Prof.

Raymond Hickey
Institute for Anglophone Studies
University of Duisburg and Essen
Summer Term 2017

Table of Contents

Contrastive linguistics
Types of interference
Contrastive phonology
Contrastive morphology
Language type and morphology
Differences in the nominal area
Contrastive lexicology and word-formation
Lexical gaps and compounding
Productive processes
Contrastive syntax
Contrastive semantics
Idioms and collocations
Contrastive pragmatics
A contrastive sketch of Turkish and English
The typology of Turkish
The sound system of English and Turkish

Contrastive linguistics
The practice of comparing languages has a long tradition in linguistic scholarship and stretches
back into antiquity. It reached its zenith in the development of Indo-European studies in the
nineteenth century when languages were compared with a view to determining their exact
genetic relationships and to reconstructing the proto-language from which the attested
languages of a family derived. This branch of linguistics is called comparative philology or
often simply Indo-European studies because of the concern with the languages of this major
family.
In the twentieth century, with the emphasis of structuralism on the synchronic aspects
of language, those linguists interested in comparing languages evolved a new kind of discipline
in which the structures of two present-day languages were compared. Here the goals were
quite different. It was not the reconstruction of a proto-language which was the concern but
usually a more immediate aim like improving instruction in one of the languages examined. This
was the birth of the discipline which is now termed contrastive linguistics.
The main differences between this direction in linguistics and that of Indo-European
studies can be shown by listing the features of contrastive linguistics in the form of a table.

Contrastive linguistics is
 Raymond Hickey Contrastive Linguistics Page 2 of 33

1) synchronically oriented
2) not concerned with genetic similarities between languages
3) usually involved in the comparison of only two languages
4) normally bound to a particular linguistic theory
5) divided into applied and theoretical sections

The last characteristic listed above has meant that contrastive studies either have no immediate
practical goal - in which case they are termed theoretical studies - or they do have such a
direct aim in which case one speaks of applied contrastive linguistics. The applied section
could for example be concerned with second language learning where attempts are made at
predicting difficulties (interference) which speakers of a foreign language may have. The
theoretical section could for instance be involved with comparing the structures of two
languages which are geographically in contact with each other and consider the likelihood of
borrowing between the two.
The concern of the remainder of this paper will be with the applied area of contrastive
linguistics with the specific intention of illuminating the differences and similarities between
English and German in order to heighten German students’ awareness of the mistakes they are
likely to make, given their background language. With this awareness it is hoped that the
number and frequency of errors in the foreign language can be reduced.

Types of interference

At the centre of applied contrastive linguistics is the notion of transfer. This refers to the fact
that speakers of a language A are likely to transfer structural features of their native language
when learning a second language B. In principle this transfer can be positive or negative. For
instance both English and German have phonemic distinctions in vowel length (English bit :
beat; German bitten : bieten) so that when a German, but not a Greek or Pole for instance,
speaks English he/she has no difficulty with maintaining the distinctions in vowel length. Here
the linguist speaks of positive transfer. Normally this type goes unnoticed as the result is
always acceptable in the foreign language.
Negative transfer is the type which presents difficulties for the learner. It is more
commonly known as interference. By this is meant the transfer of some structure or structural
element from one language to another where it is ungrammatical. The languages in question are
usually the source and target languages in a second language learning situation but could also
be two languages which were in contact in some historical period or indeed are still so at the
present time.
In second language acquisition, negative transfer cannot be made responsible for all
types of errors in a target language. Furthermore the danger of interference is greatest where
the two languages in question are most similar in structure. In such instances the transfer of
structures is easiest, i.e. a one-to-one correspondence can be quickly established between the
source and the target. Contrariwise if some category does not exist in the target language then
it is unlikely to be transferred as this would be tantamount to creating it in the target. An
essential feature of interference is that the incorrect structure in the second language be
understood by speakers of the target even though it be wrong.
There are four main types of interference discussed below. This division can be used
by students to classify the many practical examples given in the remainder of this chapter.
 Raymond Hickey Contrastive Linguistics Page 3 of 33

Note that these phenomena apply to both first and second language acquisition. In the case of
the former one does not however refer to them as interference as children do not acquire their
first language against the background of some other language.

1) Substitution At any stage in language acquisition a learner may use an already acquired
element for one which he does not yet possess. The clearest examples of this are to be found
in phonology. For example in first language acquisition sounds which have been acquired are
used for those not yet acquired: [w] for [r] in English as in [wein] rain. In second language
acquisition similar cases can be observed, e.g. the use of [k] by English speakers of German
initially instead of [x] as in Buch [bu:k] for [bu:x].

2) Over- and under-differentiation In early language acquisition clause types are

under-differentiated. Thus parataxis is used instead of hypotaxis, i.e. before the latter
establishes itself formally.
Over-differentiation is unlikely with natural language acquisition but is common with
controlled second language acquisition. For example the use of several different verbs by
English speakers of German where the latter would have machen, or the use of a formal
future where the present tense is more common, e.g. Morgen werde ich nach Hamburg
fahren. In the reverse case one has the overdistinction of drive and go in English by German
speakers on the basis of the distinction between fahren and gehen in German. Another
instance of this phenomenon would be where Germans use calendar in English for both
Kalender in the sense of a print-out of the months of the year and a planer for a year in the
form of a small book which is diary in English (this is also the word for German Tagebuch).

3) Over-indulgence and under-representation

a) OVER-INDULGENCE This can only be ascertained with certainty by statistical studies.

But typical areas for it in L1 would be ‘yes’ for affirmation where adults would have many
variants, ‘sure’, ‘certainly’, ‘of course’, ‘definitely’, ‘by all means’. Over-indulgence is very
common with children as they have a restricted range of synonyms. Examples from second
language acquisition abound. Just think of the structures which learners use repeatedly in the
foreign language because they do not have a wide-enough range of alternatives.

b) UNDER-REPRESENTATION This is of course the reverse of over-indulgence so that

each example is by implication one of over-indulgence as well. Under-representation in first
language acquisition does not imply lack of cognitive development. Thus if a child cannot or
does not use temporal adverbs (particularly relational ones) it does not mean that he/she has
no notion of time but that he/she has not the linguistic category ‘temporal adverb’ at his/her
disposal. To that extent his/her grammar is simpler. Note also that he will not use the present
perfect either and may, when he adds adverbs to his/her grammar, retain the simple present
for some time. Thus one has a case of asynchronisation in the addition/expansion of certain
categories.

4) OVER-GENERALISATION This is very common with children as they acquire irregular

morphological and syntactical forms at a later stage. A classic example is the use of weak
verb endings with strong verbs: Mamma comed home, or the lack of suppletive forms:
Daddy goed away. Overgeneralisation of this kind is untypical of adult L2 speech. But the
 Raymond Hickey Contrastive Linguistics Page 4 of 33

phenomenon is nonetheless known in this area as well. Consider such instances as the use of
gehen by English speakers to refer not just to walking as in cases like Gestern bin ich nach
Hamburg gegangen. (intended: gefahren).

INTERFERENCE AND PRODUCTIVE PROCESSES It is important to stress that

interference is not the source of all mistakes which learners make in a foreign language. A
frequent further source is the misapplication of a productive process as in the sentence
Maurice is a good cooker. Here the mistake results from an overgeneralisation of the
productive morpheme -er. Transfer should be positive in this case, producing cook from
Koch.

Contrastive phonology

Tradition of incorrect pronunciation There are a number of English words - or German words
in their English form - which are pronounced consistently in an incorrect manner by Germans.
This would in some cases to have almost become a tradition. For instance the name of the city
Berlin is continuously pronounced by Germans as [/berlin] where it should be [ber/lin], i.e.
the accent is on the same syllable as in German but the vowel is short in English. Another
example would be the word design which is usually pronounced with a voiceless [s] although
in English the fricative in the centre of the word is voiced, i.e. [z].
Another type of generalised wrong pronunciation derives from transferring a principle
of pronunciation from German to English. For instance s after a sonorant - /n, l, r/ - is normally
pronounced voiceless in English pulse, tense, curse all have [-s] at the end (there are a few
place name exceptions like Kensington, Swansea and words like parse, version with some
speakers). Now German has precisely the opposite rule: [z] is the normal realisation (unless
this is devoiced by Auslautverhärtung). This means that Germans tend to pronounce a word
like conversation as [\k>nvqr/zei$qn] rather than [\k>nvqr/sei$qn].

MIXED PRONUNCIATIONS These occur by Germans adopting the source pronunciation

for a word only in part and they effect common and proper nouns. Instances are Hifi [haifi]
and Dublin [dvbli:n] which in English are [haifai] and [dvblin] respectively.

