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УДК 81.23 DOI: 10.30982/2077-5911-2019-39-1-118-137
MAPPING RUSSIAN AND HUNGARIAN PRE-SCHOOL CHILDREN'S VERBAL CONSCIOUSNESS: CROSS-CULTURAL RESEARCH RESULTS1
Istvan Lenart
Associate Professor at Sechenov University Institute of Linguistics and Intercultural Communication Trubetskaya Ulitsa, 8-2, Moscow [email protected] Irina Markovina Professor at Sechenov University Institute of Linguistics and Intercultural Communication, Trubetskaya Ulitsa, 8-2, Moscow [email protected]; Orsolya Endrody-Nagy Associate Professor at Eotvos Lorand University Egyetem ter 1-3, Budapest endrody. [email protected] Adilya Makhmutova Junior teacher at Sechenov University Language Learning Centre, Trubetskaya Ulitsa, 8-2, Moscow a.r. [email protected]
Within the framework of a Russian-Hungarian cross-cultural research, and an interdisciplinary approach, merging the perspectives of Psycholinguistics and Pedagogy together, a study on pre-school children's verbal consciousness was conducted in Hungarian and Russian kindergartens. The investigation is based on the theories and practices of The Russian School of Psycholinguistics [Leontiev 1993; Sorokin 1993; Tarasov 1996], and most of all on its key method, the association experiment [Ufimtseva 2014]. A major objective of the research is to map and compare the 100-100 respondents' verbal consciousness on the basis of ten stimulus words (friend, child, family, water, black, toy/game, devil, home/house, foreigner, and angel). Reactions of the 4-5-year-old children are analysed with corpus linguistic methods [Kilgarriff et al. 2014]. In this article, besides presenting the key findings of the overall data collected, two selected stimulus words (family and angel) are presented in detail.
Keywords: association experiment, pre-school, early childhood, verbal consciousness, Russian School of Psycholinguistics, cross-cultural communication, corpus linguistics
1 The research was supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (project #18-512-23004 "Cross cultural comparison of Russian and Hungarian verbal consciousness. Phase 1: Verbal consciousness of preschool children (aged 4-5 years)", and the New National Excellence Program (UNKP-17-4) of the Ministry of Human Capacities of Hungary.
1. Introduction
The article presents a fragment of an interdisciplinary cross-cultural research of preschool children's verbal image of the world. The authors investigated fragments of the image of the world of Russian and Hungarian children of a preschool age group merging the perspectives of Psycholinguistics, Linguistics, and Pedagogy. The investigation is based on the theories and practices developed by outstanding Russian psychologists and linguists [Leontiev 1993; Sorokin 1993; Tarasov 1996; Ufimtseva 2014], whose works are now referred to as the Russian School of Psycholinguistics, namely, on the theory of verbal consciousness (based on the theory of speech activity), and its key method, the association test [Ufimtseva 2014]. An interdisciplinary component is corpus linguistics methods [Kilgarriff et al. 2014] additionally used to analyse the data obtained. Finally, the pedagogical perspective is the basis to characterise the age group chosen and select the stimulus words for the association test since it is focusing on the conception of childhood - description of childhood from the children's perspective. According to recent research findings, children must be seen as 'actors' determining their own life [Hendrick 2000], researches should not rely on the adults' perspectives. Knowing that learning begins with birth, 4-5-year-old children have a vast knowledge about the world around themselves and their own selves as well.
The major research objective is to experimentally obtain the data to reconstruct a certain fragment of the verbal consciousness (a psycholinguistic equivalent of image of the world) of the target group and cross-culturally compare it. The cross-cultural research by definition aims at investigating common and culture-specific characteristics of the image of the world of people speaking different languages and though this promoting better understanding in case those people become dialogue participants. According to previous results childhood researchers agree that childhood as an abstract concept varies within different societies, and ethnic groups [Heywood 2001; Endrody-Nagy 2016, 2018] - in such case we could compare two possible narratives of Russian and Hungarian childhood conceptions.
The research presented was an attempt to map and compare the fragment of verbal consciousness of Russian and Hungarian pre-school children. Each group included 100 respondents aged 4-5-years. Ten stimulus words (friend, child, family, water, black, toy/ game, devil, home/house, foreigner, and angel) were selected to represent the target fragment of the age group verbal consciousness. In this article, besides presenting the key findings of the overall data collected, two selected stimulus words (family and angel) are discussed in detail.
1.1. Psycholinguistic theory of verbal consciousness
1.1.1. Approaches to defining verbal consciousness
The present research is based upon one of the key theories of the Russian (Moscow) School of Psycholinguistics, namely, on the theory of verbal consciousness. To date, there is no agreed definition on what constitutes verbal consciousness. There have been a number of approaches to the phenomenon. For instance, Lev Scherba used the term to refer to individual psychophysiological verbal organization [Scherba 1974]. For Scherba, verbal consciousness means individual language system as opposed to the language of the community.
Tatiana Ushakova was right to stress the difficulties in interpreting the term verbal consciousness, which is supposed to unite the two phenomena underlying its core: the mental and material one. The mental phenomenon is of non-material nature, it cannot be measured, seen, or heard; the material phenomenon implies speech that can be produced or recorded and the physiological process of building verbal links [Ushakova 2003]. Although the researcher admits polysemy of the term, she believes that one of its basic meanings is that it refers to consciousness expressed verbally. In other words, the term illustrates the transition of the mental phenomenon into the material one [Ushakova 2003].
