At the interface between Contrastive Analysis and Learner Corpus Research: A parallel contrastive approach1

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 examined. 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.