49. Methods of Lexicological Investigation: Contrastive Analysis.

Contrastive analysis is the systematic study of a pair of languages with a view to identifying their structural differences and similarities. Historically it has been used to establish language genealogies

In fact contrastive analysis 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. In

English, the word foot is used to denote the extremity of the leg. In

Ukrainian there is no exact equivalent for foot. The word denotes the

whole leg including the foot.

Classification of the real world around us provided by the vocabulary

units of our mother tongue is learned and assimilated together with our

first language. Because we are used to the way in which our own language

structures experience we are often inclined to think of this as the only

natural way of handling things whereas in fact it is highly-arbitary.

One example is provided by the words watch and clock. It would seem

natural for Ukrainian speakers to have a single word to refer to all

devices that tell us what time it is; yet in English they are divided

into two semantic

49. Methods of Lexicological Investigation: Statistical Analysis.

An important and promising trend in modern linguistics which has been

making progress during the last few decades is the quantitative study of

language phenomena and the application of statistical methods in

linguistic analysis.

The first requirement for a successful statistical study is the

representativeness of the objects counted for the problem in question,

its relevance from the linguistic point of view. Statistical approach

proved essential in the selection of vocabulary items of a foreign

language for teaching purposes.

It is common knowledge that very few people know more than 10% of the

words of their mother tongue. It follows that if we do not wish to waste

time on committing to memory vocabulary items which are never likely to

be useful to the learner, we have to select only lexical units that are

commonly used by native speakers.

It goes without saying that to be useful in teaching statistics should

deal with meanings as well as sound-forms as not all word-meanings are

equally frequent.

Besides, the number of meanings exceeds by far the number of words. The

total number of different meanings recorded and illustrated in Oxford

English Dictionary for the first 500 words of the Thorndike Word List is

14,070, for the first thousand it is nearly 25,000. Naturally not all

the meanings should be included in the list of the first two thousand

most commonly used words. Statistical analysis of meaning frequencies

resulted in the compilation of A General Service List of English Words

with Semantic Frequencies. The semantic count is a count of the

frequency of the occurrence of the various senses of 2,000 most frequent

words as found in a study of five million running words. The semantic

count is based on the differentiation of the meanings in the OED and the

frequencies are expressed as percentage, so that the teacher and

textbook writer may find it easier to understand and use the list. An

example will make the procedure clear.

room (’space’)

takes less room, not enough room to turn round (in)

make room for (figurative)

room for improvement – 12%come to my room, bedroom, sitting room;

drawing room, bathroom – 83%(plural = suite, lodgings)

my room in college

to let rooms – 2%

It can be easily observed from the semantic count above that the meaning

‘part of a house’ (sitting room, drawing room,) makes up 83% of all

occurrences of the word room and should be included in the list of

meanings to be learned by the beginners, whereas the meaning ’suite,

lodgings’ is not essential and makes up only 2% of all occurrences of

this word.

In Ukrainian:

Кімната (окреме приміщення перев. для проживання в квартирі, будинку) –

41%