Contrastive analysis of compound adjectives in English and Ukrainian

Origin of the comparative analysis, its role and place in linguistics. Contrastive analysis and contrastive lexicology. Compounding in Ukrainian and English language. Features of the comparative analysis of compound adjectives in English and Ukrainian.
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Table of contents

1. Introduction

2. Chapter 1. Theoretical background of contrastive analysis

2.1 Origin of contrastive analysis

2.2 The place and role of contrastive analysis in linguistics

2.3 Contrastive analysis and contrastive lexicology

2.4 Contrastive analysis and translation studies

2.5 Word fomation

2.6 Compounding in Ukrainian and English language

3. Chapter 2. Contrastive analysis of compound adjectives in English and Ukrainian

3.1 Noun+adjective

3.2 Adjective+noun

3.3 Adjective+adjective

3.4 Adjective+preposition

3.5 Adjective+past participle

3.6 Adjective +present participle

4. Conclusions

5. References

1. INTRODUCTION

comparative analysis english ukrainian

In this research work, I clarify mechanism that work in compound adjectives. After this I make a comparative analysis between English and Ukrainian compound adjectives, which leads me to conclude that they are conceptual universal phenomenon, with high communicative and instructive power.

The topicality of the theme is determined by the necessity of description of compound adjectives in the English and the Ukrainian languages in respect of their contrastive analysis, especially within semantic groups which may provide material both for common and terminological dictionaries.

The research object are compound adjectives of the English language of their Ukrainian equivalents picked out from “Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English 2000” and “Тлумачний словник української мови“ and other sources.

The research subject is presented by explanation of English compound adjectives and their translation into Ukrainian language

The aim of my investigation is to analyze compound adjectives in English and Ukrainian taking into account different criteria, compare and contrast the result of investigation in order to discover differences and similarities in their internal structure and meaning, as well as present different methods of contrastive investigation and translation of compound adjectives. Another target of this work is to find out what type of compound adjectives is the most frequent in the modern English and Ukrainian languages.

It is a presumed fact that languages differ greatly in the combinative power of words and peculiarities of their usage as well as ways of word formation.Compounding is essential means of word formation in English.

My work is dedicated to contrastive analysis of compounding among adjectives in English and Ukrainian.

My work deals with comparative analysis of lexical system of the languages.

2. Chapter 1. Theoretical background of contrastive analysis

2.1 Origin of contrastive analysis

The study of two languages in contrast, called contrastive analysis, has been referred to by a variety of names, not all of which mean the same to all writers. One can find the following terms use: contrastive studies, contrastive language studies, contrastive linguistics, applied contrastive studies, contrastive description and others. The term contrastive is also used with studies of particular levels and functional areas of the linguistic system, such as contrastive generative grammar and contrastive lexicon, as well as the contrastive pragmalinguistics, contrastive discourse analysis, contrastive sociolinguistics, contrastive theoric and many more.

In contrastive analysis, the following problems are discussed: thesauri of entire vocabularies; classification of lexical hierarchies; taxonomic structure of specialized terminology; lexico-semantic relationships; practical implications.

Contrastive analysis is a relatively modern discipline, emerging as a major linguistic tool during and after World War Two, particularly in the United States in the context of second and foreign language teaching. In the late 1950s, Robert Lado proposed contrastive analysis as a means of identifying areas of difficulty for language learners, although already in 1945 Charles Fries had formulated the theory. The earlier contrastive analysis research was language-focused. During the pre-Chomskyan structuralist period, linguists examined features of the native language which contrasted with features of the foreign language, indicating that these would be areas most likely to cause difficulty for foreign language learners.

A contrastive analysis describes the structural differences and similarities of two or more languages. As an area of enquiry, contrastive analysis (CA) is concerned with the principles and uses of such descriptions. It implies a belief in language universals; as in any contrast, if there were no features in common, there would be no basis for comparison. Broadly defined, CA has been used as a tool in historical linguistics to establish language genealogies, in comparative linguistics to create language taxonomies and in translation theory to investigate problems of equivalence. In language teaching it has been influential through the Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis (CAH) which claims that difficulties in language learning derive from the differences between the new language and the learner's first language, that errors in these areas of difference derive from first language interference and that these errors can be predicted and remedied by the use of CA. The CAH was widely influential in the 1950s and 1960s, but from the 1970s its influence dramatically declined. In that time contrastive analysis theory had been to an extent supplanted by error analysis, which examined not only the impact of transfer errors but also those related to the target language, including overgeneralization (Bowen, Madsen & Hilferty, 1985, p. 58).

This was due in part to the supplanting of structural linguistics, with which it was closely associated. The CAH was also at odds with the views in SLA and inter-language theory that only a small proportion of errors derived from first language Krzeszowski (1985) identified an approach to the teaching of Latin in England, going back nearly a thousand years, called sign theory, which involved reconciling the grammatical descriptions of English and Latin. Di Pietro (1971) focuses on a more recent relative, late nineteenth-century comparative philology which sought to link languages historically, developmentally and structurally within “family” relationships.

Contrastive linguists attempt to find out similarities & differences in both related & non-related languages. Contrastive analysis grew as the result of the practical demands of a language-teaching methodology, where it was empirically shown that the errors which are made by foreign language students can be often traced back to the differences in structure between the target language & the language of the learner. This naturally implies the necessity of a detailed comparison of the structure of a native & a target language. This procedure has been named contrastive analysis.

People proceed from the assumption that the categories, elements on the semantic as well as on the syntactic & other levels are valid for both languages.

2.2 The place and role of contrastive analysis in linguistics

Contrastive analysis is a linguistic branch whose main aim is to help the analyst to ascertain in which aspects the two languages are alike and in which they differ. It includes two main processes - description and comparison set up in four basic steps: a) assembling the data, b) formulating the description, c) supplementing the data as required, and d) formulating the contrasts.

CA grew as the result of the practical demands of language teaching methodology where it was empirically shown that the errors which are made recurrently by foreign language students can be often traced back to the differences in structure between the target language and the language of the learner. This naturally implies the necessity of a detailed comparison of the structure of a native and a target language which has been named contrastive analysis.

It should be borne in mind that though objective reality exists outside human beings and irrespective of the language they speak every language classifies reality in its own way by means of vocabulary units.

The central theoretical issue and the ultimate goal of contrastive studies is the question of establishing similarities and differences and, consequently, their quantification. Chesterman (1998), in addressing this issue, makes a useful distinction between `similarity-as-trigger', defining it as “the notion of a particular relation existing between entities in the world, a relation that impinges upon human perception, from matter to mind” and `similarity-as-attribution', which goes in the opposite direction, from mind to matter. It is essentially a subjective, cognitive process that perceives two entities as being similar. Similarity judgements, in turn, “are (…) ways of organizing and clarifying one's mental representations of

the world” . They are also bound to be relative, variable and culture dependent.

Contrastive analysis also brings to light what can be labelled problem pairs, the words t...