Abstract The analysis of false friends and cognates for a public of Italian-speaking learners seems to us a fertile ground for diverting certain linguistic barriers and therefore progressively defining a relationship between readability and linguistic complexity. When learning a foreign language, false friends - these pairs of words, French / Italian, which have a common origin and have a great similarity of form but are nonetheless endowed with a different or partially different meaning - constitute a pitfall for the comprehension of texts. On the other hand, the presence of true friends - words that are morphologically and semantically identical or almost identical - facilitates the understanding of written and oral texts. This article defines and clarifies the different types of false friends and cognates. It shows the confrontation of a list of false friends (Italian / French) with several computerized lexical databases. The same method is done with cognates. At what level of learning do cognates and false friends seem to be more numerous? Could they be evenly distributed between the different levels? Could false friends and cognates be considered as a true readability criteria for the linguistic complexity of reading comprehension for learners?
Faux amis et vrais amis : variables pour la complexité des textes de langue française pour un public italophone
Raffaele Spiezia
2018
Abstract
Abstract The analysis of false friends and cognates for a public of Italian-speaking learners seems to us a fertile ground for diverting certain linguistic barriers and therefore progressively defining a relationship between readability and linguistic complexity. When learning a foreign language, false friends - these pairs of words, French / Italian, which have a common origin and have a great similarity of form but are nonetheless endowed with a different or partially different meaning - constitute a pitfall for the comprehension of texts. On the other hand, the presence of true friends - words that are morphologically and semantically identical or almost identical - facilitates the understanding of written and oral texts. This article defines and clarifies the different types of false friends and cognates. It shows the confrontation of a list of false friends (Italian / French) with several computerized lexical databases. The same method is done with cognates. At what level of learning do cognates and false friends seem to be more numerous? Could they be evenly distributed between the different levels? Could false friends and cognates be considered as a true readability criteria for the linguistic complexity of reading comprehension for learners?I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