TRADITION OF INCORRECT REFERENCE The teaching of foreign language has its own
customs and practices, many of which are at loggerheads with linguistics. For instance, the
reference is frequently to letters rather than sounds when describing phonological phenomena.
A good instance of this is the reference ‘the th-sound of English’. The difficulty here is that the
two letters th in English represented two separate phonemes, the voiceless ambidental
fricative /2/ and the voiced ambidental fricative /3/ as seen at the beginning of the words think
and that respectively. Note that there are a number of means of referring to the place of
articulation of these fricatives: inter-dental is not very accurate because the tongue is not
placed between the teeth in pronouncing either of the sounds; dental is confusing as a term as
it often refers to stops which are produced at or about the alveolar ridge behind the teeth. The
term ambi-dental chosen above implies at the teeth, but not between or behind them, and so
it is preferred.
 Raymond Hickey Contrastive Linguistics Page 5 of 33

PHONEMIC INVENTORIES Below are listed those segments of English and German which
are different. Some of these, as with vowels, can be substituted easily with elements which are
fairly close to them in the opposite language. Others, particularly consonants, cause difficulties
as they may lead to confusion, as with insufficient distinctions between /f/, /v/ and /w/ (an
instance from the area of vowels is /æ/ and /e/).

English German
Consonants Consonants
/2/,/3/ /t$/,/dg/ /w/ /x/,/c/

Vowels
Monophthongs
/y,y:/
/e:/ /ø,ø:/ /o:/
/=/ /o:/
/v/ /a/
/æ/ /<:/,/>/ /a,a:/

Diphthongs
/ei/ /qu/
/oi/ /oy/
/iq, eq, uq/

ALLOPHONIC DIFFERENCES English distinguishes between clear and dark /l/, i.e. [l]
versus [1]. These occur syllable-initially and syllable-finally respectively. German has an
allophonic distinction between a palatal and a velar fricative depending on whether the
preceding vowel is a front vowel (F palatal fricative as in Pech [pec]) or a back or low one
(F velar fricative as in Buch [bu:x]). Preceding sonorants behave like front vowels (cf.
Mönch, Molch, Storch).

English German
[l, 1] [l]
Ø [x, c]

DIALECT DIFFERENCES IN ENGLISH The sound [w] which is a voiceless labio-velar

approximant may occur where wh- is written. This sound is not present in Received
Pronunciation and is typical of conservative varieties of English such as Scottish or Irish
English.
The glottal stop [?] is a characteristic of vowel-initial words in German as in Eule
[?oylq]. In many English dialects this sound also occurs, however, in intervocalic position as a
replacement of [-t-] as in [bv?q] for butter. Phonotactics This area is concerned with the
position of sounds in words. Specifically there are three which are important: 1) initial, 2)
medial and 3) final. Indeed for most purposes one can reduce these positions to two, initial
and final.

English German
 Raymond Hickey Contrastive Linguistics Page 6 of 33

Initial Medial, Final Initial Medial, Final

t$ t$ - t$
dg dg - dg
- - kn -
- - gn -
- - $ + m, n, l -
$ + r, V - $ + r, V -
s + m, n, l, r - - -

In addition to the above combinations one has many others which involve sounds which do
not occur in the other language. For instance the English sounds /2/ and /w/ occur in word
onsets for which there are no equivalents in German, e.g. three /2r-/, thwart /2w-/, twist
/tw-/, dwarf /dw-/, sweet /sw-/.

CONTRASTIVE STRESS German and English both have stress accents. However, there are
many words, particularly compounds, which show different stress patterns in both languages.
What is especially tricky for the German speaker is the phenomenon of level stress where
two or more elements are stressed equally. If the German equivalent has primary + secondary
stress then care should be taken not to transfer this pattern. Here are two simple examples to
show what is meant.

English (right) English (wrong) German

/Second /World /War \Second /World \War \Zweiter /Welt\krieg
/Hong /Kong /Hong \Kong /Hong \Kong

Although level stress does not occur in German compounds it is found in syntactic
constructions and students should consider sentences like the following to grasp the difference
between primary + secondary stress versus level stress in English.

Es könnte /glatt sein ‘It might be slippery.’

Es könnte /glatt /sein ‘It could indeed be the case.’

In addition to level stress English also has contrastive stress by simple placement in a word. It
is common for the sole difference between a noun and a verb or adjective to be one of place
of stress. The rule of thumb here is that the noun has initial stress and the verb or adjective has
it on a non-initial syllable: /content (noun) : con/tent (adjective); /convert (noun) : con/vert
(verb).

Contrastive morphology

1) COMPARATIVE FORMS OF ADJECTIVES In English -er is only possible with disyllabic

words and then only with the more common Germanic words of the lexicon, e.g. perfect, but
not *perfecter.

2) CASE SYSTEM IN ENGLISH This consists of two types, an unmarked and a marked
 Raymond Hickey Contrastive Linguistics Page 7 of 33

one, which is traditionally termed the ‘genitive’, and formed by adding /s, z, iz/ to a noun
base. For the pronominal system the same two-way distinction exists which is semantically
distinguished by the functions of direct and indirect object. Note that the terms ‘accusative’
and ‘dative’ are unsuitable as these inflectional categories do not exist in English.
Note that English compensates for the loss of former cases by the more rigid use of
word order which is freer in German with its fourway case system.

3) TENSE SYSTEM In both English and German there exists a two-way distinction among
verb forms which is inherited from Germanic: the present and the past. Further tenses are
formed in both languages by analytical means, i.e. by using an auxiliary verb like will/shall in
English or werden in German.
Note that in both languages a form of the present can be used for future reference.
However, in German the present is the unmarked future and the compound form with werden
is only used for indefinite or distant future. In English the future with an appended /l/ (deriving
from will or shall) is the unmarked and the form with the present continuous is employed to
indicate a definite near future.

Morgen fahre ich nach Hause.

Sie wird ihr Examen sicherlich demnächst machen.
Mary is driving to Munich tomorrow.
Mary will do her exams next year.

3a) USE OF SUBJUNCTIVE In English this is analytical and in German frequently synthetic.
Germans may thus tend to use the simple past as an equivalent to the subjunctive as this is
synthetic like that in their own language, e.g. If he came instead of If he were to come.

4) ADVERBS These are marked in English and for the most part unmarked in German. The
only marked ones in the latter language are those which have a special semantic component,
such as -weise or -mässig, or those with a monosyllabic stem which ends in -e.

Er ist möglicherweise nach Hause gefahren.

Sie ist kleidermässig gut ausgestattet.
Sie ist gerne in Norddeutschland.

The first of these two endings are very productive in present-day German. Equivalents in
English are formed using the ending -wise which is equally common.

Flatwise Munich is a terrible place.

The job is interesting moneywise.

Note. Many adverbs in English have several meanings as in He came round 1) ‘Er kam
vorbei’, 2) ‘Er wurde wieder bewusst’. In addition the adverb beside ‘neben’ has an
additional form besides with the separate meaning of ‘ausserdem’: The bicycle was beside
the house. Besides, he is interested in linguistics.

5) VERB PREFIXES IN GERMAN AND THEIR ENGLISH EQUIVALENTS As a general

rule of thumb one can say that the equivalents of German prefixed verbs in English are phrasal
 Raymond Hickey Contrastive Linguistics Page 8 of 33

verbs, i.e. a lexical verb with a preposition which together have a meaning which is not
derivable from the elements which it consists of. For instance the sentence Er vertrug sich
mit seiner früheren Freundin would be He made up with his former girlfriend where
‘make up’ is a phrasal verb with an indivisible meaning.
A danger for the German learner of English lies in prefixes like be- where the
prepositional object is shifted to a direct object and the original direct object appears as an
instrumental.

Hans goss Wasser auf den Rasen. Hans begoss den Rasen mit Wasser.

Note that many of the verbal prefixes of German have an aspectual value which is not
expressed by the standard equivalents in English, to take the example of be- again: in German
this implies completeness as in Sie beklebten die Wand mit Plakaten.

Language type and morphology

There is an aphorism which goes like this: ‘English has a simple grammar and a complex
vocabulary and German has a complex grammar and a simple vocabulary’. Like all such
adages there is a grain of truth in it and in the present section an attempt is made to determine
the size of the grain, so to speak.
But there is one generalisation which does hold for English: because of the slight
morphology, congruence between nouns and verbs or between nouns and pronouns tends to
be determined semantically rather than formally as in German. Here is an instance where in
German the singular would have to be used: The bank - they don’t want to pay : Die Bank -
sie will nicht zahlen. The point here is that the English speaker thinks of the people who
work in the bank, whereas the German is guided by the fact that die Bank is singular (and
feminine).

AFFIXATION VERSUS LEXICALISATION IN GERMAN AND ENGLISH German has a

considerably greater number of (native) affixes than English which are used in word-formation.
Take the example of ver- which is frequently used as a prefix indicating a reversal of meaning
with a verb stem; the English equivalents are different words.

German mieten - vermieten English rent - let

kaufen - verkaufen buy - sell

In keeping with its more complex morphology, German frequently has distinctions on this level
which are not present in English. Consider the following instances of reflexive verbs.

English move German sich bewegen / etwas bewegen

cool sich abkühlen / etwas kühlen

TRANSPARENT COMPOUNDING IN GERMAN One finds that by and large the

compounds formed in German are transparent in their structure. In English classical
loan-words are often found, e.g. Kehlkopf vs. larynx; Magersucht vs. anorexia nervosa;
Fresssucht vs. bulimia. This phenomenon has been labelled dissociation as the technical
 Raymond Hickey Contrastive Linguistics Page 9 of 33

section of English vocabulary is dissociated from the everyday words which are not used in
compounding.

snow - sleet Schnee - Schneeregen

cup - saucer Tasse - Untertasse
the height of the season in der Hochsaison

Note that in German official forms of the language (such as that of the administration and
bureaucrats) tends to have native compounds for classical loans, e.g. Lichtpause vs.
Photokopie; Fernsprechapparat vs. Telefon; fernmündlich vs. per/am Telefon.
This corresponds to the structure of German which favours compounding. The latter
means that there are many formations in German which have lexicalised equivalents in English
or which must be arrived at by paraphrase.

