本書從形式與功能兩方面繫統探討了英語和漢語等語言在語音、音位、詞彙、語法、語篇和語用層次上具有的重要差異，以及這些差異對於翻譯理論、普通語言學、英語寫作、外語教學法、雙語詞典編篡、跨文化交際等領域內的研究與實踐具有的直接或間接啟示。
本書主要創新之處包括：從理論與實踐兩方面分析闡明了英漢語言研究中的許多重要問題，並對英漢語言結構與功能差異背後的深層原因進行了探究；用符號學方法對句法和語義對比的理論基礎進行了繫統研究；在對語言翻譯、外語寫作和口頭交際特別重要的語篇和語用對比分析方面做了較多的填空補缺工作。
本書是國內第一部用英文撰寫的語言共時對比研究著作，對於語言學、翻譯學和外語教學等領域內的理論研究而言是一本材料翔實、觀點與方法獨到的專著，對於高等院校英、漢語言相關專業研究生的課程學習亦是一本有價值的參考書。

本書主要特點與創新之處包括：（1）探討了英漢語言結構與功能差異背後的深層原因（如造成英漢語親屬稱謂繁簡之別以及英漢語語篇結構差異的社會歷史與文化心理因素等）；（2）從理論與實踐兩方面闡明了英漢語言研究中的許多重要問題（如英語主語突出與漢語話題突出這兩種迥然不同的信息結構、詩歌翻譯歸化與外化的語言學依據等）；（3）國內已有的相關研究集中於語音、音位、詞彙和語法層次上的對比分析，對翻譯、外語寫作和外語交際特別重要的篇章和語用對比方面的研究相當缺少，本書針對此情況做了比較多的填空補缺工作（如對英漢語篇章結構上的差異與中國學生英語寫作與英漢互譯問題之間的關繫的研究、對不同語言會話結構方面的語用特點與跨文化交往中溝通與對談的技巧之間的關繫的討論等）；（4）強調結構與生成的概念，自始至終貫穿著現代科學的分析精神與方法；（5）在句法和語義對比基礎的討論中，作者引入了符號學概念，在國內同類型著作中屬於首創。

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES\t9
PREFACE\t\t11
CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION\t1
1.1\tWhat is Contrastive Linguistics?\t1
1.1.1\tThe Name and Nature of Contrastive Linguistics\t2
1.1.1.1\tLinguistics\t2
1.1.1.2\tContrastive Linguistics (Contrastive Analysis)\t4
1.1.2\tMicro-Contrastive Linguistics and Macro-Contrastive Linguistics\t10
1.2\tWhy Contrastive Linguistics?\t11
1.2.1\tThe Theoretical Need for Contrastive Linguistics\t12
1.2.2\tThe Practical Need for Contrastive Linguistics\t13
1.3\tThe History and Development of Contrastive Linguistics\t18
Questions for Discussion and Research\t26
CHAPTER 2 THE PRINCIPLES AND METHODS OF CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS\t28
2.1\tBasic Assumptions and Hypotheses Underlying Contrastive Analysis (CA)\t28
2.1.1\tThe Psychological Basis of Contrastive Analysis: Transfer\t29
2.1.2\tThe Strong and Weak Versions of Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis\t30
2.1.3\tThe Predictive Power of Contrastive Analysis\t31
2.2\tTheoretical Contrastive Analysis and Applied Contrastive Analysis\t32
2.3\tCriteria for Comparison\t37
2.3.1\tThe Surface Structure (SS)\t38
2.3.2\tThe Deep Structure (DS)\t40
2.3.3\tTranslation Equivalence\t44
2.4\tProcedures of Contrastive Analysis\t49
Questions for Discussion and Research\t50

