Category of «animateness – inanimateness» in teaching Russian as a foreign language

Abstract

The functioning and ways of expression of lexico-grammatical category of «animateness – inanimateness» in the Russian language are investigated in the article. The stages of learning the category of «animacy – inanimacy» at Russian language classes in a foreign audience are considered, different groups of nouns are analysed from the point of view of their attitude towards the category under analysis with the aim of improving the process of teaching Russian to foreign students.

 From the point of view of attitudе to the category of «animacy – inanimacy» all concrete nouns of the Russian language are divided into the following ones: 1) those which belong to the category of animate objects, 2) those which belong to the category of inanimate objects, 3) nouns with the variable index of belonging to «animacy – inanimacy» according to the context, 4) nouns without any grammatical indexes of belonging to «animacy – inanimacy». The majority of difficulties foreign students have with the nouns, which have variable indexes of belonging to «animacy – inanimacy». Such «ambiguous» nouns are included into a group of words, that name biological objects: амеба, бактерия, бацилла, вирион, вирус, зародыш, инфузория, микроб, микроорганизм, эмбрион, etc. Some scientists point out the possible double use of similar words. However most researches define, that the marked nouns designating biological objects, native speakers mostly refer to the category of inanimateness. It confirms the conducted analysis of scientific texts on the biological subject matter. Foreign students’ attention should be focused on the words, that name animate objects perceived as food (кальмар, креветка, мидия, омар, устрица, etc.), because in the Russian language they can be used as nouns that mean the names of inanimate objects, when we are talking about food, and as nouns that mean the names of animate objects, when the latter are examined as biological matters.

To sum up, it can be concluded that the category of «animateness – inanimateness» reflects the anthropocentricity of human thinking, but not the compliance of the world language picture to a scientific paradigm. That is why at Russian language classes, especially in the process of training a scientific style to the students of medical and biological specialities, it is necessary to pay special attention to learning nouns with variations in their meaning of «animacy – inanimacy». For educational and translation dictionaries of medical and biological terms for foreigners to mark not only grammatical categories of nouns but also their belonging to the category of «animacy – inanimacy». The article offers different kinds of tasks for fixing the appointed teaching material in the groups of students of medical and biological specialities.