Eine aggresionsarme Umgebung Ein schmerzarmer Tag

A non-aggressive environment A day with little pain

Bleifreies Benzin Bissfeste Kartoffeln Schnittfester Käse.

Unleaded petrol Crunchy potatoes Firm cheese.

Hochschulpolitisch unratsam
Inadvisable from the university’s point of view

Magerjoghurt Low-fat yoghurt

Magerfleisch Lean meat

Students should resist the temptation to translate compounds piece by piece, it rarely works,
for instance a German Wassergraben is not a water ditch but a moat, that is the term is
lexicalised in English and transparently compounded in German.

SEMANTIC EXPLOITATION OF MORPHOLOGY There are many word pairs which show
a difference in meaning which is determined by an inflection attached to the stem. This option
is of course only possible in German which shows a variety of endings. Kotletten ‘side-burns’
vs. Kotletts ‘chops’ is just such a pair. Graben and Grab is another; the English equivalents
are ditch and grave. Some of these instances rest on the contrast between an older and a
newer form, the former being quite restricted in its range, e.g. Mannen ‘troop’ vs. Männer
‘men’; Lande (really just in the phrase aus deutschen Landen ‘from the German regions’) vs.
Länder ‘countries, states’. Equivalent cases in English simply have homophony as in glasses
‘Gläser’ and ‘Brille’.

Differences in the nominal area

USE OF GENDER English only has natural gender with the exception of technical objects
which may take the feminine to indicate a particular emotional attachment. A source of
interference would be the use of gender by Germans where this is not possible in English.
 Raymond Hickey Contrastive Linguistics Page 10 of 33

She (die Bundesbank) is not going to reduce interest rates

FORMATION OF PLURALS Alternation of voiceless and voiced fricatives exist in English

but not in German.

leaf - leaves; thief - thieves; knife - knives

In a small number of cases the different historical plural types contrast as in the following:
cloth, cloths ‘Stofftypen’, clothes ‘Kleider’; brother, brothers ‘Brüder’, brethren
‘geistliche Brüder’.

NO DISTINCTION BETWEEN SINGULAR AND PLURAL This is true of only a handful of

nouns in English, all of which are animal names: sheep, deer. Furthermore a distinction is often
made between a singular usage and a plural usage, where the singular is used in a generic
sense and the plural refers to several individuals animals: They shot a lot of duck during
their hunting holiday versus Six ducks were swimming in the pond.

FORMAL PLURALS WITH SINGULAR MEANING This is not something unknown to

German but the specific instances may not match in both languages e.g. contents ‘der Inhalt’,
means ‘das/die Mittel’.

COUNTABLE NOUNS Once more this is a phenomenon which is common to both

languages but the instances are frequently different. The following is a common source of
error.

Informationen information Verwirrungen confusion

SINGULAR VS PLURAL Occasionally there is a semantic difference between the use of a

noun in the singular and that in the plural. An instance of this is scale versus scales. The
singular noun means ‘Ausmass’ while the plural means ‘Waage’. These words are quite
distinct in meaning. More common are cases where nouns are countable and non-countable in
different circumstances (compare this to animal names above): hair means the growth on a
human’s head while hairs refers to single strands of this as in He had thick hair in his youth
but now has only a few hairs at the back.

DIFFERENCES IN SINGULAR AND PLURAL REQUIREMENTS As might be expected

the requirements for number are often different in English and German and it is in these cases
that the student must exercise care. Here are some typical examples to illustrate this. The last
one shows an idiom in which number differs in between the two languages.

Waage scales Pyjama pyjamas

Hose trousers Schere scissors
die Möbel furniture Fortschritte machen make progress

USE OF THE DEFINITE ARTICLE The essential point for the German student to notice is
that the definite article is not used with abstract terms.
 Raymond Hickey Contrastive Linguistics Page 11 of 33

She is interested in philosophy

Sie interessiert sich für die Philosophie

However it is found in English if a qualifying clause or element follows.

The philosophy of Kant

The philosophy of late 19th century Germany

USE OF THE INDEFINITE ARTICLE There is less divergence between English and German
in the use of the indefinite article. The main area where Germans should take care is with
numerals as here there are differences, e.g. hundred is always preceded by an indefinite
article and always followed by and.

Hundertfünfzig A hundred and fifty

Hunderteins A hundred and one
Neunzehnhundertvierundfünzig Nineteen hundred and fifty four

PREPOSITIONAL USAGE Unfortunately there is no hard and fast rule for the differences in
prepositional in English and German. These can concern nouns which are employed in set
phrases like the following

on foot zu Fuss by train mit dem Zug

or they can refer to verbs with prepositions, usually so-called phrasal verbs in English which
are lexical units which consist of a base verb and a preposition with a meaning which is not
immediately derivable by linking both these elements. The equivalents are nearly always
prefixed verbs in German.

to fill in ausfüllen to stand down zurücktreten

to stand out auffallen to stand up to widerstehen
to put up with ertragen to sleep in ausschlafen

DON’T FORGET THE CONJUNCTION It is obvious that there are more compounds in
German than English and the temptation to produce them in the foreign language is always
present for the learner. There are of course cases where this works but there may still be a
danger, as in the following case where the conjunction and is necessary between the two
colours which qualify the noun.

Schwarz-Weiss-Film Black and white picture

Contrastive lexicology and word-formation

A curious feature of second language acquisition is that the recollection of words - technically
termed lexical retrieval - varies in quality according to many external factors - such as
concentration, nervousness, tiredness, etc. - which do not have such an influence on the same
process with one’s native language. For instance an English speaker of German once
 Raymond Hickey Contrastive Linguistics Page 12 of 33

produced Magensprecher for Bauchredner. Now the word in English is ventriloquist - an

opaque word for the non-linguist - so that one can assume that the attempted German word
was arrived at by combining one of the words for ‘stomach’ with one of the words for
‘speaker’.
This instance shows that second language learners decompose words; connected with
this is the habit of translating compounds piece by piece, which can also be observed in a
foreign language. Again an instance from second language German can serve to illustrate the
phenomenon. The word Gesichtstuch for Waschlappen was noted with an English speaker.
Now the English word is face cloth so that the incorrect word just given can be interpreted as
an item-for-item translation, unfortunately with the wrong result in German.

WORD-FORMATION ERRORS Give the different typologies of German and English it is not
surprising that they diverge in the methods of word-formation which they use. In general one
can say that German employs compounds, which are usually realised with two nouns, whereas
English uses sequences of an adjective and a noun to express the same content. The point to
be careful about here is not to use double noun compounds in English if an adjective plus noun
is possible.

Hafenverwaltung harbour authority (no adjective from ‘harbour’)

Medizinstudent medical student (adjective plus noun)

ROMANCE ELEMENTS IN ENGLISH AND GERMAN Both languages have borrowed

copiously from French and other Romance languages in the course of their histories. The
borrowings in English are older, stemming mostly from the Middle English period. Those in
German are generally recognisable as a largely French pronunciation is retained; furthermore
special verb endings are used for Romance and Classical borrowings. An interesting feature in
German is that there are many cases of contrast between English and Romance loan-words
which have become semantically differentiated.

schocken : schockieren; Promotion : promotion; relaxieren : relaxen;

Model : Modell; Bilanz : Balance.

In English the distinction between Romance words and native Germanic stock is a stylistic one
as can be gleaned from the following examples.

freedom : liberty; work : labour; unemployed : jobless.

Note. This distinction may be one between different levels within the Romance component of
English lexis:

recalcitrant vs. disobedient; retractable vs. difficult.

In some cases the less tangible Romance words may be seen as euphemisms.

steal : expropriate (cf. stehlen/klauen vs. entwenden)

The stylistic device of deliberately choosing a Romance word in English has its equivalent in
 Raymond Hickey Contrastive Linguistics Page 13 of 33

the nominalisation of verbs in German.

in Erfahrung bringen (erfahren) zur Kenntnis nehmen (sich merken)

zu Ohren kommen (hören) in Erinnerung rufen (erinnern)

Here a supportive verb is used with the nominalised lexical verb. There are however, a few
cases where a simple verb is not always possible: Abbitte tun but not *abbitten.

WORD CLASS INCONGRUENCE BETWEEN ENGLISH AND GERMAN Just as

speakers search for equivalents to the elements of a compound they also try to find a
corresponding word in the foreign language which belongs to the same word class as the one
they first think of in their own language. There are unhappily many instances in which this does
not work between German and English. The following examples show differences in participial
and adjectival usage.

Herr Schneider ist immer sehr konzentriert.

Mr Schneider always concentrates (on his work) very well.
Er starb neunundsiebzigjährig in Berlin
He died in Berlin at the age of seventy nine.
Er hat die Sache eigenhändig durchgezogen.
He completed the matter on his own.

