AN ERROR IN ERROR ANALYSIS1

Jacquelyn Schhchter
American Language Institute, University of Southern California

Presently, a number of proponents of an error analysis

approach to the investigation of 2nd language learning argue that
contrastive analysis (CA) apriori is inadequate as an account of
target language learning problems. They claim that the only
tenable version of CA is an aposteriori approach, i.e. CA in just
those areas that have been proven by error analysis to be
difficulties in production. This claim is disputed in a study
involving the acquisition of English relative clauses by speakers of
Persian, Arabic, Chinese, and Japanese. The aposteriori approach
obscured the fact that the Chinese and Japanese learners have
more difficulty with relative clauses and therefore avoid them, a
fact predicted by the apriori approach.

In the course of the intense debate on the value of the

Contrastive Analysis (CA) hypothesis in the last 10 years, two
clearly differentiated versions have emerged : CA apriori, which is
also called the predictive or strong version, and CA aposteriori,
which is sometimes called the explanatory or weak version. The
terminological distinction “apriori vs. aposteriori” proposed by H.
Gradman (1971a) appears t o be more purely descriptive and less
evaluative than the distinctions “strong vs. weak” or “predictive vs.
explanatory.” CA apriori is said to be a point by point analysis of
the phonological, morphological, syntactic, or other subsystem of
two languages. Given two theoretically compatible linguistic de-
scriptions of one of these subsystems of language A and language
B, investigators can analyze them and discover the similarities and
differences between them. They do this so that they can make
predictions about what will be the points of difficulty for a
speaker of language A, for example, who is attempting to learn
language B, on the assumption that similarities will be easier to
learn and differences harder. CA apriori advocates generally con-
cede that the prediction of areas of difficulty will not account for
all of the learning problems that occur in the classroom. There will

lThis is a revised version of a paper presented at the Summer Meeting

of the Linguistic Society of America, Amherst, Massachusetts, July 1974.

205
206 LANGUAGE LEARNING, VOL. 24, NO. 2

be problems caused by such variables as previous teaching and

motivation.
The proponents of CA aposteriori take a different methodo-
logical approach. Assuming that speakers of language A are found
by the process of error analysis to make recurring errors in a
particular construction in their attempts to learn language B, the
investigator makes an analysis of the construction in language B,
and the comparable construction in language A, in order to
discover why the errors occur. CA aposteriori is said t o be a
subcomponent of the more encompassing field of error analysis.
Those who propose an error analysis approach to the study of
second language acquisition point out that both linguists and
teachers have paid too much attention to predicting what the
learner will do, and have not paid enough attention t o the study of
what the learner actually does. They stress the claim that many
language learning errors do not result from native language inter-
ference but rather from the strategies employed by the learner in
the acquisition of the target language and also from the mutual
interference of items within the target language. There is sufficient
evidence a t this point to indicate that these claims are correct, and
that error analysis is a useful tool in the study of second language
acquisition.
However, there are a number of people who are currently
taking a more extreme view. (W. R. Lee 1957, R. Whitman and K.
Jackson 1972, H. Gradman 1971a, 1971b, W. Ritchie 1967.) They
argue that the only version of CA that has any validity, either for
the classroom or for the investigation of second language acquisi-
tion, is CA aposteriori. In the numerous articles which present
arguments against the apriori version, there are two objections that
occur repeatedly. The first is that CA apriori sometimes predicts
difficulties that d o not occur, especially in the syntactic subcom-
ponent of a language, resulting in a waste of time in the classroom.
And it is argued that if wrong predictions are made using the
apriori hypothesis, then the hypothesis itself must be wrong. The
second recurring claim is that CA aposteriori provides a shortcut
to the long and arduous job of doing CA at all. It allows the
investigator to focus his energy and attention in just those areas
that are proven, by error analysis, t o be the difficult ones.
It is necessary at this point t o make the assumptions under-
lying the aposteriori approach explicit, especially since its advo-
cates have so far failed to d o so. The main assumption is that error
analysis will reveal to the investigator just what difficulties the
learners in fact have: the difficulties in the target language will
 AN ERROR IN ERROR ANALYSIS 2 07

