Sanastollinen tieto ja suomen kielen oppikirjojen sanasto

• Tarja Puro

Avainsanat: oppikirjat, sanaluokat, sanastontutkimus (ks. myös lainasanat, leksikografia, sanahistoria), suomi toisena ja vieraana kielenä

Abstrakti

Lexical knowledge and the vocabulary of course books on the Finnish language (englanti)

1/1999 (103)

Tarja Puro (address: Kettulantie 188, FIN-41940 Vesanka)

LEXICAL KNOWLEDGE AND THE VOCABULARY OF COURSE BOOKS ON THE FINNISH LANGUAGE

The writer defines vocabulary as consisting of words and the lexical information they contain. This information can be further divided into different sub-categories: phonology and morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics and frequency of occurrence. Vocabulary is seen as a structure that holds the language together and which can connect and organise words in many different ways using the means afforded by the various sub-categories referred to.

Using this definition of vocabulary, the writer examines the vocabulary of course books on Finnish as a second and foreign language. The aim of the empirical research was to see what kind of information the given vocabulary definition reveals about the vocabulary of course books and what kind of lexical knowledge the course books provide the learner. The study material comprised the text and language presentation sections of the books Aletaan! and Jatketaan! and Suomea suomeksi 1 and 2. Examination of the results focuses on word-class distribution and the most common words, nouns and verbs. The most common verbs were examined from the viewpoints of morphology, syntax and semantics.

The course books contain a lot of information on phonology and morphology, and they present basic information about the syntax of the most common verbs. Some of the words contained in the examples given in the course books appear only in few times in the actual text. In studying the vocabulary of course books and in teaching the language, attention should be given to how words are used in sentences and how words are connected syntactically to each other.

The course books present words which are concerned with the main areas of everyday life and study. Words related to teaching and grammar are also common. Study of the contexts shows that the basic meanings are discernible for the most common verbs. The meanings and semantic relations of words presented in the course books would be clearer if words from the same semantic and associative fields appeared in the same text. Pragmatics is not really given much attention in the books &emdash; they concentrate mainly on expression according to standard Finnish. Regarding the frequency of occurrence of different words, the books give a picture based on standard Finnish.

The two sets of course books differ from each other in terms of their word-class distributions, repetition, diversity, number of words and amount of lexical information. In terms of the features studied, the vocabularies of Aletaan! and Jatketaan! are similar to each other, whereas the two Suomea suomeksi books differ from each other quite clearly.