COMPONENTIAL ANALYSIS Semantic components are elements of meaning which can be

recognised in words. These may be relevant for linguistic analysis and differences here can be
a cause of interference between English and German. An example of what is meant would be
the components [action] and [goal] which plays a role in the contrastive use of the word pair
finden/find and suchen/seek in both languages. The first pair emphasises the goal reached
and the second the action typical of a verb. Now in German in requests the [action]
component is stressed whereas in English the [goal] component is placed in the foreground.

Suchen Sie mir bitte einen Stuhl!

Can you find me a chair, please?

Lexical gaps and compounding

LEXICAL GAPS IN MODERN ENGLISH These have been largely filled by classical loans in
the early modern English period. Because of the compounding morphology of German such
adjectival qualifiers are not necessary.

aquatic sport : Wassersport

marine biology : Meeresbiologie
equestrian sport : Reitsport
pedestrian zone : Fussgängerzone

COMPOUNDING IN ENGLISH Criteria Compounds are indicated prosodically in English by

having stress on the first item of the supposed compound. Level stress usually denotes a
 Raymond Hickey Contrastive Linguistics Page 14 of 33

syntactic group (though primary stress may be used for topicalisation purposes).

a /dark /room vs. /dark-\room; a /glass /case vs. a /glass-\case.

Note that the spelling is irrelevant; compounds usually occur with a hyphen or are written as
one word.

a /black/bird vs. /black\bird; /green/house vs. /green\house;

/hot/house vs. /hot\house

In German a syntactic group consists of an inflected adjective and a noun; compounds are
formed by single words.

eine dunkle Kammer vs. Dunkelkammer

Level-stress is characteristic of copulative compounds in English /learner-/driver

(‘anfänglicher Autofahrer’) and of adjective determinative compounds: /hard-/boiled;
/hand-/picked. Contrast this with German which shows primary stress.
 Raymond Hickey Contrastive Linguistics Page 15 of 33

Productive processes

CONVERSION This is the use of a word from one word class in another without any
alteration in form. It is not possible in German as endings are always added to altered word
class forms, cf. (Copy)Shop : shoppen. English has some instances of phrasal verbs as nouns,
e.g. the ubiquitous takeaway.

package : (to) package anger : (to) anger

shelf : (to) shelf

BACK-FORMATION This is where a verb is derived from a noun. Normally nouns are
created from verbs which already exist.

vivisector : (to) vivisect burgler : (to) burgle

brainwashing : (to) brainwash baby-sitter : (to) baby-sit

SUFFIXATION Most suffixes in English are unstressed with the exception of a few such as
-ese: Chinese, Japanese, etc. or /ette: /kitchen vs. kitche/nette; /statue vs. statu/ette.
German uses the ending -isch, the vowel before which is stressed. If the stem ends in
a vowel then this may be used, otherwise a stressed /e:/ is found: italienisch, chinesisch, but
kenjanisch.
Note that adjectives from city names are quite irregular in English: London (no
change), Viennese, Glaswegian, Liverpudlian, Mancunian (E Manchester).

LEXICALISED BRANDNAMES IN GERMAN Note that there are two main types. The first
refers to a phenomenon which already exists but which by force of habit is always associated
with a brandname. The second is where the object is new and derives its name from its
inventor or main distributor.

1) einwecken = einmachen (Glasfirma Weck in Bonn)

2) Tesaband = Sellotape (selbstklebender Band)

Note. xerokopieren is probably a loan from English which is not recognised as coming from
the American firm Rank Xerox which pioneered the photocopying machine.

BRANDNAMES IN ENGLISH These occur quite frequently, e.g. hoover the floor
(staubsaugen) from the firm Hoover which was once leading in the production of vacuum
cleaners.

BLENDING This process is very common in English (typical of an analytic type of language).
In German the strict morphology does not allow for this.

work + alcoholic F workaholic

chocoholic, sportaholic, shopaholic

guess + estimate F guestimate

 Raymond Hickey Contrastive Linguistics Page 16 of 33

gigantic + enormous F ginormous

chunnel E channel + tunnel; motel E motor + hotel

EXPRESSIVE WORDS These form a curious group in English because they are of no
apparent origin: pizazz ‘energy, verve’, gunge ‘sticky, mud-like substance’, zany ‘idiotic,
ridiculous’ (possibly from Venetian Italian).

COINAGES These are completely new words, usually names for commercial products. A
famous example is Kodak which was invented with the express intention of being
pronouncable in the main European languages in more or less the same way.

SEMI-PHONETIC SPELLINGS Deliberate semi-phonetic spellings in names of shops and

products are increasingly common in the English-speaking world, above all in America:
nitebite (takeaway open late at night), kwik kleen (prompt dry cleaners), xpress (rapid
parcel service). These have been termed ‘sensational spellings’ and are becoming increasingly
common in situations where little space is available for long words, e.g. on computer displays,
signs or on credit cards. Examples are thru (for through), xing (for crossing), hi (for high).

HEADLINESE Headlines in newspapers result in much reduced sentences. Such ellipsis may
become a general characteristic but also lead to phrases which are not immediately
comprehensible as in the following instance: Judas kiss killer gang given life, i.e. ‘the killer
gang which gave a Judas kiss to its victim was sentenced to life imprisonment’.

REDUCTIONS AND ABBREVIATIONS Soap from soap opera. disco from discothèque;
older one are pants from pantaloons; ad from advertisement, mag from magazine. Soccer
from association football, bobby from Robert Peel, the founder of the modern police force
in England in the 19th century, mob from mobile vulgus. This is quite a productive process
and can be seen in very recent instances such as the following.

decaf decaffeinated coffee

deli delicatessen
eco ecological(ly)
eco-friendly ecologically friendly
eco-disaster ecological disaster

PRODUCTIVE MORPHEMES 1) -burger as in hamburger, beefburger, cheeseburger. 2)

-aholic as in alcoholic (the origin of the use), workaholic, sportaholic (see blending above).
3) -ery as in upholstery, buttery, knishery ‘shop selling baked or fried pastries’ (Yiddish).

BUZZ-WORDS Fashionable words, frequently from certain areas of occupation or interest.

Computer terms provide many examples, RAM, ROM, floppy, hard disk, cache, internet.

Ablaut-motivated compounds involve two words which are phonetically identical but for a
change in the stem vowel, a common alternation between /i/ and a low or low back vowel /a/
or />/ shilly-shally, wishy-washy, zig-zag; flip-flop.
 Raymond Hickey Contrastive Linguistics Page 17 of 33

ACRONYMS Here the letters of the abbreviation are pronounced phonetically, i.e. as if they
were a real word, e.g. NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), WHO (World Health
Organization), WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant), AIDS (acquired immune deficiency
syndrome), BSE (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy), MCP (Male Chauvinist Pig).

INITIALISMS In the case of ‘letter pronunciations’ the name consists of each letter
pronounced individually as in BBC [/bi:/bi:/si:] (British Broadcasting Company), BA [/bi:/ei]
(British Airways). There are differences between German and English here: the former has
VIP as [vip] (an acronym) and the latter has VIP as [/vi:/ai/pi:] (an initialism); the same
applies to UNO (United Nations) which is [u:no:] in German (an acronym) and [/ju:/en] in
English (an initialism). Bear in mind that initialisms always have level stress.

Contrastive syntax

The greatest source of interference in syntax is the verbal area. German and English show
considerable differences here and hence there are many pitfalls for the student when creating
English sentences. Complement types Complements are parts of a sentence which follow on a
verb and which fulfil the same function as objects. There are different types of complement in
both languages and even where types are shared the requirements for individual verbs may
vary. For instance, the English verb want takes an infinitive complement whereas its German
equivalent wollen demands a clausal complement.

He wants her to sing a song.

Er will, dass sie ein Lied singt.

Many verbs in German take an infinitive complement with accusative object and the equivalent
in English can be a participle construction. Or the English verb may require an infinitive
complement but the German one may demand a sentential complement.

Er sah ihn weglaufen. He saw him running away.

He told him to leave. Er sagte, er soll weggehen.

Sentential complements tend to be rather long so that in some case the equivalent English
sentence is rather short.

Er überlegte sich, ob er nicht weggehen sollte

He considered leaving
Sie überlegte sich, ob sie nicht heiraten sollte
She considered marriage

The above instances can all be put into the broad framework of verb valency. By this is
meant the elements which are required to accompany a verb form and the necessary syntactic
form which they take. The latter, for example, concerns the type of object of a verb. German
very often governs a direct case where English with its relatively weak case system uses
prepositions to express grammatical relations. However, if in German there is no case
government for a verb, then prepositions are also used, cf. warten which is used with auf (cf.
 Raymond Hickey Contrastive Linguistics Page 18 of 33

English wait for).

