본 연구는 중국어 독서지수(Readability Index) 개발을 위해 문법 난이도 지표체계를 설계하는 것을 목적으로 한다. 기존 이독성 연구가 어휘 난이도와 문장 길이 등 표면적 변인에 치중해 온 한계를 보완하기 위해, 邓守信(2008)과 Westney(1994)의 이론을 재구조화하여 문법 난이도를 구조 복잡도·의미 투명도·학습 처리난이도의 세 차원으로 체계화하였다. 각 차원은 코퍼스 기반 계량이 가능한 지표로 정식화하였으며, 구조 복잡도는 성분 수·의존 깊이·어순 변형, 의미 투명도는 의미예측 가능성·다의성·맥락 의존도·공기어 결합 안정성, 학습 처리 난이도는 L1 전이 가능성·오류 빈도·공기어 분산성으로 구성되어 총 10개 세부 지표를 제시한다. 본 연구는 문법을 독서지수의 독립적 구성 요소로 정립함으로써, 중국어 교육에서 수준별 텍스트 선정과 교육문법 배열을 위한 객관적 기준을 제시한다.

This study aims to design grammatical difficulty indicators for the development of a Chinese Readability Index. Previous research on Chinese readability has predominantly relied on surface-level variables such as lexical difficulty and sentence length, often failing to sufficiently account for the typological characteristics of Chinese―such as word order variation, the use of function words, and collocational patterns―that directly impact a learner’s cognitive processing. To address this limitation, the present study restructures the grammatical difficulty principles proposed by Teng(2008) and integrates them with Westney’s(1994) theory of pedagogical grammar. Based on this theoretical synthesis, grammatical difficulty in Chinese is systematically conceptualized into three dimensions: structural complexity, semantic transparency, and learning processing difficulty. Structural complexity is operationalized through the number of sentence constituents, dependency depth, and word order variation. Semantic transparency is captured by indicators such as meaning predictability, polysemy, contextual dependency, and collocational stability, which reflect how grammatical meanings are realized in actual usage. Learning processing difficulty is further quantified using measures of L1 transferability, error frequency, and collocational dispersion, thereby capturing learners’ actual cognitive load. By establishing grammar as an independent component of readability assessment, this study provides an objective and theoretically grounded framework for level-appropriate text selection in Chinese language education.