Evgeniy Tarasov, following the psychological activity theory of Alexey N. Leontev, describes verbal (or language) consciousness as mental consciousness images that constitute a set of a person's perceptual and conceptual knowledge about objects of the world. These images of consciousness require externalizations that can be observed. These externalizations may be represented as objects, actions, words [Tarasov 1996]. In other words, verbal consciousness is viewed as a complex of verbally externalized mental images of consciousness developed by members of a certain culture which contains concepts of man and his activities as well as concepts of objects and phenomena of the world [Tarasov 1996]. At the same time, Evgeniy Tarasov emphasizes that an important function of externalization is to communicate mental images across generations. For example, a mental image of the Russian house/home can be developed if one perceives it from its both inside and outside and lives in a Russian family setting. This shows that externalization reveals cultural and mental peculiarities that can be studied.
Natalia Ufimtseva confirms the same thesis. Based on the key statement of the Russian (Moscow) School of Psycholinguistics she affirms that in order to communicate people use special signs (most of all the linguistic ones) therefore they draw on the knowledge shaped within their native culture [Ufimtseva 2006].
Although differences of opinion still exist, there appears to be some agreement among the leading psycholinguists that verbal consciousness has the following characteristics:
1) It manifests images of consciousness indirectly and materially. It can be therefore studied.
2) It can be described as mental images having equivalents in the language. These images are characteristic of a community and can be extrapolated.
3) It reflects cultural and mental peculiarities and moral standards of a community making verbal consciousness a tool to analyse not only linguistic and psychological, but also cultural aspects.
1.1.2. Problems associated with studying verbal (language) consciousness
The notion verbal consciousness is virtually a result of cooperation of linguistics and psychology. As it is at the interface between these sciences, it enables the researchers to study speech, language, consciousness, as a mental phenomenon, and culture. As T. Ushakova puts it, developing the term in a specific study is supposed to provide an opportunity to enrich our knowledge not only of speech and language phenomena, but also of consciousness as a mental phenomenon [Ushakova 2003].
At the same time, the investigation of verbal consciousness has a number of problems one of which is inability to study consciousness directly and objectively.
Evgeniy Tarasov states that 'distorting images of consciousness in their externalization' is a challenge for researchers [Tarasov 1996].
To level this kind of distortion to the fullest extent possible, an association test involving a large number of subjects can be conducted. Involving a large number of respondents may be regarded as a kind of an averaging. This implies that statistically processed association test data shows the various fragments of the verbal consciousness of an average, or a typical language speaker.
Conducting an association experiment results in constructing associative fields of stimulus words. Natalia Ufimtseva asserts that an associative field is not only a fragment of verbal memory but also a fragment of the world image of a particular language speaker reflected in the consciousness of an average cultural representative, his or her judgments and motivations, i.e., cultural stereotypes [Ufimtseva 2009].
Distortion of consciousness images can be caused by mental mechanisms that externalize images in words as well as by many other factors that influence the validity of the association experiment. For instance, the limitation may be that some respondents tend to react in a non-discrediting way, i.e. in a favorable one.
No agreed definition of the term verbal consciousness gives rise to one more challenge, i.e. drawing conclusions based on studying verbal consciousness in its current understanding [Ushakova 2003]. Verbal consciousness lies at the interface between both mental and material phenomena. A researcher may tend to present a transition from one phenomenon to another as a simple and direct one [Ushakova 2003]. The transition is possible in case we know how the image of consciousness is transformed into an externalized sign or object (in our case, a word). Without understanding this process, we cannot scientifically explain how mental and material phenomena are related to each other.
However, with the advent of the so-called association dictionaries and associative thesauri the focus of interest moved to the problem of interpreting the results of association tests.
1.1.3. Practical aspects of verbal consciousness: verbal consciousness in communication
Consciousness is a mental phenomenon that cannot be studied directly. To gain access to it, it has to be externalized as e.g. linguistic signs that people select based on their knowledge acquired in their cultural environment. It can be postulated that we may succeed in communicating our consciousness images to other people via linguistic signs if we share with them common knowledge as well as cultural stereotypes. Within a community, mutual understanding and interaction are possible because communicants use definitions and interpretations shared by members of this community [Markovina 2011].
This explains why representatives of one culture almost freely understand each other and why there are failures in intercultural communication (even if there is no language barrier).The latter is determined by the fact that people with different cultural backgrounds lack commonality of consciousness [Tarasov 1996].
It can be concluded that, to improve intercultural communication, it is important to reveal features of verbal consciousness in people with different cultural backgrounds.
Intercultural communication has a pivotal role in the modern world of globalization and growing international cooperation that is why studying problems of intercultural miscommunication is essential. Studying common and different features of verbal consciousness in people with different cultural backgrounds will contribute to the problem solving.
1.1.4. Techniques to study the content of consciousness images
Natalia Ufimtseva points out that peculiarities of images of consciousness (cultural stereotypes) can be revealed as a result of either conscious introspection or organized experimental research [Ufimtseva 2011]. Association test technique and associative dictionaries and thesauri developed based on the data obtained are now widely used to gain access to the content of mental images and through this to reconstruct the verbal image of the world of particular language speakers. The benefit of this approach is that an association dictionary entry may be regarded as a model of verbal consciousness of a language speaker representing a certain culture. It demonstrates the world image, features of mentality, ethnic character, and communicative potential of native language speakers [Ufimtseva 2011].
