THE ANALYSIS OF ERRORS IN GENDER OF THE CONGRUENT WORD IN A NOUN PHRASE IN SERBIAN AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Abstract

This paper carries out a morphological and syntactic analysis of errors in the form of a dependent member of a nominal phrase, specifically – in gender of the congruent word. The corpus has been formed through the excerption of material from 503 assignments written by students who have taken an intensive course in Serbian as a foreign language (at level A1 and A2) at the Centre for Serbian as a Foreign Language at the Faculty of Philosophy in Novi Sad. The aims of the analysis are as follows: identification of errors, systematisation according to types, quantitative and statistical analysis, presentation of analysis results according to types of errors, frequency of occurrence and the students’ first language (since the participants are ethnically and linguistically heterogeneous). Another aim is to compare, as far as possible, the analysis outcome with results of previous analyses of errors in gender of the congruent word in language production by students with Hungarian as their first language learning Serbian as their non-native language. Since there is no category of gender in Hungarian, it is pointed out that the acquiring of this category is especially difficult for speakers of this language. The analysis has shown that: foreign students incorrectly use male gender forms most frequently (45,5%), while the incorrect use of female and neutral gender is completely equal (27,2% per gender). Considerable similarities in errors have been established between foreign students and students with Hungarian as their first language. What was previously determined as the most frequent error among students of Hungarian nationality in Serbia has now been confirmed in the case of foreign students as well, including students whose first language is Hungarian regardless of whether they live here or come from Hungary.