The Contrastive analysis hypothesis

The Contrastive analysis hypothesis

1. Middle 20th

   • Behavourist psychology and structural linguists
     • Dedicate to study languages in contrast
       • The Contrastive analysis hypothesis theory could be benefitial to second language learners
         • The CAH claimed that
           • The interference between the first and second language system is the principal barrier to acquire a second language
           • Structural analysis of the two languages could produce information that would enable the linguist to predict the difficulties that the learner would encounter
         • During its popular period
           • Linguists proposed other theories
             • 1965
               • Stockwell, Bowen, and Martin
                 • Hierarchy of difficulty
                   • make predictions of the relative difficulty of a given aspect of the second language.
                   • For phological systems were 8 degrees of difficulty
                     • based upon the notions of transfer
                   • For grammatical structures were 16 levels of difficulty
             • 1967
               • Clifford Prator
                 • reformulated the hierarchy of difficulty
                   • Transfer
                   • Coalescence
                   • Underdifferentiation
                   • Reinterpretation
                   • Overdifferentiation
                   • Split