Трудное для чтения слово: критерии, типология, корпусная статистика (на материале русской речи носителей китайского языка)

Abstract

The article is devoted to the description and systematization of words that are difficult for unprepared reading in a non-native language. The material for the analysis included 40 spontaneous reading monologues recorded from 20 informants (10 male and 10 female), native Chinese speakers, with different levels of proficiency in Russian (B2 or C1) and with different psychotypes (extroverts, ambiverts, introverts). Informants were reading two texts: M. Zoshchenko’s narrative story The Fantasy Shirt and a non-narrative excerpt from V. Korolenko’s story The Blind Musician. In the recorded monologues, words with different signs of spontaneity and errors were singled out, and they were then examined in the lexico-phonetic, lexico-grammatical, lexical, and lexico-syntactical aspects. The analysis of the material showed the following features to be the difficulty criteria for the Chinese readers: the length of the word form, the word frequency in Russian, the degree of complexity of the grammatical form, the absence of the word in the basic vocabulary list for the corresponding level of Russian as a foreign language, the presence of stylistic usage labels in dictionary entries for the word, the special attitude of the Chinese to the word, the idiomaticity of the word combination. Based on these criteria, a typology of difficult-to-read words was developed. The paper provides examples showing how foreigners overcome these difficulties (communicative obstacles). It has been found that the most difficult for Chinese are words with a complex grammatical form. When faced with such words, informants often make hesitation pauses, syllabize, cut off and repeat words, sometimes even verbalize their difficulties and doubts with the help of metacommunicative inserts. There were also noted hiccups and speech failures when the informants were reading familiar and easy words, which was due to the general unpreparedness of this type of speech task. The typology obtained can be useful not only in the general analysis of oral speech by specialists studying colloquial language but also in the teaching of reading in a non-native language as part of teaching the Russian language in a foreign, including Chinese-speaking, audience.