Introduction

Abstract

Contrastive linguistics is a field of linguistics which aims to compare linguistic systems of two or more languages in order to ease the task of teaching, learning and translation processes. It has a lot of concerns with teaching problems and therefore tries to provide problem-solving. It provides teaching programmes, on the one hand, and studies the system of each language (syntactic level, phonetic level, phonological level and morphological level) to help in translation on the other. Contrast can be done at several levels; in the syntactic semantic field, for instance, contrastive linguistics works according to universalities, i.e. to delimit how to realize a universal category in contrasted languages. In phonology, however, it deals with phonological characteristics and shows functions of this latter in languages to be compared, i.e. theoretical contrastive study is an independent study; it does not deal with a particular element that exists in language (A). However, it does deal with how a universal category (x) is realized in language (A) and (B). Contrastive linguistic studies, therefore, do not travel from A to B but rather from X to A and X to B (Dresher 2009, p. 1).