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HUNGARIAN-ENGLISH LINGUISTIC CONTRASTS. A PRACTICAL APPROACH 2. COMPOUND WORDS In Hungarian there are more compounds than in English. Hungarian learners tend to use compounds where English uses simple words. CONSIDER THESE EXAMPLES AND DISCUSS: WHY DO THESE ERRORS OCCUR? Hungarian: compound English: simple word Interlanguage (Hunglish): compound íróasztal desk "writing table kutatómunka research "research work tűzhely stove, cooker *fireplace PRAGMATIC DIFFERENCES WHAT FORMULAS DO YOU USE IN PARTICULAR SITUATIONS? How DO YOU SAY IN ENGLISH? Ez többé nem fordul elő. Jó étvágyat! Elnézést, nem tudná megmondani, merre van az állomás? Elnézést, nem hallottam mit mondott. WHAT BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE DO YOU NEED TO INTERPRET CULTURE-BOUND REFERENCES LIKE THIS: But apart from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play? 1.2 CLASSICAL CONTRASTIVE LINGUISTICS In the first half of the 20" century structural linguistics became the dominant paradigm in linguistics. Following Saussure (1916/1967), it focused its attention on the system of language (langue) as against its use (parole). The system of language was interpreted as a set of structural (grammatical and phonological) patterns, and linguistics was supposed to identify these patterns without reference to meaning. Contrastive linguistics (also known as contrastive analysis, CA) developed in the 50s and early 60s of the 20" century, based on structural linguistics. It was intended to be applied linguistics: it was hoped that the results of (structural) linguistics could be applied in the teaching of foreign languages, making it more efficient. It was assumed that knowledge of a language (linguistic competence) was equivalent to knowing the structural patterns of that language, so learning a foreign language meant learning the structural patterns of that language. Therefore, the job of linguistics was to provide adequate descriptions of the structural patterns of the two languages, and the job of contrastive linguistics was to compare these descriptions, identifying the differences (the contrasts), so that learners could focus on practising the patterns that were +18 +
