In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

166LANGUAGE, VOLUME 62, NUMBER 1 (1986) differing assessments of the precise way in which discourse is relevant to the investigation and analysis of language. [Received 25 May 1985.] Contrastive linguistics: Prospects and problems. Edited by Jacek Fisiak. (Trends in linguistics, Studies and monographs, 22.) Berlin: Mouton, 1984. Pp. x, 449. DM 158.00. Reviewed by Robert K. Herbert, SUNY Binghamton Contrastive linguistic analysis (CA; or Contrastive Linguistics, CL) has had a checkered history. The enthusiasm of the 1950's and early 1960's gave way to pessimism and rejection as questions were raised about the theoretical and methodological foundations of the field, and empirical studies demonstrated the lack of predictive classroom value. Error analysis developed as an independent entity, but other interest waned in the US. Thus CA has been largely a European discipline since the 1970's; and much of its work has been conducted under the auspices of large contrastive projects, especially in Eastern Europe. The volume under review represents the proceedings ofthe 4th International Conference on Contrastive Projects, held in Charzykowy, Poland, in December 1980. Most conference volumes tend to be uneven in quality; this one is, unfortunately , no exception. Somewhat surprisingly, only two of the 21 papers are actual reports from on-going contrastive projects. One is 'Primary data for CA', by R. Filipovic (107-117); drawing on his experiences in the Yugoslav Serbo-Croatian-English Project, he points to a need for a 'standard and representative corpus'. The paper is actually a list of shortcomings of other contrastive projects, most of which seemingly derive from a failure to employ a standard body of data such as the Brown Corpus (and its translation). The remaining papers fall into two groups: the first contrasts specific rules or structures in Ll and L2, while the second deals with the conceptual, methodological, and pedagogic bases of CA. There is also a paper by A. KopczyƱski, 'Problems of quality in conference interpreting' (283-300), which seems misplaced, since it does not mention CA. Because of the usual constraints of space, the reviewer of such a collection is forced to choose between selecting very few papers for analysis, or providing briefer treatments of a larger number of papers. This review opts for the latter strategy, in the interest of providing a more representative picture of the volume. The vast bulk of the data-oriented papers deal with Polish and English, reflecting a bias in the list of participants. (To be fair, many scholars refused to travel to Poland even in the pre-martiallaw period of December 1980.) The two phonological papers both treat interference errors as a source of evidence in argumentation. E. Gussmann, 'Abstract phonology and CA' (171-86), stresses the view that the use of all external evidence requires caution. After a useful survey of the problems in segment and rule comparisons, he concludes that the comparison of such units is necessarily vague and meaningless, and that contrastive phonology 'must concentrate primarily on the networks ofrule interactions' (183). J. Rubach, 'Rule ordering in phonological interference' (365-77), uses Poles' errors in pronouncing English as a basis for examining learners' transfer of REVIEWS167 rule-ordering. A number of problems common to contrastive studies appear here. First, no data base is mentioned; one assumes that the data are anecdotal and unsystematic. Second, one crucial argument depends on Polish pronunciation of a single English form, svelte; in addition to its anomalous structure, this is not a high-frequency item in English, and cannot be the basis for any sound conclusion. Later, Rubach uses the non-transfer of certain rules, e.g. 1st Velar Palatalization (as opposed to automatic rules such as Progressive Devoicing) to support the cyclic framework; i.e., the reality of the distinction between cyclic and postcyclic rules is somehow demonstrated by the transfer of the latter but not the former in second-language learning. That this same distributional fact has been widely used by others, e.g. W. Dressier and P. Linell, to argue against the phonological status of the former rules is ignored here. Seven papers are case studies in contrastive syntax. But three do not really have CA foci: R. D. Borsley, "Free relatives in Polish...

pdf

Share