The formation of the grammatical speech system of the child

Speech development after the first year of life is marked by the construction of a language becoming the language personality as a multi-level system. In addition to phonetics and vocabulary, the grammatical structure of children's speech is intensively formed. In an effort to convey any information, the child masters the laws of combining words into sentences. As well as children's word creation, this process has the nature of an active creative search. The child not only imitates the speech of adults, but also learns the most general rules for creating his own utterances. The grammar of each individual child differs according to the principles that form the basis of the system. However, there are some general patterns of formation of morphological categories in children's speech. We will talk about them in this section.

The first practical grammar that guides the kid is very simple. As an example, let us give a short story of a two-year-old boy, recorded by the well-known child grammar specialist S. N. Tseitlin. "Ai apam ... ao nachet, pachet ... ai tei ... ao kei ... ao pack nea ... ao isy apam nea". Translated into “adult language”, the story looks like this: “The phone has dropped. The phone is crying, crying. There was a crack on the phone. Phone taped The phone no longer cries. The phone no longer falls. ”

The first (primary) system of statements is built in the child according to the principle of amorphous languages, when the words that make up the sentence are not grammatically related to each other. Actual

ski each word has one grammatical unchangeable form (Uncle top-top no). Quite often, these are sound gestures or sound imitations. As the syntactic system develops and simultaneously with it, the morphological paradigm of the children's language begins to form. A paradigm, that is, a system of forms of a word, changing one lexeme in order for it to enter grammatical connections and relations with other words. Each grammatical class has its own paradigmatic system. So, in Russian, the noun, as we remember, is characterized by signs of number, gender, case, and so on; the verb is categorized by type, time, person, conjugation, etc. How does a child begin to create this complex morphological system?

The formation of the morphological structure of children's speech.

The formation of the morphological paradigm takes place in children according to the principle of supergeneralization, a phenomenon widespread in children's speech, which consists in expanding the sphere of use of a language unit.

The first nominations of a child are super-generalized: they convey all the grammatical forms of a single word. For example, the verb give in the speech of a one-year-old baby is used in all moods and types of temporal meanings. Then another form is added to it - give. The form of ladies now conveys only the meaning of the imperative, the imperative mood; give becomes a supergeneralized form that denotes all other grammatical categories. Then another one is added to these two forms, for example, it gives, which also takes on broad supergeneralized functions, etc. The same can be said about the formation of the paradigm of nominal forms, etc.

In the formation of the morphological system of children's speech, there is a definite pattern: here there is clearly a movement from the concrete to the abstract, from the figurative to the conditional. Therefore, for example, the child first masters the grammatical category of the number of a noun and only then forms the cases.

Creating "his" grammar, the little man seeks for universality. Exceptions to the rules are categorically discarded. A child, for example, does not want to put up with different basics in the designation of different forms of one word: man,

benok (units. number) - people, children (many. number). Linguistic phenomena, due to historical development, it also eliminates, unifying morphogenesis: ear (units. Number) - ears (and not ears) (plural number); scoop (named after a case) - a scoop (and not a scoop) (genus case); high - higher (and not higher), etc. Strictly speaking, children's grammar is more consistent than that which we, adults, use. It relies on the most common patterns, morphological supermodels. The system created by such supermodels knows no exceptions and logical inconsistencies. It overcomes the limitations imposed on native speakers by the grammatical norm. This striving for "grammatical justice", ignoring exceptions that do not fit into the general rules or somehow violate the sequence of formation, determines the difficulties in constructing a morphological system.

As an example, we present some features of the child’s mastery of the category of gender of nouns. In accordance with supermodels, animated personal nouns (that is, words that mean people) ending in a, belong to the feminine {woman, mother, sister, girl, etc.); words that have a zero ending refer to the masculine gender (man, brother, friend, boy, etc.). And children quickly learn this pattern. However, as we, adults, we know well, in Russian this supermodel is often violated: there are words - dad, uncle, grandfather, etc. At first, children eliminate this discrepancy (“I came with my grandfather”; “Hide this hare” ). A four-year-old boy named Nikita went out into the yard. When he began to get acquainted with the neighbors' boys, they instantly eliminated the rhodopolal inconsistency: from Nikita he became - Nikitos. Notice how often Sane, Gray, Diman, etc. sound in the courtyard instead of Sasha, Seryozha, Dima, etc. in the courtyard. And this is also a kind of struggle for grammatical justice.