1.2. Association experiment as a research tool to reconstruct the content of the consciousness image externalized by a word
1.2.1. Association experiment
As Natalia Ufimtseva puts it, verbal consciousness can be studied only as a result of the former activity < ... > in its "converted" and alienated from an individual consciousness forms [Ufimtseva 2009]. In other words, to analyze, we need an externalized, materialized form of verbal consciousness.
As mentioned above, one of the main techniques to externalize verbal consciousness is an association experiment. In an association experiment, an individual is given a list of words and is instructed to respond with the first word that comes to mind. In most cases, the respondents are university students. The test is carried out in a native language of the subject.
There are several types of an association experiment: free, directed, and linking associative experiment. A major advantage of an association experiment is its relative simplicity in conducting: no special equipment or setting is needed, the instructions are easy to understand and follow. Another benefit of this approach is that it is time-saving. The test may be conducted in a room with a large number of respondents that speeds the collection. Another advantage is that a large number of responses may be collected at once that enables to extrapolate the results on all representatives of a particular culture. A great number of respondents secures a relative stability of association fields.
However, there are certain limitations of this experimental technique. Many factors may influence the results of the test. One of these is that there are some factors independent ofthe experiment itself (neither the researcher nor the respondent can influence on it). Among the factors is active vocabulary of the respondent, age, sex, profession, and geographical conditions. High frequency of the response man to a stimulus word WOMAN is explained by a large number of female respondents [Tarasov 1996]. In the experiment performed by Alexey A. Leont'ev, the respondents reacted differently to the
stimulus word BRUSH depending on their profession and geographical conditions. The research carried out by Russian psychologists and linguists showed that the respondents with technical background give more paradigmatic responses whereas subjects studying humanities tend to give more syntagmatic reactions [Vasilevich 1987; Ilyasov 1974].
Some factors like time and conditions of a test as well as respondent's physical and emotional state are among those that have an impact during performing the experiment. So, the results may be distorted because of the respondent's tiredness caused by the length of the experiment (e.g. phonetic associations that are not typical of adult respondents ВРАЧ — грач [DOCTOR — rook]). The place where the experiment is conducted can also have an effect on the results (e.g. INSTITUTE — here). All these and some other factors should be well understood and noted in each association research.
1.2.2. Association field
Association field is a set of reactions to a stimulus word. An association field consists of a nucleus with the most frequent reactions and a periphery. In terms of its content, it reflects both a person's verbal memory and a fragment of verbal image of the world, judgments, attitudes, and motivations of the respondents as representatives of a certain culture [see: Russian association dictionary 2002]. Let us emphasize once again, although there are some individual variations in responses, the fact that the respondents represent one culture, secures association fields with a relative stability.
The so called semantic gestalt of an association field developed by Juri N. Karaulov is one of the methods to reconstruct the knowledge about the surrounding world in the verbal consciousness of native speakers [Karaulov 2000]. The method is based on dividing the reactions of one association field into several semantic zones uniting similar features of an object or a phenomenon. To make it convenient, the semantic zones are marked by pronouns that reflect general ideas, e.g. who (persons), what (objects), which (attributes), this (structures in which the pronoun 'this' acts as a hypothetical link), to do/ to make (actions), where (places), and when (time). At the same time, it is possible to choose additional semantic zones [Karaulov 2000].
1.2.3. Dictionaries of word association
Conducting large-scale association experiments resulted in creating the so called association dictionaries, or thesauri of word associations. Today, there are two major Russian dictionaries: Russian association dictionary (RAD) developed by Juri Karaulov, Galina Cherkasova, Natalia Ufimtseva, Yuri Sorokin, and Evgeny Tarasov, and Slavic association dictionary (SAD) developed by Natalia Ufimtseva, Juri Karaulov, Galina Cherkasova, and Evgeny Tarasov. The RAD contains around 1300 stimulus words and about 13 000 different reactions. The fullest English association dictionary is The Associative Thesaurus of English, The Edinburgh Associative Thesaurus developed by G.R. Kiss, C. Armstrong, and J. Piper. The English AT contains more than 23 000 words.
The reactions in a dictionary entry are given in decreasing order of frequency. Each reaction has its own index, a number of respondents who reacted to a stimulus word with this word.
An association kind of a dictionary is considered to be unique because it gives information about the most frequent word links that characterize cultural features, and
no other dictionary contains such kind of information. Thus, an association dictionary holds a big amount of data to study culture, verbal consciousness, and "text potential", i.e. the cultural and linguistic background of the respondents for text perception and understanding. Association dictionaries allow the researcher to identify and study the systemic character of the world image of representatives of different cultures. To do it, researchers reveal the nucleus of language consciousness, i.e. the units of a semantic network that have the largest number of links with other units of this semantic network represented in the thesaurus (dictionary).
Thus, researchers in different fields will find their own field-specific data in an association dictionary. A philosopher will reveal the constituent parts of the image of the world; a culture studies expert - the system of axiological patterns and attitudes of a certain culture; a psychologist - the proportion of linguistic and extra-linguistic knowledge contained in the image of the world of representatives of a certain culture.
