What do you know about contrastive analysis in linguistics?

In the field of linguistics there are several elements
that are studied in order to understand the semantics, syntax, and morphology of a
language.

Contrastive analysis is a practice used in our
field to, as the name itself says, contrast one language from another. We do this in
order to categorize and differentiate their structure, and sometimes when we
differentiate we are also able to compare and look for similarities that arise as a
result of our investigation.

Why do this? If you think
about it, language is an ever-changing communication tool. Contrastive analysis helps us
understand what changes the language has undergone, and whether these changes are
similar to any other language. It is the best way to tell the story of the language from
the basic foundations of the human proto-language  and all the way until modern
time.

The most interesting aspect of contrastive analysis
is that it gives us the chance to make connections. Change is often the result of a
shift in some historical or social element such as demographic influx, the advent of
war, political unrest, and economic changes, among others. When we make a social
connection within a linguistic perspective, we are literally analyzing history. The
connections between social changes and language changes are extremely interesting, and
can only be discovered with the use of a contrastive analysis. Therefore, contrastive
analysis is one of the most interesting and useful practices in the field of
linguistics.