show up as errors in production. The second assumption is that the

frequency of occurrence of specific errors will give evidence of
their relative difficulty.
While the aposteriori approach appears, on the surface, to
have certain merits, it is my contention that the weaknesses of this
approach are more serious than the weaknesses of the apriori
approach. In both the apriori and aposteriori approach, there are
weaknesses in the CA of phonological systems (the area in which
most CA work has been done), for reasons which I will attempt to
explain later. But the aposteriori weaknesses, which are due to the
previously mentioned assumptions, become glaringly obvious in the
area of syntax.
In order t o support this claim I would like t o present certain
facts that I have discovered about the difficulties that different
groups of foreign students have with the acquisition of English
relative clauses. As background for this research I compared the
major restrictive relative clause formation (RCF) strategies of 4
unrelated languages, Persian, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, with the
major restrictive RCF strategies of English. From this comparison I
was able t o make predictions of probable areas of difficulty for the
speakers of each group in producing relative clauses in English. I
made no attempt t o set up a hierarchy of difficulty since I feel
that at this point hierarchies of difficulty are premature. I then
analyzed “free” (no controls for structure) compositions of some
Persian, Arab, Chinese, and Japanese students studying English at
the American Language Institute, in the University of Southern
California. There were 50 compositions from each language group,
25 compositions from intermediate level classes, and 25 from
advanced level. I extracted all of the relative clauses from these
compositions, and analyzed them with respect t o certain criteria
which I will mention shortly. I reasoned that if the aposteriori
advocates were correct, the information that I had gained from the
apriori comparison would provide less in the way of explanation of
errors than the information some other investigator would have
gained from error analysis and CA aposteriori alone. Furthermore,
again if the aposteriori advocates were correct, I would have
predicted some difficulties which did not in fact occur.
The information on RCF strategies in the particular language
was derived for the most part from the work of E. Keenan and B.
Comrie (1972) who have investigated RCF in some 40 languages.
Their material is rich and complex and can not be completely
summarized here. What I shall do is mention 3 main dimensions
with regard to which, as they point out, languages can differ in
208 LANGUAGE LEARNING, VOL. 24, NO. 2

their RCF strategies, describing for each dimension only the 5

languages of concern t o this paper. Information on Japanese was
provided by Matt Shibatani and Masakazu Watabe; information on
Chinese was provided by Charles Li. (Another dimension con-
sidered in this study was what noun phrases can be relativized, but
I found that I had insufficient evidence t o make conclusions with
regard t o it.)
Dimension 1: Position of relative clause with respect to the
head noun. Relative clauses can occur either t o the left of the head
NP (Chinese and Japanese) or t o the right of it (English, Persian,
Arabic) or both (no languages in this study). With respect to this
dimension, the prediction is that the Japanese and Chinese would
have difficulty, but the Persians and Arabs would not.
Dimension 2: How relative clauses are marked. Relative
clauses are marked as subordinate in a number of ways. The only
ones relevant to this study are: (1)the introduction of an arbitrary
subordination marker between the head NP and the relative clause
(English that, Persian he, Arabic illi, Chinese d a ) ; (2) the insertion
of a pronominal particle between the head NP and the relative
clause (English who, whom, which, whose); (3) no subordination
marker or pronoun, but subordinate affixes in the restrictive clause
(Japanese). The prediction in this case is that the Japanese learners
would have difficulty with both the subordination marker that,
and with the relative pronouns who, whom, which, whose, whereas
the others would have difficulty only with the latter.
Dimension 3: The occurrence of a pronominal reflex. English
does not have these pronouns, but the other 4 languages do,
although not in all NP positions. Table 1 summarizes the possibili-
ties in the 5 languages of concern here (where + is obligatory, - is
obligatorily absent, (+) is ambiguous between sometimes obligatory
and optional).

TABLE 1
Pronominal reflexes in five languages

Subj. Dir. Obj. Ind. Obj. Obj. Prep. PossNP Obj. Comp.Part.

Persian (+) + + + + +
Arabic (+) (+) + + + +
Chinese - - + + + +
Japanese - - - (+I
English - - - - - -
 AN ERROR IN ERROR ANALYSIS 209

