Contrastive analysis

A contrastive analysis (CA) describes the structural differences and similarities of two or more languages. Historically it has been used to establish language genealogies. The contrastive analysis hypothesis (Lado, 1957) claims that difficulties in language learning derive from the differences between the new language and the learner’s first language, that errors in these areas of difference derive from first language interference and that these errors can be predicted and remedied by the use of CA.