Kann ich Sie kurz sprechen? Can I speak to you for a moment?
Sie beziehen bald das Haus They are moving into the house shortly
Sie belegte einen Spanischkurs She took part in a Spanish course
Er wurde letzte Woche operiert He was operated on last week

VERBAL FALSE FRIENDS The verbal area is just as much a source of false friends as is the
nominal area. Most of the instances which one can cite are verbs which share a Germanic root
or which have a common Romance source.

bekommen ‘obtain’ become ‘change state’

irritieren ‘confuse’ irritate ‘annoy’
sensibilieren ‘sensitise’ ---

GERMAN PREFIXES A major difference in verbal morphology between English and German
is the large number of verb prefixes in the latter language. Certain prefixes have no equivalents
in English, e.g. bewundern ‘admire’, beneiden ‘envy’.
These prefixes allow the option of contrast with a non-prefixed verb, e.g.
beschimpfen : schimpfen ‘insult’, beantworten : antworten ‘answer’. In such cases English
may have an optional complement: answer : answer s.o. Another example would be filmen
and verfilmen which in English is rendered as to film and to make a film of.
Many prefixes in German have more or less fixed meanings which are rendered in
English by separate lexemes or paraphrases, e.g. ver- which means ‘to end, die, decay’:
verhungern ‘starve’, verdursten ‘die of thirst’, verbluten ‘bleed to death’, vergehen
‘decay’, verwesen ‘decomposed’ (now only past participle); er- meaning ‘to attain
something, reach an endpoint’: erwirken ‘realise’, erstreiten ‘attain by legal means’,
erlangen ‘obtain’; ersticken ‘choke to death’.

ZERO SUBJECTS AND OBJECTS IN GERMAN Empty subjects are ones which only fulfil a
syntactic requirement but which have no semantic justification. In English these are almost
confined to verbs referring to the weather: It’s raining heavily. German has such subjects in
a much wider range of situations and students should be careful not to overgeneralise this
phenomenon in English.

Es wartet ein Mann auf Sie. Ein Mann wartet auf Sie.
A man is waiting for you. There is a man waiting for you.
Es besteht kein Zweifel.
No doubt exists. ?There exists no doubt.

A semantically empty es (dummy subject) can be deleted if an adverbial introduces the

sentence. The agreement with the real subject is seen in instances with plural nouns.

Es besteht noch Hoffnung. Noch besteht Hoffnung.

Es kommen später drei Männer bei Ihnen vorbei.
Es waren heute morgen zwei junge Damen hier.
 Raymond Hickey Contrastive Linguistics Page 19 of 33

Dummy objects (es) are also found in German, together with the verb haben. This is also
found in English on occasions, though again not to the same extent as in German.

Er hat es mit der Arbeit eilig.

Er hat es sicherlich in seiner Position schwierig.
Sie hat es mit den Kindern nicht leicht.
Er hat es einfach in der neuen Stelle.
He has it easy in his new job.

DATIVE SHIFT IN ENGLISH This is a process in English whereby the indirect object of a
sentence is positioned before the direct one so that its relative position is the indicator of its
sentence function. This does not work with all verbs, however.

She showed the book to him. She showed him the book.
She served the guests the evening meal.
She served the evening meal to the guests.
She demonstrated the programme to him.
*She demonstrated him the programme.

Furthermore there are verb constructions which only show ‘dative position’, i.e. which do not
have the alternative of postposing the indirect object and indicating it with a preposition to.

They helped him a lot. *They helped a lot to him.

John made her a good husband. *John made a good husband to her.
They made him a present of it. ?They made a present of it to him.

The permissibility of both types of word order may depend on the kind of verbal complement
which occurs. For instance tell only has postposition with a direct object.

She told him the whole story. She told the whole story to him.
She told him to behave himself. *She told to behave himself to him.
She taught him a new language. *She taught a new language to him.

The last sentence corresponds to a double accusative in German. Such sentence types may
cause difficulty for English learners of German because they do not conform to the structure of
German which usually has two objects in different cases.

Sie lehrte ihn eine neue Sprache. Das kostete ihn ein Vermögen.

ENGLISH PASSIVE AND GERMAN EQUIVALENTS There is of course a passive in

German with the auxiliary werden. What is equally frequent is to use the indefinite man and an
active voice verb. Note that somebody is not the semantic equivalent of man.

Man ist ihm mistrauisch begegnet. Man beschuldigte ihn der Unaufmerksamkeit.
He was treated suspiciously. He was accused of inattentiveness.
Man war ihm am Flughafen begegnet.
He was met at the airport (by the embassy official).
 Raymond Hickey Contrastive Linguistics Page 20 of 33

In many passive sentences English allows the original direct object of the sentence to remain in
its slot and only shifts the indirect object to subject position. In German this is strictly
forbidden.

He was given the book. *Er wurde das Buch gegeben.

She was paid the money. *Sie wurde das Geld bezahlt.

Without the direct object some of these passives are acceptable in German, e.g. Sie wurde
bezahlt.

PERSONIFICATION OF INANIMATE OBJECTS IN ENGLISH One is dealing here with a

phenomenon here which is in tune with the backgrounded morphology of English. It allows
non-animate subjects which in German are forbidden on formal grounds.

The letter demands that you respond.

The law demands that you comply.
The door opens easily. Die Tür lässt sich leicht öffnen.
The wind broke the window. ?Der Wind hat das Fenster gebrochen.
The storm uprooted many trees. Der Sturm entwurzelte viele Bäume.

SUBJECTIVISATION OF INSTRUMENTAL AND LOCATIVE OBJECTS Again this is a

feature of English syntax which can be traced back to the flexible morphology which allows
the shifting of indirect objects into subject position, usually for topicalisation purposes.

Money can’t buy you happiness.

Mit Geld kann man sich kein Glück kaufen.
The key opened the door.
Mit dem Schlüssel liess sich die Tür öffnen.
The Midlands report bad snow this morning.
Aus den Midlands wird heftiger Schneefall gemeldet.
The hotel accommodates 200 guests.
Das Hotel fasst 200 Gäste. (?)

PREPOSITION VS. NO PREPOSITION Cases where no preposition is used are tricky as

the tendency is for the speaker to transfer this null state to the foreign language where it is not
permissible. This applies particularly to phrases involving time in German.

Vielen Dank, dass Sie Lufthansa geflogen sind

*Thank you that you flew Lufthansa
Thank you for flying with Lufthansa
1980 ist er nach München gezogen. Er ist Freitag abgereist.
He moved to Munich in 1980. He departed on Friday.

PREPOSITIONAL DISTINCTIONS Finally one should mention that English may make
distinctions by employing different prepositions with one and the same noun. A case in point is
the noun time as seen in the following examples.
 Raymond Hickey Contrastive Linguistics Page 21 of 33

in time rechtzeitig on time zur rechten Zeit

Contrastive semantics

ENGLISH VS. LATINATE TERMS For the advanced learner of English the chief stumbling
block which remains is deciding on when to use Latinate and when native words in English.
The guidelines which exist are only approximate. It is true that Latinate words are more
common in technical or stylistically elevated discourse, however, determining when the
discourse is right for their use is a matter which can only be mastered by constant exposure to
English usage.

fat obese drunk inebriated

dead deceased very thin emaciated

There are various occasions when the items in the right-hand column above would be used.
For instance to describe a patient as ‘fat’ might well be regarded as too personal; to talk of a
near relative of one’s interlocutor as ‘dead’ rather than ‘deceased’ might be deemed
disrespectful or insensitive. Here, as in so many areas, practice makes perfect.

UNUSUALNESS OF ENGLISH WORDS The difficulties in English are compounded by the

fact that, although a word may exist as an equivalent for a German word, it still may not be
common in everyday usage. A typical example of this is the term sibling which is an exact
translation of German Geschwister. However, it is really only common in the phrase sibling
rivalry ‘competition between brothers and sisters’. Otherwise in English one speaks of
‘brothers and sisters’ and in a sentence like She has four brothers and sisters the context
usually decides whether this means ‘four brothers and four sisters’ or ‘four in all’.

DIFFERENCES ON AN ARCHAIC - MODERN AXIS Not all equivalents which the student
may hit on are appropriate in the foreign language because some may be archaic. For instance
the word verdammt as an augmentative in German is common but it is somewhat antiquated
in English. Sie haben verdammt gut gespielt vs. They played damned well.
It is important for students to grasp how terms are located on this axis. For instance in
German the word Bach is commonly used. English has the word stream. This is rather small
and although the term brook does exist it is antiquated and should be used with caution.
Furthermore formal equivalents to German words may exist in set phrases in English
but no longer be common words. For instance the root behind German wachsen can be seen
in the English expressions wax and wane, to wax lyrical but the normal word is to grow.

DIFFERENCES ON A COLLOQUIAL - VULGAR AXIS There are occasions where a

formal equivalent is more forceful in the target language and caution should be exercised here.
For example the German verb stinken is frequent in colloquial language whereas English stink
is definitely vulgar.

Hier stinkt’s nach Knoblauch. It’s smells (*stinks) of garlic here.

 Raymond Hickey Contrastive Linguistics Page 22 of 33

WORDS WITH DIFFERING RANGE Semantic range is something which is determined by

language use and so it is not surprising to find that the range of similar words in two languages
is not the same. In the case of words which are common Romance borrowings there is a
temptation to treat them as if the range were the same. Take as an example the word perfect
which in English and German has the main meaning of ‘fully satisfactory, as good as possible’.

A perfect coup Ein perfekter Streich

The meal was perfect Das Essen war perfekt

There is an additional meaning in German which derives from Latin, i.e. ‘complete’ which
does not exist in English.