The present cross-cultural research has been conducted in line with the theoretical and experimental approaches described. The authors attempted to make a step forward by developing and modifying the techniques already existing in this research field. They hope some innovation approaches presented and results obtained are a convincing argument in favour of interdisciplinary study conducted by an intercultural team of researchers.
2. Methods
An essential research method of the Russian (Moscow) School of Psycholinguistics, the association experiment [Ufimtseva 2014] was utilized in a modified form. Ten wordstimuli (friend, child, family, water, black, toy/game, devil, home, foreigner, and angel) were selected based on three sources. The majority of the stimulus words of the research aimed at better understanding the verbal consciousness of the target group of pre-school children through mapping basic concepts from their everyday lives. Five lexemes stem from the core lexicon of Russian verbal consciousness [Sergieva 2006] with their ranks in parentheses дом (home, #2), друг (friend, #10), вода (water, #18), ребенок (child, #19,5),черный (black, #49,5). One stimulus - игрушка (toy) - originates from the 18 initial stimuli of the Russian children's associative thesaurus [Sokolova 1999]. The remaining four stimulus words come from the authors' subjective choice, keeping in mind firstly the fundamental objective of the research - to be able to explain the children's self-perception and their concept of a family (семья/family), moreover, to shed light on some atypical lexemes that are less frequently used by this age group, including angel (ангел), foreigner (иностранец), and devil (чёрт). On the other hand, the following stimulus words - child, family, friend, home and toy - are related closely to everyday socialisation context in the target group of the investigation.
The classical association method was slightly modified in order to better comply with the research objectives and especially to be able to collect a more linguistic data, sufficient to transform them into linguistic corpora [Kilgarriff et al. 2014]. Accordingly, a questionnaire of 27 questions on the 10 word-stimuli was created (with 2-4 sub-questions for each stimulus word). Although in a classical association experiment stimulus words appear independently, requesting direct reactions for each given stimulus, in this research several questions were applied for each stimulus word. Consequently, two data sets (out of
the Russian and Hungarian responses) were cumulated, the Hungarian corpus consisting of 19,967 tokens and 15,319 words, and the Russian corpus incorporating 16,268 tokens and 12,646 words.
Two parallel investigations were conducted in Russian and Hungarian kindergartens respectively. The 100-100 respondents came from two Muscovite kindergartens, and from 8 Hungarian dwellings including the towns Budapest, Szeged, Tata, Zalaegerszeg, Godollo, Kistarcsa, and Veresegyház as well as a the village of Kesztolc. In the course of the 15-20-minute interviews, 4-5-year-old pre-school children with year of birth 2013-2014 were investigated, applying the shoulder-to-shoulder method [Griffin et al. 2014]. The shoulder-to-shoulder approach originates from paired or partner reading, a teaching strategy that enhances reading fluency by two students sitting next to one other, sharing the same book. This pedagogical approach [Meisinger et al. 2004] underlines the importance of an easy, friendly atmosphere allowing children to express themselves freely. Interviewers are encouraged to play with the children, draw, walk, or move with them as the situation requires. In case the conversation cannot be completed in one occasion, it is recommended to continue in another, second or third time when the child feels emotionally more tuned to the situation.
The gathered linguistic info was entered into 22 separate searchable corpora: 2 corpora of the overall Hungarian and Russian results, as stated above, and another 10-10 corpora based on the 10 stimulus words from the Hungarian and the Russian results. The data sets were analysed with the Sketch Engine corpus linguistic tool [Kilgarriff et al. 2014] both on the stimulus- and on the country/language-level. Results were contrasted applying comparable gigaword corpora from the Araneum corpus family [Benko 2014]: the Araneum Russicum Russicum Maius (1,200,000,258 tokens, 859,319,823 words) and the Araneum Hungaricum Maius corpus (1,200,001,609 tokens, 792,549,686 words), as well as with two web-based corpora: the Russian Web 2011 (ruTenTen11; 18,280,486,876 tokens, 14,553,856,113 words) and the Hungarian Web 2012 (huTenTen 12; 3,161,920,362 tokens, 2,572,620,694 words).
3. Results
3.1. Overall results
All-inclusive results were arranged into two main corpora, incorporation answers from the 100 Russian respondents (HU100 corpus) and from the 100 Russian pre-school children (RU100). Overall results (Table 1) suggest that in both respondent groups two key constituents of children's verbal consciousness are mother and father, the former preceding the latter in both respondent groups. Child also appears in the top-15 elements, based on frequency. It must be noted that in both the Hungarian group a more informal, colloquial variant of the lexeme child is present: in the Hungarian sample gyerek (child) is mentioned (vis-à-vis gyermek, also denoting a child), similarly, among the Russian results малыш (kid) is present vis-à-vis ребёнок (child). Russian results are more diversified in terms of word classes: nouns, adjectives ^маленький/small, большой/big, and белый/ white), verbs (играть/play, and™6rnb/love) and personal pronouns are on the peak of verbal consciousness, while the Hungarian results are limited to nouns and personal pronouns.