CHAPTER 3 PHONETIC AND PHONOLOGICAL CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS\t52
3.1\tPhonetics and Phonology\t52
3.2\tContrastive Phonetics\t54
3.2.1\tArticulatory Phonetics\t54
3.2.1.1\tVocal organs (articulators) and the dynamics of voice production\t54
3.2.1.2\tThe modulation of speech sounds\t58
3.2.2\tAcoustic Phonetics\t60
3.2.2.1\tFrequency\t60
3.2.2.2\tAmplitude of vibration\t61
3.2.2.3\tTimbre\t61
3.2.3\tAuditory Phonetics\t62
3.3\tContrastive Phonology\t65
3.3.1\tPhonological Contrastive Analysis\t65
3.3.1.1\tThe functional statuses of comparable speech sounds in different languages\t65
3.3.1.2\tPronunciation problems caused by phonemic asymmetries and by allophonic differences\t66
3.3.1.3\tThe functional loads of comparable phonological contrasts in different languages\t67
3.3.2\tTwo Phonological Models\t68
3.3.2.1\tThe taxonomic or structural phonology\t68
3.3.2.2\tGenerative phonology\t69
3.4\tSuprasegmental Contrastive Analysis\t71
3.4.1\tThe Contrastive Analysis of Pitch\t72
3.4.1.1\tTone\t72
3.4.1.2\tIntonation\t73
3.4.2\tThe Contrastive Analysis of Juncture\t75
Questions for Discussion and Research\t76
CHAPTER 4 LEXICAL CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS\t78
4.1\tContrastive Lexical Morphology\t79
4.1.1\tLexical/Derivational Morphology and Inflectional Morphology\t79
4.1.2\tMorpheme\t80
4.1.2.1\tFree morpheme\t80
4.1.2.2\tBound morpheme\t80
4.1.2.2.1\t Affix\t80
4.1.2.2.2\t Combining form\t81
4.1.2.3\tStem (base morpheme) and root\t81
4.1.3\tA Comparison of the Makeup of English and Chinese Word Stock\t82
4.2\tContrastive Lexical Semantics\t84
4.2.1\tThe Motivation (Internal Form) of Words\t85
4.2.1.1\tPhonetic motivation\t86
4.2.1.2\tGraphemic motivation\t86
4.2.1.3\tMorphological motivation\t87
4.2.1.4\tSemantic motivation\t87
4.2.1.5\tA contrastive analysis of the morphological motivation of English, German, and Chinese words\t87
4.2.2\tSense Relationships\t91
4.2.2.1\tSyntagmatic semantic relationship: Collocation\t92
4.2.2.2\tParadigmatic semantic relationships\t94
4.2.2.2.1\t Synonymy\t94
4.2.2.2.2\t Antonymy\t95
4.2.2.2.3\t Hyponymy\t96
4.2.2.2.4\t Incompatibility\t98
4.2.2.3\tLexical fields and lexical gaps\t98
4.2.3\tSemantic Features\t103
4.3\tThree Active Areas\t107
4.3.1\tAnthropology\t108
4.3.2\tTranslation\t114
4.3.3\tBilingual Lexicography\t118
Questions for Discussion and Research\t119
CHAPTER 5 GRAMMATICAL CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS\t122
5.1\tThe Concept of Grammar\t122
5.2\tThe Contrastive Analysis of Inflectional Morphology\t124
5.2.1\tGrammatical Categories\t126
5.2.1.1\tAspect\t126
5.2.1.2\tCase\t128
5.2.1.3\tGender\t129
5.2.1.4\tMood\t129
5.2.1.5\tNumber\t129
5.2.1.6\tPerson\t130
5.2.1.7\tTense\t130
5.2.1.8\tVoice\t130

5.2.2\tA Contrastive Study of the Chinese and English Case Systems\t131
5.3\tSyntactic Contrastive Analysis\t135
5.3.1\tThe Structural Approach (Surface-structure Contrasts)\t135
5.3.2\tThe Weaknesses of the Structural Approach\t139
5.3.3\tThe Generative Approaches\t140
5.3.3.1\tThe Transformational Grammarian approach (For deep-structure contrasts)\t141
5.3.3.2\tThe Case Grammarian approach (For deeper-structure contrasts)\t147
Questions for Discussion and Research\t154
CHAPTER 6 TEXTUAL CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS\t156
6.1\tText and Discourse\t158
6.2\tThe Defining Characteristics of the Text\t159
6.3\tThe Contrastive Analysis of Textual Cohesion\t162
6.3.1\tSemantic Cohesion\t164
6.3.1.1\tReference\t164
6.3.1.2\tSubstitution\t167
6.3.1.3\tEllipsis\t168
6.3.1.4\tConjunction\t170
6.3.1.5\tLexical relationships ("lexical cohesion")\t174
6.3.2\tStructural Cohesion\t175
6.3.2.1\tParallelism\t175
6.3.2.2\tComparison\t180
6.3.2.3\tInformation structure\t180
6.3.2.3.1\t Theme and Rheme\t181
6.3.2.3.2\t Functional Sentence Perspective (FSP)\t182
6.3.2.3.3\t Topic and Comment\t183
6.3.3\tDifferent Languages Preferring Different Cohesive Devices\t192
6.4\tThe Contrastive Analysis of Textual Coherence\t192
Questions for Discussion and Research\t200
CHAPTER 7 PRAGMATIC CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS\t203
7.1\tSpeech Act Theory\t203
7.1.1\tSpeech Acts\t204
7.1.1.1\tPerformatives and constatives\t204
7.1.1.2\tThree kinds of speech acts\t204
7.1.1.3\tFive basic types of illocutionary acts\t205
7.1.2\tFelicity Conditions\t206
7.2\tConversational Interaction\t207
7.2.1\tThe Structural Components of Conversation\t208
7.2.1.1\tOpenings\t208
7.2.1.2\tThe maintaining of a conversation\t210
7.2.1.3\tClosings\t215
7.2.2\tPrinciples of Conversational Organization\t217
7.2.2.1\tThe Cooperative Principle (Be Clear)\t217
7.2.2.1.1\t Conversational maxims\t217
7.2.2.1.2\t Conversational implicature\t218
7.2.2.2\tThe Rules of Politeness (Be Polite)\t221
7.2.2.2.1\t Rule 1: Don't impose on your hearer\t221
7.2.2.2.2\t Rule 2: Give the hearer options\t223
7.2.2.2.3\t Rule 3: Make the hearer feel good: Be friendly\t223
Questions for Discussion and Research\t225
REFERENCES\t\t227
INDEX\t\t235