If English did have these pronouns, the following would be

examples:
Subj: the boy that he came
Dir. Obj: the boy that John hit him
Ind. Obj: the boy that I sent a letter t o him
Obj. Prep: the boy that I set near him
PossNP: the boy that his father died
Obj. Comp. Part: the boy that John is taller than him
The prediction of difficulty here varies for each language, with
Japanese learners predicted to have least and Persian learners most
difficulties.
After the apriori predictions were identified, I then undertook
an error analysis. I wanted t o find how many errors were made by
each group relative t o the total number of RC’s produced, and
then, what kinds of errors each group made.
All restrictive relative clauses-both correct and incorrect-
were identified for each language group. (I counted as a restrictive
relative clause any clause contiguous to a NP which had the
semantic effect of modifying the NP. Any clause which might be
interpretable as either a restrictive or a nonrestrctive clause was
counted as the former). Both the correct and the error groups were
further divided on the basis of the NP in the relative clause that
was relativized, i.e., Subj., Dir. Obj., Ind. Obj., etc.
The overall totals for each group, including an American
control group consisting of a freshman composition class, are listed
in Table 2.
The differences in the total number of relative clauses for
each group are surprising. But for the moment let us focus solely
on the errors. From an inspection of the number of errors of the 4
groups one would be led to suspect that the Persian and Arab
learners have far more difficulty producing relative clauses than do

TABLE 2
Relative clause production in five language groups

Correct Error Total Percentage of errors

Persian 131 43 174 25

Arab 123 31 154 20
Chinese 67 9 76 12
Japanese 58 5 63 08
American 173 0 173
210 LANGUAGE LEARNING, VOL. 24, NO. 2

the Chinese and Japanese learners. It might be argued, however,

that since the Persians and Arabs produced more relative clauses
they would be expected to produce more errors also. The signifi-
cant figures would be the percentage of relative clause errors t o the
number of relative clauses produced.
According to these figures and the CA aposteriori hypothesis,
the Japanese and Chinese students have considerably less difficulty
in the acquisition of relative clauses than do the Persian and Arab
students; although they produce fewer relative clauses, the percent-
age of errors is significantly less (p < .025). Notice that if one were
to do an error analysis of the Chinese or Japanese students alone,
he would discover extremely few relative clause errors in the data
and would thus be led t o conclude, given the aposteriori assump-
tions, that RCF is a quite minor problem for speakers of these
languages learning English.
However, what I find striking is the difference in the total
number of relative clauses produced between the Persian (174) and
Arab (154) students on the one hand, and the Chinese (76) and
Japanese (63) students on the other. Why should the former group
spontaneously produce so many more relative clauses than the
latter group?
A partial answer to this question lies, I think, in the
difference between the two groups with regard t o dimension #1,
the position of the relative clause with regard to the head NP.
Persian and Arabic students already have postnominal relative
clauses in their native languages. Chinese and Japanese students
have prenominal relative clauses in their native languages and must
learn to switch relative clauses to a postnominal position in the
process of learning English. (The switching from pre- to post-
nominal position is not the only problem for the Japanese and
Chinese students; in most cases they must also change the internal
order of the main constituents within the relative clause.) This
difficulty, which was predicted by the apriori approach, surfaces
not in the number of errors they make, but rather in the number
of relative clauses they make. It is plausible and I think correct to
suppose that they produce fewer relative clauses in English because
they are trying to avoid them, and that they only produce them in
English when they are relatively sure that they are correct, which
would also account for the extremely small number of errors they
make. What we encounter is a phenomenon of avoidance due t o a
difficulty which was predicted by the apriori approach, but which
the aposteriori approach can not handle at all.
 AN ERROR IN ERROR ANALYSIS 211

I claim that Persian and Arab learners, on the other hand,

find RCF in English t o be so similar to RCF in their native
languages that they assume they can directly transfer their native
language forms to English. This not only accounts for the larger
number of relative clauses that they make in English, but also for
the larger number of errors, and for the type of errors most
commonly made. The number of relative clauses produced by the
Persian and Arab learners in this study is quite close to the number
produced by typical American freshman college students (as seen
in Table 2). Given that the Persian and Arab learners transfer their
native language forms to English, one would expect numerous
errors in pronominalization (dimension #3) and this is precisely
what the data show. This pronominalization occurs in most NP
positions in both languages, and it is reflected in English in the
following sentences (where the parenthesized number is the actual
number of occurrence of errors of the type).
Arab
S: activities which they are hard (2)
0: the time I spent it in practice (6)
OP: education which they don’t work for it (4)
Persian
S: the people that they are interested in space
research (14)
0: oil which we sell it to other countries (12)
OP: a little pool which the water for it comes
from the mountains (9)
The evidence with regard to dimension #2, the marking of
relative clauses as subordinate, does not provide arguments for
either approach. The apriori prediction is that all groups will have
difficulty in producing the English relative pronouns, who, which,
whom, whose, and there is some evidence that this is the case.
Persian: persons which I have to spend most of my life with
them
Arab: the college who asked my some questions
Chinese: t o help the student whom is going to join in this
contest
(There were no Japanese errors of this type in the study, but this
is hardly surprising, since there were only 5 total errors. I have
some examples of errors of this type, but they are not part of the
study.)
212 LANGUAGE LEARNING, VOL. 24, NO. 2