Table 1
Top-15 most frequent words of the research (excluding articles, conjunction words, prepositions, and modal verbs)
Hungarian (HU100) Russian (RU100)
word frequency word frequency
1. en (I) 228 он (he) 161
2. o (he/she) 194 мама (mother) 158
З. anya (mother) 145 я (I) 144
4. gyerek (child) 129 папа (father) 136
5. apa (father) 118 маленький (small) 117
6. jatek (game/toy) 111 человек (person) 10З
7. barat (friend) 77 дом (house/home) 75
8. mi (we) 76 играть (play) 69
9. csalad (family) 58 малыш (kid) 54
10. haz (house) 58 мы (we) 53
11. ok (they) 54 большой (big) 50
12. anyuka (mother) 53 друг (friend) 47
1З. ruha (clothes) 52 люблю (love) 47
14. viz (water) 48 белый (white) 47
15. szarny (wing) 46 хорошая (good) 45
The frequency list of this research (Table 1) can be contrasted with the mass data of comparable gigaword corpora (Table 2) such as the Araneum Hungaricum Maius corpus containing 792m words and the Araneum Russicum Russicum Maius [Kilgarriff et al. 2014] consisting of 859m words. Table 2 displays the top-15 most frequent words, from exclusively three word classes (nouns, adjectives, and verbs). Dissimilarity with the children's corpora is visible - apart from the Russian adjective белый (white no common items could be identified.
Table 2
Top-15 most frequent words of Araneum corpora (only nouns, adjectives, verbs)
Hungarian Russian
Araneum Hungaricum Maius Araneum Russicum Russicum Maius
word frequency word frequency
1. magyar (Hungarian) 1220.190 время (time) 1.423.693
2. nagy (big) 1.208.250 года (year) 1.067.703
З. jó (good) 1.197.570 белый (white) 917.064
4. kis (small) 639.925 является (seems) 894.318
5. ember (man/person) 515.212 работы (work) 828.425
6. fontos (important) 452.408 россии (Russia) 773.292
7. év (year) 421.349 просто (simply) 722.367
8. nap (day) 411.425 компании (company) 713.094
9. tudom (know) 370.037 день (day) 660.297
10. mondta (said) 343.625 случае (case) 621.417
11. all (stand) 337.052 области (region) 610.025
12. europai (European) 336.319 необходимо (necessary) 591.914
13. szo (word) 327.590 жизни (life) 565.731
14. megfelelo (appropriate) 312.559 человек (person) 486.725
15. kerult (cost) 289.208 системы (system) 477.049
Regular daily activities of a 4-5-year-old Russian and Hungarian child are well reflected in the list of key single-words (Table 3). Keywords are identified as those lexical items that are over-represented in the target corpus when compared to the reference corpus [Kilgarriff et al. 2014]. In this analysis the investigated corpora are those mentioned above: the overall Hungarian and Russian databases, consisting of all replies of the 100-100 respondents. The reference corpora are the Russian Web 2011 (ruTenTen11; 18,280,486,876 tokens, 14,553,856,113 words) and the Hungarian Web 2012 (huTenTen12; 3,161,920,362 tokens, 2,572,620,694 words) [Kilgarriff et al. 2014]. Briefly, lexemes presented in Table 3 are the most typical vocabulary of the observed 4-5-year-old Russian and Hungarian pre-school children.
A considerable part of Russian and Hungarian children's activities - implied by these relevant lexemes - coincides in the two data set, including playing with lego, or playing hide and seek or playing tag. A specific item from the Russian results is the sixth most frequent word дружить that goes back to the same root with друг (friend) and means be friends with someone. Playing with lego is definitely the most popular activity of both Hungarian and Russian pre-schoolers, occupying first and third place in the Hungarian corpus, and second place in the Russian results. Besides the data presented in Table 3, further brand names (Duplo, Trudi, Bumblebee, Disney) as well as manifestations of globalization (tablet, computer, cartoons) were identified.
Table 3
Top-15 key single-words of the research (without proper names, double occurrences)
Hungarian (HU100) Russian (RU100)
word frequency word frequency
1. legózik (play lego) 13 братик (bro) 31
2. babakonyha (dollhouse) 11 лего (lego) 15
3. lego (lego) 8 прятки (hide and seek) 16
4. bujocska (hide and seek) 9 догонялки (play tag) 7
5. babazik (play with dolls) 10 ребёнок (child) 5
6. szarv (horn) 28 дружить (befriends) 49
7. Jezuska (little Jesus) 14 сестрёнка (littlesister) 5
8. tarsasozik (play board game) 6 домик (small house) 4
9. pluss (plush) 12 крылышко (little wing) 10
10. bujocskazik (play hide and seek) 6 крыльев (wings) 3
11. rosszalkodik (misbehave) 8 чертить (draw) 3
12. dinosat (play with dinos) 4 карандаш (pencil) 3
13. fogocskazik (play tag) 5 чёрный (black) 3
14. kisteso (small brother/ sister) 8 папа (dad) 146
15. poni (pony) 10 машинка (car) 46
Similar to key single-words, key multi-words are defined in this study as collocations of two or more words that are over-represented in the investigated corpus when compared to the reference corpora (Russian Web 2011 and the Hungarian Web 2012 respectively). Table 4 displays those two-item key word collocations that are most representative of these children's corpora. The typical word combinations are built up by an adjective-noun collocation. The most relevant adjectives among the results include real (igazi/настоящий); big (nagy/большая); tiny (наименьший); white feher/белът); black (fekete/чёрный); and bad/naughty (rossz/плохой). The most frequent two-word collocation in the Hungarian sample is igazi csalad (real family), while in the Russian results наименьший малыш (tiny baby).