Die Koalition ist jetzt perfekt (= ‘abgeschlossen’)

The coalition has been finalised

Native German words also show such differences in range, some of which can be tricky to
deal with in the foreign language. For instance the word girlfriend in English has the meaning
of sexual partner, whereas German Freundin has both this meaning and a general one of
‘female friend’ which is not covered by the English term.
The word blond has a different range in English and German. In the latter it refers to
many shades which in English would be brown. What an Englishman calls blond hair would
be referred to as hellblondes Haar in German; there is no augmentative for blond in English.
The area of food and its preparation reveals further differences between the two
languages. In German kochen is used for solids and liquids; in English cook refers to solid
materials and boil to liquids. The German durchziehen refers to the maturation of food. There
is no single equivalent in English; instead one must choose from a variety of verbs mature,
settle, develop flavour. For eating itself German has fressen and essen which refer to
animals and humans respectively. English only has eat. Flouting in German is found
occasionally for stylistic purposes: Friss nicht so schnell. In English a separate verb is used:
Don’t gulp your food so quickly.
Animate vs. inanimate distinctions are found in English and not in German with the
verbs swim vs. float on the one hand and schwimmen vs. treiben on the other. German can
use either verb for objects whereas English must use float and swim for inanimate and
animate objects respectively.
An artificial vs. natural distinction is seen in the word pair canal and channel in
English. These correspond to one word in German Kanal so that care must be taken in
English to observe the distinction.
The natural vs. artificial distinction is found in many other cases in both English and
German. as with pond, Tümpel vs. pool, Teich. False friends Differences in range are not
normally too serious in their consequences for the foreign language learner, but divergent
meaning is a source of major mistakes, in particular where a word in the native language of the
learner sounds similar to one in the foreign language. This type of case is traditionally termed
false friend. Below a brief selection of such instances is offered to give an impression of the
scope of the phenomenon.

aktuell ‘topical’ actual ‘tatsächlich’

Apartment ‘one room flat’ apartment ‘Wohnung’
 Raymond Hickey Contrastive Linguistics Page 23 of 33

Artist ‘circus artist’ artist ‘Künstler’

Brieftasche ‘wallet’ briefcase ‘Koffer’
dumm ‘stupid’ dumb ‘stumm’
durchsegeln ‘fail an exam’ sail through ‘einfach bestehen’
feudal ‘luxurious’ feudal ‘mittelalt. Gesellschaft’
fixieren ‘stare’ fix ‘reparieren’
Gift ‘poison’ gift ‘Geschenk’
Gymnasium ‘secondary school’ gym(nasium) ‘Turnhalle’
liquidieren ‘to invoice’ liquidation ‘Vernichtung’
Physiker ‘physicist’ physician ‘Internist; allg. Arzt’
Rezept ‘prescription’ receipt ‘Quittung’
sensibel ‘sensitive’ sensible ‘vernünftig’

Among loan-words the phenomenon of false friends has an additional twist to it in German in
that many words from English were borrowed with a shifted meaning.

German meaning English original

slip (‘Höschen’: underpants) slip ‘Unterrock’
old timer (‘alter Wagen’: vintage car) old timer ‘alter Mann’
city (‘Stadtmitte’: city centre, downtown) city ‘Stadt’

There are also cases of meanings which evolved on words being adopted into German. The
latter fact is important as it highlights a feature of German which is quite unique: the language
has often been creative in its manipulation of loan material and formed words which simply do
not exist in English. For instance the word dressman is an entirely German word as is
smoking. The equivalent terms are (British English) dinner jacket and (American English)
tuxedo for the latter and dandy for the former. The words Pullunder, Twens does not exist
in English either but show productive word-formations based on real words: Pullover F
Pullunder; Teens F Twens.

ONE-TO-MANY EQUIVALENTS (GERMAN - ENGLISH) Somewhat different from false

friends are those instances where one word in German has more than one equivalent in
English. In some of these cases one of the equivalents is formally similar to the German word
as with Note which can mean (exam) mark or music note, ten-pound note, etc.

glücklich happy, lucky seit for, since

Bank bank, bench dick thick, fat
Kontrolle check, control Rezept recipe, prescription
Schatten shade, shadow Treppe stairs, steps
bemerken notice, remark während while, during
Paar pair, couple hören listen to, hear
Himmel sky, heaven

ONE-TO-MANY (ENGLISH - GERMAN) The reverse situation where there are more
equivalents in German also exists and can be seen from the following few examples.
 Raymond Hickey Contrastive Linguistics Page 24 of 33

dress Kleidung, Kleid lens Linse, Objektiv

river Strom, Fluss go gehen, fahren

Idioms and collocations

LEXICALISED PHRASES Foreign speakers should take care not just to determine lexical
equivalents in principle but also to bear in mind the collocations which words enter into, in
both the native and target language. Here is a simple example of what is meant: krönend can
be taken to mean crowning in English. However, the collocations in which these words
occur, differ in both languages, particularly if the word occurs in a compound form in German.

A crowning achievement Eine Spitzenleistung

Der krönende Abschluss The final flourish
Ein preisgekröntes Buch An award-winning book

BINOMIALS A common feature of German is a type of expression which consists of two

nouns or adjectives which occur in a fixed order and which are mostly alliterating. This
expression is termed a binomial (from two nouns) and usually has a figurative sense.

Über Stock und Stein Mit Kind und Kegel

Von Luft und Liebe leben Ross und Reiter nennen
klipp und klar hü und hott
dick und dünn hoch und heilig
nagelneu Wald und Wiese
Hand und Fuss haben Haken und Ösen

Such structures are not as common in English. Those which do occur may be alliterating or
not, e.g. As different as chalk and cheese but Under lock and key.

IDIOMS WHICH ARE THE SAME There are a small number of idioms which are identical in
English and German. A common origin can be postulated for some, like the first one below,
where the image stems from the domestic sphere. In the case of the second this may be the
result of transfer from German emigrants in the United States. The third instance may simply
be the outcome of a parallel development.

Too many cooks spoil the broth

The devil is in the detail (American English, German influence?)
A hard nut Eine harte Nuss

IDIOMS WHICH ARE NOT QUITE THE SAME Far more common is the situation where
idioms are similar in their content but slightly different in their form. For instance the notion of
‘2 for 1’ is present in both German and English but the imagery diverges somewhat. The
divergence may be traceable to differences in gesture in English and German as with the
second example below.
 Raymond Hickey Contrastive Linguistics Page 25 of 33

Zwei Fliegen mit einer Klappe schlagen

To kill two birds with one stone

Jemandem die Daumen drücken

To keep your fingers crossed (for someone)

Den Stein ins Rollen bringen

To get the ball rolling

Er sieht aus als könnte er kein Wässerchen trüben

Butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth
Wie ein Elefant im Porzellanladen
Like a bull in a china shop

Viele Hände schaffen schnell ein Ende

Many hands make light work

Greenhouse (People in greenhouses should not throw stones)

Glashaus (Wer im Glashaus sitzt...)

Ups and downs Höhen und Tiefen

To be all ears Ganz Ohr sein
A pain in the neck Eine Nervensäge
Bag of nerves Nervenbündel
Out of the blue Aus heiterem Himmel
grüne Hände green fingers
Schnee von gestern Water under the bridge
Eulen nach Athen tragen to bring coals to Newcastle

COLLOCATIONS IN ENGLISH AND GERMAN This causes a problem with those words
which are the same in basic meaning in both languages but different in the collocations they
occur in; two illustrations can be offered with the words ignorant and collaborate.

1a) He is ignorant of this book.

He is an ignoramus.
What ignorant behaviour!

1b) Er weiss nichts von diesem Buch.

Er ist ein Ignorant.
Was für ignorantes Verhalten!

2a) He collaborated with her on the new book.

He collaborated with the enemy during the war.

2b) Er arbeitete mit ihr am neuen Buch zusammen.

Er kollaborierte mit dem Feind während des Krieges.
 Raymond Hickey Contrastive Linguistics Page 26 of 33

The difficulty for the language learner with words such as those just discussed is that the
dictionary does not always give enough information on usage. Take for instance the word pair
deep vs. shallow in English. It would appear at first sight that German has two equivalents tief
vs. seicht. It turns out though that German prefers untief as a neutral equivalent of tief: Das
Wasser ist untief an der Stelle. Seicht is possible but it is more common in the figurative
sense of ‘insipid’ as in seichte Unterhaltung ‘insipid entertainment’. Nor is it used as the
equivalent to English shallow in a figurative sense. Here German prefers oberflächlich as in
the following examples.

He is very shallow. Er ist sehr oberflächlich.

The distinction between literal and figurative meanings is one which students should be
constantly aware of. Not simply because it is an essential aspect of language use but because
there are many differences between English and German in this respect. For instance
adjectives or prepositional complements often differ in the elements they use for figurative
usage. In English the word heavy is the equivalent to German stark in a figurative sense as
can be seen in the following examples.

ein starker Raucher a heavy smoker starker Regen heavy rain

ein Mann von Gewicht a man of substance

RHYME-MOTIVATED COMPOUNDS These are very common in present-day English.

Examples are flower-power, brain-drain, culture-vulture, legal eagle, nitty-gritty, pelvic
politics, dream team, lunch bunch.

cardboard city Obdachlosensiedlung

legal eagle Staranwalt
pelvic politics Politik, die sich mit Sexualangelenheiten beschäftigt
castle Catholic Katholiken, die sich in Irland wie Protestanten benehmen
road rage Ungehobeltes Verhalten im Strassenverkehr
axe tax Nieder mit der Einkommensteuer!
shop till you drop Einkaufen, bis man nicht mehr kann!
publish or perish Veröffentlichen oder untergehen!

