“QUALITATIVE” PARAMETERS OF TEXT COMPLEXITY (BASED ON FICTION AND POPULAR SCIENCE TEXTS PIRLS)

Abstract

In the presented study, a multifaceted complex analysis of eight multi-genre texts used in the international testing of PIRLS in the period 2001-2011 is carried out in order to confirm the hypothesis about differences / similarities in typological parameters assessing the complexity of fiction and popular science texts. The theory of the complexity of the text is used as a fundamental one, taking into account the quantitative (length of the text, sentences, words) and qualitative (narrative, syntactic simplicity, concreteness, referential coherence, deep coherence) parameters of the text (McNamara 2004 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/8358727_Coh-Metrix_Analysis_of_text_on_cohesion_and_language). It was determined that with equal volume and level of readability, literary texts demonstrate a greater variety of syntactic structures and a high degree of narrative. The indices of the specificity of fiction and popular science texts are approximately in the same range, while the referential and deep connectivity demonstrate a wide amplitude of fluctuations in both types of texts.