Let me summarize the evidence that has been presented with

regard to the two dimensions in which the two approaches differ.
In the apriori approach, the prediction was that the Chinese and
Japanese learners would have difficulty with the placement of the
RC, and that the Persian and Arab, and t o some extent the
Chinese learners would have difficulty with pronominalization. The
evidence shows that this was the case. In the aposteriori approach,
with its dependence on error counts, only the pronominalization
problems of the Persian and Arab learners surfaced. Given the
number of errors made by the Chinese and Japanese learners, a
total of 14, the investigator would be led t o assume the Chinese
and Japanese students did not have any difficulty producing RC
structures in English, a conclusion that I think is completely
erroneous.
The total weight of the evidence from this study strongly
supports the apriori approach. The learner apparently constructs
hypotheses about the target language based on knowledge he
already has about his own language. If the constructions are similar
in the learner’s mind, he will transfer his native language strategy
to the target language. If they are radically different, he will either
reject the new construction or use i t only with extreme caution.
On the other hand, error analysis without apriori predictions
simply fails to account for the avoidance phenomenon. If the
student does not produce the constructions he finds difficult, no
amount of error analysis is going to explain why. But this
statement needs t o be tempered somewhat. It is quite possible that
the avoidance phenomenon does not occur in the acquisition of
the phonological subcomponent of the target language, and that
there is a qualitative difference in the acquisition of the phonologi-
cal as opposed to the syntactic subcomponents. In the syntactic
subcomponent, the possibility of paraphrase exists, and the student
can take advantage of paraphrase relations t o avoid constructions
he finds difficult, while still getting his idea across. Examples from
the compositions of Japanese and Chinese students bear this out.
Chinese: We put them in boxes we call them rice boxes.
Japanese: Japan Islands are located right on the Pacific
volcanic zone; that is why we have such kind of
disaster.
As far as you are a human being, that is a normal
thing. Every teacher has to get through.
However, there is no such thing as phonological paraphrase, and
therefore the avoidance phenomenon is difficult, if not impossible.
 AN ERROR IN ERROR ANALYSIS 213

Imagine a student who has trouble making the th sounds in English

trying t o avoid using words that contain them by substituting
other words with the same meaning but with the th sounds. What
happens in fact is that the student is forced t o use the words and
therefore to make errors in the production of the sounds.
It is instructive to look at this controversy from another point
of view. It has often been claimed that CA apriori has predicted
difficulties that d o not turn out to be difficulties in the classroom.
This could be due t o poor analysis or poor predictions about what
is difficult and what is not. But it could be due t o another factor.
CA apriori is neutral between comprehension and production. CA
aposteriori is based on production. If a student finds a particular
construction in the target language difficult t o comprehend it is
very likely that he will try t o avoid producing it. Since the
difficulty lies in the comprehension, an apriori prediction that the
construction will be difficult will not be contradicted by the lack
of production of that construction in the target language. We may
very well be deluding ourselves into thinking that we have done
such a good job teaching a particular construction that the
students are not having any trouble with it at all, whereas in fact
the students have so much trouble with it they refuse to produce
it.
I regard the CA aposteriori hypothesis as untenable and think
it should be abandoned. In the analysis of the difficulties of
English RCF for the speakers of the 4 languages in this study, the
aposteriori approach alone would not have accounted for the
phenomena that occurred. However, the technique of error analysis
proved extremely useful, and I would not like t o see that
technique abandoned. It was the error analysis that showed how
the learners react t o new phenomena. I think it likely that more
work in error analysis will provide us with data from which useful
insights about the second language acquisition process can be
derived. There is no reason t o assume, however, as many people
do, that one and only one approach will provide us with all the
answers t o our questions about second language acquisition. It
seems much more reasonable to suppose that only by a combina-
tion of approaches, say CA apriori predictions, error analysis, and
comprehension testing, will we begin t o amass some reasonably
unassailable information on what the second language learning
process is all about.
214 LANGUAGE LEARNING, VOL. 24, NO. 2

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