Contrastive may refer to one of several concepts in linguistics: *

Contrast (linguistics) In semantics, contrast is a relationship between two discourse segments. On contrast Contrast is often overtly marked by markers such as ''but'' or ''however'', such as in the following examples: # It's raining, ''but'' I am not taking an umbr ...

Contrastive linguistics Contrastive linguistics is a practice-oriented linguistic approach that seeks to describe the differences and similarities between a pair of languages (hence it is occasionally called "''differential'' linguistics"). History While traditional ...

Contrastive distribution Contrastive distribution in linguistics, as opposed to complementary distribution or free variation, is the relationship between two different elements in which both elements are found in the same environment with a change in meaning. Phonology ...

Contrastive analysis Contrastive analysis is the systematic study of a pair of languages with a view to identifying their structural differences and similarities. Historically it has been used to establish language genealogies. Second language acquisition Contrasti ...

Contrastive rhetoric Contrastive rhetoric is the study of how a person's first language and his or her culture influence writing in a second language or how a common language is used among different cultures. The term was first coined by the American applied linguist ...

* Contrastive focus reduplication * Contrastive stress *Contrastive wa; see

Japanese grammar Japanese is an agglutinative, synthetic, mora-timed language with simple phonotactics, a pure vowel system, phonemic vowel and consonant length, and a lexically significant pitch-accent. Word order is normally subject–object–verb with ...

*Contrastive units, a basic unit of sound **

Chroneme In linguistics, a chroneme is a basic, theoretical unit of sound that can distinguish words by duration only of a vowel or consonant. The noun ''chroneme'' is derived , and the suffixed ''-eme'', which is analogous to the ''-eme'' in ''phoneme'' ...

Phoneme In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-wes ...

See also