German tends to favour alliteration, which is found in many established phrases such as Ross
und Reiter nennen, mit Kind und Kegel, über Stock und Stein.

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS This is a curious phenomenon which has evolved in public life,
particularly in the United States in the last decade or so. Basically it requires that, for any
expression which is deemed politically or socially sensitive, a replacement must be found
which is a kind of intangible paraphrase which is less direct, less straightforward and ultimately
exonerates the user of the phrase from any responsibility which might otherwise be attached to
its use.
 Raymond Hickey Contrastive Linguistics Page 27 of 33

Normal phrase ‘PC’ phrase

old age pensioners senior citizens
prison correctional facility
blind visually impaired
rubbish collector sanitary engineer
caught lying factually challenged
lie credibility gap
air bombing air support
shot down by own forces victim of friendly fire

Contrastive pragmatics

USE OF DISCOURSE PARTICLES These are small grammatical elements which are used in
specific situations in conversations and which are intended to attain a certain pragmatic effect.
Here are a few examples to illustrate what is meant.

1) Wir können heute abend hinfahren, oder?

We could go there this evening, couldn’t we?

2) Du willst nicht etwa hinfahren, oder?

You’re not going to drive there, are you?

3) Meinetwegen könnte er den Wagen saubermachen.

Zum Beispiel!
He could clean the car so he could.
You bet he could! / Sure he could!

THIRD PERSON REFERENCE Referring to a third person in a conversation who is present

by means of a pronoun, he/she, is regarded as very impolite in English but is quite acceptable
in German. In English one must refer to the person in question by his/her name when present.

EXCLAMATIONS Such a linguistically peripheral area as this nonetheless shows systematic

differences between German and English. For instance two exclamations, which express pain
and surprise, occur frequently in both languages and are formally different.

Aua! Ouch! /aut$/

Hoppla! Whoops(-a-daisy)! /wups (q deizi)/

CONVERSATION Last but not least one should mention that the manner in which Germans
and English speakers carry out conversation differs not insignificantly. Two things should be
remembered by Germans when interacting with English speakers: (i) remember to always say
‘please’ when making a request and to say ‘thankyou’ when you have received what you
requested, (ii) when you are talking to someone make sure that you do not only talk about
yourself, ask to the other person how he/she is doing, what’s news, what have he/she has
done recently, etc. (it is quite inacceptable in English to only talk about yourself). These
matters depend, of course, on individuals but in general Germans tend not to observe (i) and
 Raymond Hickey Contrastive Linguistics Page 28 of 33

(ii) to the same extent. If you do not, then your English friends may think you are somewhat
‘impolite’ or ‘unfriendly’ or lack social skills (without necessarily being able to put their finger
on what it is that makes them think so).

A contrastive sketch of Turkish and English

The intention of this section is to provide students whose native language is Turkish with some
idea of major structural differences between English and Turkish and to point out some of the
more obvious pitfalls which one should take care about. Those features of Turkish which are
not likely to lead to difficulties will not be dealt with as they are either neglected by the Turkish
speaker of English or they lead to positive transfer and hence go unnoticed. For instance
Turkish has a complex nominal and verbal morphology, most of which can be simply be
ignored when learning English. It is obvious that in second language learning it is easier to
neglect distinctions rather than introduce new ones so the many verbal endings, e.g. in
geliyorum [gel + iyorum] ‘I come’, are simply abandoned by the Turkish speaker of English.

Vowel harmony provides another such case. This system requires that endings
attached to bases must agree with the vowel(s) of the base in respect of frontness or
backness, for instance evi [ev + i] ‘the house’ and adami [adam + i] ‘the human being’
show the use of /i/ and /*/, the accusative suffix, when attached to a stem with a front vowel
and one with a low or back vowel respectively. This system is not relevant to English and can
be simply ignored by Turkish speakers.

HISTORICAL OUTLINE It is usual to divide Turkish into the following periods. 1) Archaic
Turkish, also called Gökturkish, from the 8th century onwards. It is documented in
inscriptions from the regions of the Siberian rivers of Orchon (now in Mongolia) and Yennisey
and was later replaced by Uigur when this group became dominant in the 9th century. 2) Old
Turkish from about 1200 to 1500. After the conversion to Islam one distinguishes a western
group (which includes Oghusish) and an eastern group which developed into Jaghataish in the
14th century. The eastern group is sometimes called after Turkish rulers, e.g. the language of
the Hakans and later the language of the Golden Horde. 3) Middle Turkish (1500-1800)
arose on the basis of Anatolian (central) dialects and is associated with the period of Osmanic
domination. 4) Modern Turkish is used to refer to the language from the 18th century to the
present. The classical period for literature was that which set in after the taking of
Constantinople (present-day Istanbul) in 1453.
Contemporary Turkish is written with the Latin alphabet to which have been added a
dotless i for the /*/ sound, ü and ö to indicate front vowels and a g with a hacek on it to
indicate a /g/ sound which has been vocalised and now lengthens the vowel which precedes it.
Before 1929, when Kemal Atatürk introduced the Latin alphabet as part of his modernisation
programme for Turkey, the language was written with the Arabic alphabet. Present-day
Turkic languages in the former Soviet Union, such as Turkmen, Uzbek and Kazakh, are
written with modified forms of the Cyrillic alphabet developed since their annexation by Russia
in the 19th century.
Due to the religious affiliation of the Turks with Islam and their general contact with
Arabs and Iranians in their history there are many Arabic and Persian loans such as kitap
‘book’ or ikamet ‘stay, live’ (from Arabic). These words often retain vowel length which is
 Raymond Hickey Contrastive Linguistics Page 29 of 33

otherwise not so distinctive in Turkish.

GENETIC AFFILIATION Turkish is the main member of the Turkic group of languages. This
is one of the great language families of Euroasia. The Turkic family itself belongs to a larger
group called Altaic, after the Altay mountains in southern Siberia where the language family is
thought to have originated. The remaining two groups are Mongolian and Manchu-Tungus
which, all in all, comprise some 40 languages. Written documentation for the latter two groups
only appears after the Middle Ages and their affinity with Turkic is distant. For Turkic itself,
remains go back to the 8th century.
Note that the Turkic group and the entire Altaic family is separate from
Indo-European but may be distantly related to Uralic, the language family to which Finnish,
Estonian, Hungarian and many minor languages beyond the Urals belong. Uralic is itself
divided into Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic, the group which contains the Siberian languages of
the family.

PRESENT-DAY DISTRIBUTION The group of Turkic languages today stretches

geographically in a broad band from Turkey in the west to the Turkic regions in the south of
the former Soviet Union. Some of these areas are now independent countries, albeit still under
strong Russian influence. The other main languages which also represent state languages are
Azerbaijani (in Azerbaijan), Turkmen (in Turkmenia), Uzbek (in Uzbekistan), Kazakh (in
Kazakhstan) and Kirghiz (in Kirghizistan). Note that Tadzhik (in Tadzhikistan) is an
Indo-European language of the Indo-Aryan group and ultimately related to Persian, Kurdish
and many of the languages of present-day northern India. Some of the smaller Turkic
languages found in the area of the former Soviet Union, where they are often languages of
regions but not of republics, are structurally quite distant from the main one just listed. This
applies to Tatar and above all to Chuvash which is sometimes considered a separate branch
of the family.
Turkish is spoken by about 60 million people, mostly in the state of Turkey, but there
are large groups in diaspora, in the Balkans (in Bulgaria for instance), on Cyprus (in the
self-appointed state of Turkish Cyprus) and in many northern European countries - above all
in Germany where Turks first moved as seasonal workers, later settling and representing a
sizeable portion of the foreign population. In Turkey itself there are large numbers of speakers
of other languages, the principal group being the Kurds in the south-east of the country,
roughly in the area around the regional centre of Diyarbakir. Some 10 million Kurds
(something between 12% and 15% of the population of Turkey) are spread across the border
region of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and the Iran. Other groups in Turkey are Arabs, Armenians (of
Indo-European stock), Azerbaijani and some Georgian and Romani (original gypsies of
Indo-Aryan stock).

The typology of Turkish

TURKISH MORPHOLOGY Turkish is a very consistent language from the point of view of
its grammatical structure, i.e. its type. The main principle is that of agglutination. This type of
strategy makes use of single elements with single meanings which are attached to a lexical
base to indicate grammatical categories. Note furthermore that there is a definite order to
these elements, for instance the plural suffix is closer to the stem than the possessive one.
 Raymond Hickey Contrastive Linguistics Page 30 of 33

Principle: Lexical Base + Ending_1 + Ending_2...

Example: ev ler im ‘my houses’
[house plural poss.pro.]