Table 4
Top key multi-words of the research (with at least 3 occurrences)
Hungarian (HU100) Russian (RU100)
multi-word frequency multi-word frequency
1. igazi csalad (real family) 8 наименьший малыш (tiny baby) 10
2. feher ruha (white dress/ clothes) 8 наименьший человек (tiny person) 7
3. kulfoldi ember (foreign person) 6 настоящий дом (real house/home) 6
4. nagy gyerek (big kid) 5 плохое слово (bad word) 5
5. masik orszag (other country) 5 чёрный цвет (black colour) 5
6. fekete szarv (black horn) 5 лучший друг (best friend) 4
7. rossz gyerek (naughty kid) 4 наибольший кирпич (huge brick) 4
8. szoke haj (blond hair) 4 лучшая семья (best family) 4
9. nagy haz (big house) 4 худший человек (worst person) 4
10. fekete ruha (black dress/ clothes) 4 белый дом (white house) 3
11. feher szarny (white wing) 4 наибольший дом (huge house) 3
12. fekete ceruza (blackpencil) 3 игре прятки (hide and seek game) 3
13. pluss cica (plush kitten) 3 большая комната (big room) 3
14. rossz dolog (bad thing) 3 красивая семья (nice family) 3
15. emeletes haz (storeyed house) 3 младшая сестра (younger sister) 3
16. feher a ruha (the dress/ clothes is white) 3 наибольший человек (huge/largest person) 3
17. piros szarv (red horn) 3 чёрный человек (black person) 3
18. Zsuzsi vonat (Zsuzsi train) 3
3.2. Results of two selected individual word-stimuli
Due to space limitations two stimulus words - one more and one less typical term of childhood studies - out of the ten stimuli applied were selected in this paper, and a more detailed analysis of those (family, and angel) was completed in order to illustrate some of the key outcomes and advantages of the methods applied. In this chapter, multiple ways of comparing as well as visualizing the obtained data are presented.
3.2.1. Family
Family is a key concept in a child's consciousness, thus the authors aimed at taking a closer look at the cross-culturally differing verbal consciousness connected to the termfamily. Results of the research reconfirmed the cross-culturally high resemblance of the perception of the term, furthermore re-iterated the outcome of the overall results (Table 1), namely the primary role of the parents with mother in the first place followed by father in the second. The associations from the stimulus word family to grandmother
surpassed grandfather (Table 5). Grandma/grandmother got in the top-4 most frequent associations in both countries, while grandpa could not get in the top-4 in Hungary.
Table 5
Associations of family Results of the research (frequencies)
csalad family) семья (family)
NOUN ADJECTIVE VERB NOUN ADJECTIVE VERB
anya/anyuka (mother) 140; apa/apuka (father) 121; gyerek (child) 35; mama (mom/grandma) 23 kedves (kind) 27; jo (good) 23; nagy (big) 17; igazi (real) 10 szeret (love) 26; jatszik (play) 12; mond (say) 11; megy (go) 10 мама (mom) 146; папа (daddy) 134; бабушка (grandma) 50; дедушка (grandpa) 40 хорошая (good) 40; добрая (kind) 20; большая (big) 19; дружная (friendly) 17 любить (love) 26; жить (live) 13; ходить (go) 7; дружить (be friends) 5
Besides noun associations, adjectives matched by respondents with the stimulus word family almost fully coincided. In both cultures, pre-school children perceive and describe a family as kind, good, and big among the four most frequent reactions. The forth characteristic of a family is real (igazi) in the Hungarian and friendly (дружная) in the Russian context. The most typical activity/action associated with a family is love in both countries, followed by play (jatszik), say (mond), and go (megy) in Hungary; live (жить), go (ходить), and be friends (дружить) in Russia (Table 5).
Table 6
Thesauri of family Comparative data from the Araneum corpora (frequencies)
csaldd (family) семья(family)
NOUN ADJECTIVE VERB NOUN ADJECTIVE VERB
gyermek fiatal el (live) родитель молодой стать
(child) (young) 675,558; (parent) (young) (become)
376,113; 318,105 szeret 220,563; 223,831; 1,074,175;
gyerek (child) (love) дитя (child) русский хотеть
412,046; 983,599 617,06; (Russian) (want)
ember (man/ жизнь (life) 364,077; 600,660;
person) 908,095; данный жить (live)
1,248,639; ребёнок (given) 310,494;
elet (life) (child) 731,108 смочь (be
901,881 510,992 able to)
454,904
In this paper, outputs of the research based on the association experiment are contrasted with online thesauri of Sketch Engine [Kilgarriff et al. 2014]. Thesauri in this context are defined as follows: "thesaurus databases can be exploited in text search software by allowing the user to automatically include similar words in the search" [Benko 2014]. The thesauri displayed in Table 6 demonstrate similar collocations of the stimulus words in three word class categories: nouns, adjectives and verbs. Frequency of the reactions words is visible in Table 6, compiled from the Russian and Hungarian corpora of the comparable corpus-family Araneum [Benko 2014]. The Russian corpus mentioned is the Araneum Russicum Russicum Maius consisting of 1,200,000,258 tokens and 859,319,823 words, while its Hungarian variant is Araneum Hungaricum Maius containing 1,200,001,609 tokens and 792,549,686 words.
