Chackelis Lemchenas, a contrastive linguist before contrastive linguistics

Abstract

The article explores the views of Chackelis Lemchenas (1904– 2001) on teaching Lithuanian to speakers of other languages. As a prominent linguist, experienced practitioner, and a multilingual person, he proposed ideas that are compatible with the principles of contrastive linguistics already in the 1920s. He favoured explicit grammar explanations in the subsystems that differ in Lithuanian and the students’ L1 and explained that what he called “formal logic” was necessary in order to teach the students how the grammar of Lithuanian works in comparison with their L1. The article demonstrates that exploration of language teaching approaches in non–Western contexts and from historical perspectives provides a better understanding of the history of ideas.

Keywords: Lithuanian, language teaching, language learning, Chackelis Lemchenas, historical sociolinguistics