Contrastive analysis of the dependent subject clause in Albanian and English

Abstract

During the process of foreign language learning, it often happens that students are influenced by native language rules while formulating their ideas in a foreign language, thus failing to pay due account of the fact that linguistic aspects are different in different languages. In light of this finding, this paper/presentation intends to make a contrastive analysis designed to demonstrate, both from a theoretical and practical perspective, similarities and differences between subject clauses in English and Albanian, from a syntactical point of view. Thefollowing presentation examinessome of the linguistic means used to express a subject clause in both languages; their structural typology (based on the conjugation means); the grammatical agreementsbetween the categories of number and person, both direct or otherwise, that this type of sentence establishes with the predicate of the main clause of a complex sentence; as well as its order in the complex sentence. The similarities and differences we intend tounfold in this analysisare expected to be of value to two target-groups: it shall serve English language students as an example illustrating that failure to take account of these linguistic differences in the way a sentence is formed, would result in the use of grammatically erroneous structures and, consequently, create obstacles in interlingual communication. This presentation shall also serve English language university students who may use this modest and by no means exhausting presentation, and elaborate it to a greater extent and in greater detail in their scientific papers.