The Araneum gigaword comparable corpora demonstrate differences as well as similarities between the general distribution of words in these databases compared to the children's vocabulary revealed in the associative research. An example of congruity between the two sources is the verbs love and live matched to the notion of family in both databases, while differences include the absence of the nouns mother and father. In the massive database of Araneum a family's main characteristic is a child (gyerek/ gyermek, ребёнок/дитя). Families are most frequently described as with the adjective young (Table 6) .
Table 7
Key single words (in individual corpora)
család (family) семья (family)
Hungarian results Russian results
1. veszekedos (quarrelling) братик (bro)
2. nagypapa (granpa) сестрёнка (sis)
3. kistestvér (small brother/sister) папа (daddy)
4. kistesó (small bro/sis) дедушка (grandfather)
5. jószívü (good-hearted) сестричка (sis)
6. papa (dad/granddad) бабушка (grandmother)
7. nagyika(granny) ребёнки (kiddos)
8. tesó (bro/sis) дружный (friendly)
9. nagytesó (bigbro/sis) мама (mom)
10. apuka (dad) поженились (got married)
Table 7 presents a comparison of the results of the research in the two sample groups (Hungarian and Russian children). The linguistic data displayed relies on the corpora of the individual stimulus words (e.g. the Hungarian column contains exclusively that data collected as reactions to the stimulus csalad[family]). The reactions predominantly refer to family members including siblings, parents and grandparents. The extensive use of diminutive forms can be observed (kisteso [small bro/sis], nagyika
[granny], сестрёнка [sis], ребёнки [kiddos] etc.). Similarly to the overall association results (Table 5) generally positive features are connected to a family (josztvu [good-hearted], дружный [friendly]. However, one negative description of family leads the Hungarian results: veszekedos [quarrelling]. The present article focuses primarily on the linguistic and psycholinguistic consequences, but we must underpin that - especially talking about their own family - children had the chance to elaborate their experience of being part of a family - e.g. having somebody died or divorced.
3.2.2. Angel
A less typical lexeme of childhood studies - angel - was selected in this paper to be presented in detail. However, angel, examined less in childhood analysis might help of the understanding of reality versus fiction regarding the age group. Associations of angel resemble in Hungarian and Russian children's verbal consciousness in a sense that both respondent groups associate angel to a religious context. Jezuska [little Jesus] is exhibited in Table 8, furthermore such lexemes appeared in the Hungarian reactions as Isten [God], fejkorona [halo], and meghalunk [we die]. Meanwhile Russian children also liaised angel with Бог (God), Иисус Христос (Jesus Christ), крест (cross), and умер (died). Furthermore, Christmas appears 4 times in the Hungarian reactions - no such result could be identified in the Russian reactions.
Table 8
Associations of angel Results of the research (frequencies)
angyal (angel) ангел (angel)
NOUN ADJECTIVE VERB NOUN ADJECTIVE VERB
szarny kedves (kind) repul человек белый (white) летать
(wing); ruha 28; feher (fly) 24; (person) 31; 26; хороший (fly)
(clothes) (white) 26; lat (see) крыло (wing) (good) 7; 31;
45; Jezuska szep (nice) 11; hoz 21; небо (sky) добрый/ жить
(little Jesus) 19; jo (good) (bring) 15 розовый (live) 7
12; fej/ 13 9; segit (kind/pink)
ajandek (help) 6 крылышко 6; черный/
(head/gift) 8 (little wing) маленький
10 (black/little) 5
In both respondent groups wing (szarny/Kpum/KpunbiMKo) leads the frequency list of noun associations andfly (repul/xemamb) is the top verb among the results. Multiple colour terms appear in both samples including white ffeher/6enuu) as first Russian and second most typical Hungarian adjective, and further colours including pink, black, yellow and blue.
Table 9
Thesauri of angel Comparative data from the Araneum corpora (frequencies)
angyal (angel) ангел (angel)
NOUN ADJECTIVE VERB NOUN ADJECTIVE VERB
Isten (God); isteni (divine) hisz христос небесный явиться
45,541; (believe) (Christ) (heavenly) (come)
343,527; szent (saint) 470,096 45,449; 22,840; божий 26,573
Jézus (Jesus) 196,789; бог (God) (divine)
95,055; mennyei 190,103; 56,915;
lélek(soul/ (heavenly) господь CB^ro^saint)
spirit) 12,794; (the Lord) 136,909;
172,872; lény gonosz (mean) 46,514; божественный
(creature) 40,326 (divine) 24,660
62,521 Иисус
(Jesus)
28,923
Although - as highlighted above - the research resulted in a handful of associations connected to religion, children typically connect angel to objects and activities of their daily lives such as ruha (clothes), ajandek (gift), человек (person), and lat (see), hoz (bring), and жить (live). The mass data of the Araneum Hungaricum Maius and Araneum Russicum Russicum Maius corpora suggest at the same time a significant interconnectedness with religious objects and persons as demonstrated in Table 9.