There is a basic difference between an agglutinative and a synthetic language. While it is true
that a synthetic language like German or Latin use endings (inflections) with these languages
each ending can have more than one function, can indicate more than one grammatical
category as with Latin domini ‘of the master’ (from dominus) in which the ending i indicates
singular, masculine, genitive. This is not the case in an agglutinative language. Here the
absolute rule holds: one inflection, one function. For instance the plural ending in Turkish
always indicates plurality and nothing else. If one wishes to put a noun in the dative case one
must add a plural suffix to the lexical base and then a dedicated dative suffix.
The suffixes in an agglutinative language as usually invariable. True there is vowel
harmony in Turkish which means that suffixes occur in two forms, one for bases with a front
vowel (plural: -ler) and one for bases with a low or back vowel (plural: -lar), with very few
exceptions. What one does not have is the frequent irregularity of endings which is typical of
synthetic languages - just think of the many plural types in German. In English there are some
remnants of the previous more complex plural system, umlaut plurals (man : men; tooth :
teeth), r-plurals and n-plurals, sometimes combined: ox : oxen; child : children. This type of
situation is unknown in Turkish and students should be careful to note these irregular forms
correctly. Even more attention should be paid to the irregularities in the verb system of
English, particularly the system of strong and weak verbs (vocalic and consonantal type)
which has no equivalent in Turkish.
A feature of agglutinative languages is that they do not usually have many prepositions
or postpositions. The reason is simple: given the transparent morphological structure and the
productive use of affixes there is no need for prepositions or postpositions which indicate
grammatical relations. Quite the opposite is the case in English. Because of the lack of
grammatical inflections the semantics of such cases as dative must be expressed by the use of
prepositions which have a grammatical interpretation, e.g. to which expresses who benefits
from an action as in The book was given to him.

Ankara yolundayim ‘I am on the way to Ankara’

[Ankara way-on + I-am]
Ankara Türkiye’dedir ‘Ankara is in Turkey’
[Ankara Turkey-in + is]
yar∉na kadar ‘until tomorrow’
[tomorrow-dative until]

The principle of agglutination is kept to strictly in Turkish and it has resulted in many
constructions which appear unusual to speakers of Indo-European and which conversely may
lead to difficulties for Turkish speakers of English. For example, negation in verbal phrases is
reached by means of a suffix which is placed closed to the base, before the personal ending.

gelmiyorum görmüyorum okumuyorum

[come + not + I] [see + not + I] [read + not + I]
 Raymond Hickey Contrastive Linguistics Page 31 of 33

Verbal suffixes are common when expressing the notion of being, this is always expressed in
English with a form of the verb be in a so-called equative sentence.

gençim from genç ‘young’ + -im ‘I am’

[young I-am]
gençtir from genç ‘young’ + -tir ‘he is’
[young he-is]

THE USE OF THE ARTICLE Turkish does not possess a definite article, only an indefinite
one. This means that a noun employed without an article is interpreted in a definite sense.
Turkish speakers in English must be careful not to neglect the definite article. While it is true
that this is not necessary in a generic sense in English, e.g. She finds drama fascinating, it
must be used when a noun is qualified by a following complement as in The dramas of Shaw.
The indefinite article does not cause problems as its use represents a case of positive transfer
from Turkish in English.
The indefinite article of Turkish always keeps its position before the noun even if
accompanied by an adjective. Care should be taken not to apply this type of phrase structure
to English.

enteresan bir film ‘an interesting film’

[interesting a film]

SYNTAX: PRE-MODIFICATION IN TURKISH The basic word-order of Turkish is SOV.

This is typical of most agglutinative languages and was found in Old English and still is in
German in subordinate clauses. English has, however, long since switched to an SVO order
where the position of an element in a sentence, i.e. vis à vis the main verb indicates the
function it plays in the sentence.

Ankara’ya gitmek istiyorum ‘I want to go to Ankara’

[Anakara-to go want-I]

Türkiye büyük bir memlekettir ‘Turkey is a big country’

[Turkey big a country-is]

Note again that there is specific order of elements vis à vis the verb. The nominative comes
closer to the actual verb form than do other cases such as the dative.

Denizde bir vapur var ‘There is a steamboat on the sea’

[sea-on a steamboat is]

A consequence of the pre-modifying form of Turkish is that it does not use a conjunction to
introduce relative clauses. Instead the contents of a relative clause would be expressed as a
pre-modifying phrase prefixed to a noun.

Antalya’dan gelen vapur

[Antalya-from coming steamboat]
‘the steamboat which is coming from Antalya’
 Raymond Hickey Contrastive Linguistics Page 32 of 33

Turkish students of English must pay attention not to form sentences which involve any type of
literal translation of Turkish pre-modifying phrases. Always remember to encode such
information in relative clauses which are placed after the noun they modify.
Another feature of pre-modifying languages is that the genitive precedes the
nominative. This is somewhat different in English as the prepositional genitive follows the
nominative but with the inflected genitive it precedes (the book of the teacher; the teacher’s
book)

trenin hareketi ‘the departure of the train’

[train departure]

This premodification does not present problems when the genitive corresponds to an adjective
in English as in

Türk dili ‘the Turkish language’

[Turkish-gen language]

The sound system of English and Turkish

The inventory of sounds in Turkish is quite similar to that in English. Both languages have four
alveolar or alveo-palatal fricatives and two affricates consisting of a stop and a fricative of the
latter type: /s, z, $, g, t$, dg/. However there is no equivalent to the ambidental fricatives of
English /2, 3/ so that Turkish students must pay particular attention to realise these segments
correctly.
Be careful not to phonetically palatalise consonants before front vowels as many
speakers of Turkish do in their own language, e.g. with the verb stems gel- [g”el] ‘come’ and
git- [g”it] ‘go’. There is a degree of palatalisation in English but it is important not to
exaggerate it. There is no equivalent to the yumus,ak g of Turkish in English and do not be
tempted to produce vowel lengthening or diphthongisation of a vowel before /g/ or before /v/
which frequently has this effect in Turkish.
Many speakers of Turkish have a velarised realisation of their /l/ phoneme, i.e. [1].
Now this sound only occurs in syllable-final position in English, the /l/ being alveolar in initial
position, [l]. If you are aiming at Received Pronunciation then you should observe this
distribution. A clear [l] is permissible in all positions in various standard forms of English, such
as American English. However to consistently use [1] is typical only of certain dialects of
English, such as those in the north-west of the country. Do not roll the /r/ in English and do not
pronounce it with any degree of friction except perhaps when it comes immediately after /t/ or
/d/ as in try or dry.

VOWEL EQUIVALENTS There is no æ-sound in Turkish and students should be careful not
to use their /e/-sound for this as this is too close as a realisation of the English sound. The two
types of high unrounded vowel in Turkish, /i/ and /*/ do not exist in English. However, there is
a general feature of English that short vowels are realised more centrally than corresponding
long vowels, i.e. beat /bi:t/ and bit /bit/ differ not only in vowel length but also in the fact the
 Raymond Hickey Contrastive Linguistics Page 33 of 33

vowel in the second word is pronounced more towards the centre of the mouth. The degree
of centralisation is slight and nothing like the retraction for Turkish /*/ so that this vowel is not
acceptable as a realisation of /i/.
The above remarks lead to a consideration of vowel length. While it is true that
Turkish observes differences in vowel length for the low vowels, as in âdet [<:det] ‘habit’
versus adet [<det] ‘number’, in general the phonemic distinction between long and short
vowels is slight and does not show anything like the systematic status it has in English. Hence
the necessity of Turkish students to take particular care to observe length distinctions for
vowels in English.
The front rounded vowels of Turkish do not of course exist in English and can be thus
ignored.

STRESS ACCENT AS OPPOSED TO LEVEL ACCENT An important feature of Turkish is

its very level accent. It would appear to the listener that no syllable of a word carries main
stress. Now this situation is diametrically opposed to English which has a strong stress accent.
Turkish students must attain this when learning English, for instance the word family is
pronounced //fæmili/. Indeed because of this stress accent the syllable immediately following
is deleted if another follows, hence the word just quoted is usually realised as [/fæmli]. This
applies to very many words in English so that syncope of unstressed vowels is typical of good
English pronunciation as in holiday [/h>ldei].

REDUCTION OF UNSTRESSED SYLLABLES A consequence of the stress accent of

English is that unstressed vowels are reduced in quality. This is not a slurred pronunciation but
quite intentional. Turkish students should pay attention that they reduce vowels where
necessary, for instance about and sofa are [q/baut] and [/squfq] respectively and not [a/baut]
and [/squfa].

CLUSTERS AND THE PHONOTACTICS OF ENGLISH In keeping with its level accent
and clear agglutinative character Turkish does not have any consonant clusters. This makes it
particularly difficult for students with Turkish as a native language to master such consonant
groups as those in months [mvn2s], fifths [fif2s], texts [teksts]. There is no simple solution
to the differences in phonotactics between the two languages. Only constant vigilance and
practice on the part of Turkish students can lead to the correct results. The first step on the
way to this goal is a heightened awareness which has been the aim of the current contrastive
sketch.

Summary Students with Turkish as their mother tongue should pay attention to typical kinds
of interference due to the differences in structures between English and Turkish. Interference is
found most obviously on the sound level. The strong stress accent of English is often not
realised by Turkish students as their mother tongue has a fairly even distribution of stress
across the syllables of words. Furthermore students should distinguish between long and short
vowels, take care to reduce unstressed syllables and to master the phonotactics of English,
with its difficult clusters, and pay attention to pronouncing the ambidental fricatives /2, 3/
properly.