Common Difficulties of Different Categories of Speakers when Using Russian Nouns and Noun Phrases

The purpose of the study is to resolve the issue of whether there are difficulties of the Russian language that are common to different categories of learners of this language. Research methods are identification and comparative analysis of deviations from the norms in the use of nouns and noun phrases. The material of the study is data from observations of oral speech, written works, transcripts of recordings of stories based on pictures. The objects of analysis are the facts of deviations from the norms in the use of nouns and noun phrases in the speech of foreigners who study Russian as a second language, Russian-German bilinguals at the age of 10-15 years, Russian monolinguals at the age of 10 – 15 years. As a result of the study, the most typical similar grammatical errors were identified, indicating the general difficulties of the Russian language: the replacement of some case forms by others, the replacement of some forms by others within the same case, the replacement of prepositions, the mixing of possessive pronouns, violations of the agreement between the main and dependent words. The study has confirmed the hypothesis that there are common difficulties of the Russian language, which do not depend on the native language of students and are due to the structural diversity of the grammatical phenomena of the Russian language.