Professional discourse of contrastive grammar textbooks: the problem of interpretation of key terms

Abstract

INTRODUCTION Comparative studies in linguistics have a long history. Comparison is a general scientific method of research, which is used along with logical analysis, generalization, description and other methods. It is traditionally believed that the heyday of comparative linguistics was the ХІХ century, but the method of comparative or contrastive analysis remains the main in linguistic research in the ХХ and ХХІ centuries, and contrastive grammar has become the main principle of foreign language teaching, so textbooks on this subject are paramount. Comparison or contrast is a property of abstract human thinking, a way of knowing reality, differentiation of similar objects and phenomena, so the category of comparison in logic and philosophy belongs to the key epistemological categories. It is the diversity of the world that determines the constant comparison of human consciousness of different phenomena. Many things, especially in the mental sphere, in the sphere of traditions and habits of the people, public institutions can be understood only by comparison, i.e. it is necessary to find in this or that object something different from the object familiar to us to realize that the usual object has some other features, qualities, properties or, conversely, to understand what it lacks, why there are no certain features, qualities, properties, characteristics 1 . The term comparative (contrastive or confrontational) linguistics is interpreted in science in many ways, including as a linguistic direction that studies two or more languages to compare their structures and identify