primary data for contrastive analysis? 107
  10. Remarks on contrastive pragmatics 119
  11. English sentences with introductory there and their Polish counterparts 143
  12. Abstract phonology and contrastive analysis 171
  13. Towards a contrastive syntax of Irish and English 187
  14. Constraints on transformations: evidence from contrastive analysis 205
  15. On the structure of adverbial subordinate constructions in English and Polish 251
  16. Problems of quality in conference interpreting 283
  17. Tertium comparationis 301
  18. Pedagogical limitations of contrastive linguistics 313
  19. Contrastive analysis, error analysis, and learning difficulty* 333
  20. Towards pragmatic contrastive analysis 349
  21. Rule ordering in phonological interference 365
  22. Psycholinguistic models, second language acquisition, and contrastive analysis 379
  23. Learnability and second language acquisition 409
  24. Some problems of contrastive analysis and text linguistics 419
  25. On the nature of movement rules in English and Polish 431
  26. Index of names 445
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https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110824025.301

Chapters in this book

  1. I-IV I
  2. Preface V
  3. Contents VII
  4. List of conference participants IX
  5. Free relatives in Polish and English 1
  6. A note on inversion/conjunct ascension constructions in Polish and English 19
  7. Contrastive linguistics and text linguistics 45
  8. Ja und? - og hva' så ? - a contrastive discourse analysis of gambits in German and Danish 69
  9. What are the primary data for contrastive analysis? 107
  10. Remarks on contrastive pragmatics 119
  11. English sentences with introductory there and their Polish counterparts 143
  12. Abstract phonology and contrastive analysis 171
  13. Towards a contrastive syntax of Irish and English 187
  14. Constraints on transformations: evidence from contrastive analysis 205
  15. On the structure of adverbial subordinate constructions in English and Polish 251
  16. Problems of quality in conference interpreting 283
  17. Tertium comparationis 301
  18. Pedagogical limitations of contrastive linguistics 313
  19. Contrastive analysis, error analysis, and learning difficulty* 333
  20. Towards pragmatic contrastive analysis 349
  21. Rule ordering in phonological interference 365
  22. Psycholinguistic models, second language acquisition, and contrastive analysis 379
  23. Learnability and second language acquisition 409
  24. Some problems of contrastive analysis and text linguistics 419
  25. On the nature of movement rules in English and Polish 431
  26. Index of names 445
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