Figure 1
*Labels of the Hungarian chart: angyal (angel); lat (see); lesz (will be); repul (flies);van (is);lesz (will be);Isten (God);amilyen (such); kek (blue); G.P.(G.P.: initials of the interviewee who named himself). Russianlabels: ангел(angel); спать (sleep);быть (is); летать^ fly); прилетать (arrive by flying); превращаться (transform); обычный (ordinary); о (about: preposition); в (in: preposition)
As a final element of the presentation of the results of this research two illustrative pie charts were compiled (Figure 1) about the stimulus word angel. Russian reactions words reflect a more detailed elaboration of the activities associated with an angel, including sleep (спать), to be (быть), to fly (летать), arrive by flying (прилетать), as well as transform (превращаться) - while in the Hungarian group see (lat), is/will be (van/lesz) and to fly (repul) are displayed as relevant associations of the stimulus angel.
4. Conclusions
The amalgam of various disciplinary fields (Pedagogy, Psychology, Linguistics) combined with a mixed methodology (association experiment, shoulder-to-shoulder method, corpus linguistic methods) proved to be adequate and efficient in comparing 4-5-year-old Russian and Hungarian pre-school children's verbal consciousness.
Both universalistic and culture- or language-bound characteristics of the Hungarian and Russian respondent groups were identified, including similar verbs, nouns, and adjectives associated with the notion of a family, or religious references of the stimulus word angel even at this period of early childhood.
The effects of globalization were pinpointed when presenting reaction words such astablets, lego, Disney, uplo, and Trudi. The methodology proved to be adequate to describe respondents' daily activities and fields of interest when listing out top-frequency reactions including hide and seek, tag, playing with dinos, with pony, playing with dolls or drawing.
Although there are only two stimuli analysed in this article, there are eight more words to be investigated more closely. In the near future, the further research is planned to be continued with those lexical items. There are also plans to expand the analysis regarding the age group and conduct similar examination with primary school students.
Benko, V (2014) Compatible Sketch Grammars for Comparable Corpora. In Andrea Abel, Chiara Vettori, Natascia Ralli (Eds.): Proceedings of the XVI EURALEX International Congress: The User In Focus. 15-19 July 2014. Bolzano/Bozen: Eurac Research, pp. 417-430.
Endrody-Nagy O. (2018) A Brief History of Childhood - As seen on Visuals. Revista de Didácticas Específicas, No. 19, pp. 100-107.
Endrody-Nagy O. (2016) Paintings and Illuminated Manuscripts as Sources of the History of Childhood: Conceptions of Childhood in the Renaissance. In the Beginning was the Image: The Omnipresence of Pictures: Time, Truth, Tradition, pp. 91-100.
Griffin, M., Lahman, M., Opitz, M. (2014). Shoulder-to-shoulder research with children: Methodological and ethical considerations. Journal of Early Childhood Research, Vol. 14(1), pp. 18-27.
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РЕКОНСТРУКЦИЯ ФРАГМЕНТОВ ЯЗЫКОВОГО СОЗНАНИЯ РУССКИХ И ВЕНГЕРСКИХ ДЕТЕЙ ДОШКОЛЬНОГО ВОЗРАСТА: РЕЗУЛЬТАТЫ КРОССКУЛЬТУРНОГО ИССЛЕДОВАНИЯ1
Иштван Ленарт
доцент Института лингвистики и межкультурной коммуникации, Первый МГМУ им. И.М. Сеченова (Сеченовский университет)
Трубецкая ул., д.8, стр. 2, Москва [email protected] Ирина Марковина
профессор Института лингвистики и межкультурной коммуникации, Первый МГМУ им. И.М. Сеченова (Сеченовский университет)
Трубецкая ул., д.8, стр. 2, Москва [email protected];
Орсолья Энроди-Надь доцент университета им. Лоранда Этвеша Эгиетем 1-3, Будапешт endrody. [email protected] Адиля Махмутова преподаватель Центра изучения иностранных языков, Первый МГМУ им. И.М. Сеченова (Сеченовский университет)
Трубецкая ул., д.8, стр. 2, Москва a.r. [email protected]
В рамках российско-венгерского кросскультурного исследования на основе комплексного междисциплинарного подхода (психолингвистика, лингвистика и педагогика) изучалось языковое сознание детей дошкольного возраста. Исследование проводилось в детских дошкольных учреждениях России и Венгрии. В основе работы лежит психолингвистическая теория языкового сознания [Леонтьев 1993; Сорокин 1993; Тарасов 1996]; основным методом является ассоциативный эксперимент [Уфимцева 2014]. Цель исследования - реконструировать фрагмент образа мира, обозначенного такими понятиями, как: ДРУГ/ПОДРУГА, РЕБЁНОК, СЕМЬЯ, ВОДА, ЧЁРНЫЙ, ИГРУШКА, ЧЁРТ, ДОМ, ИНОСТРАНЕЦ и АНГЕЛ. В исследовании принимали участие 100 русских и 100 венгерских детей 4-5 лет. Ответы респондентов были проанализированы методами корпусной лингвистики [К^агШ" и др. 2014]. В этой статье, помимо представления ключевых результатов всего исследования, произведён подробный анализ реакций на два слова-стимула: СЕМЬЯ и АНГЕЛ.
Ключевые слова: ассоциативный эксперимент, дошкольный возраст, раннее детство, языковое сознание, российская школа этнопсихолингвистики, кросскультурная коммуникация, корпусная лингвистика
1 Работа выполнена при поддержке РФФИ [проект № 118-512-23004 «Кросскультурное исследование русского и венгерского языкового сознания. Фаза 1: языковое сознание детей дошкольного возраста (4-5 лет)»].