Another example is related to the mastery of animate nonpersonal nouns (animal symbols), which do not always have generic containers. Here too, the child boldly and resolutely eliminates language inconsistency. "Tit - aunt, uncles - tit"; “I have bitten a big fly”; "Well, you and the dogs"; "Mowgli helped the black panther", etc.

The noted features are also manifested in the child’s mastery of the category of the number of a noun. This category is connected with reality more than all the others, because the child learns it quite easily. However, in our “adult” language in its use there is a fairly large number of inconsistencies that are consistently eliminated in children's grammar. For example, in the language there are so-called paired nouns that exist only in the plural form: watches, pants, scissors, sleds. Children fill in the missing form: Kachelya broke down; Scissors cut off; One sleigh rides, etc.

Another type of nouns - uncountable, non-discrete - on the contrary, has no plural form: air, wool. In this case, the children restore the missing plural form: Good air in the gardens; We have the same wool on hats, etc.

In mastering the category of number in children, a phenomenon is clearly observed, which is called the unification of the foundations of word forms. Most vividly, it finds expression in the elimination of the divergent foundations (suppletivism): “All people are humans”; "Children can not be punished"; "All children play, only one cry;" "I'm not a kid, I'm already a man."

The use of the comparative degree of an adjective (comparative) becomes an extremely interesting phenomenon of children's form-making. As the reader remembers, in the Russian language only quality adjectives can form a comparative degree. Children, trying to compare everything with everything, expand the scope of this category; they form a comparative from relative adjectives (“I'll give you sweeter candy”; “This is a ring of zoloev (shines better)”), and from adjectives with a particle NOT (“Your soup is more tasteless than grandma’s”), and (even -! !) from nouns, which in their meaning have an idea of ​​quality {"In the wind field, than here"; "Oh, mom, you are even daldee than dad"; "I am more princess than you"; “- My grandmother is a dressmaker. “And I have more tailor”). We emphasize that here the child goes beyond the capabilities of the national language, as if trying to test the strength of the language system. Such efforts are not just a fun demonstration of the difficulties of language development. They outline a weak spot in the structure of the language, showing possible ways of its development.

Similar processes can be seen in mastering verb morphological categories. A good example here is the category of the species. The Russian language system has two main ways of forming specific pairs: the prefix (one of the prefixes is used - ON-, C-, PO-, ZA-, etc.) a way to form a perfect type (do - "do, write -? Write) or suffix (the suffix -IVA - / - YBA- and -A- are used) method of forming an imperfect species (label - "label, chop - * chop").

However, as is often the case in language, this supermodel is not implemented consistently: not all perfect verbs with a prefix form a species pair in a suffix way (to want, take a break) and not all similar verbs have a paired non-abbreviated imperfect type (miss, need). Of course, children do not want to put up with such imperfections and restore the missing pairs:

want to -> download the spoil f— to bury

take a break -> need a breather * - need it

In creating species-related occasional verb pairs, children sometimes seem to show the possibilities of developing a language system. So, for example, in their recourse they dramatically expand the circle of one-act verbs, representing action as a set of acts, such as: blink -> blink. In the speech of preschoolers, there is a desire to dismember almost any action: shedding, biting, drinking, sniffing, buzzing, roaring, whining, playing, drawing, etc.

The elimination of multi-root pairs also appears in children's speech as a result of the struggle for "grammatical justice." Supplementary pairs “take - take”, “say - talk”, “put - put”, “catch - catch”, “find - search” are corrected for - “take - take”, “say - say”, “put - put , put ”,“ catch - catch ”,“ search - search ”, etc.

Not being able to provide a detailed description of the process of forming the morphological system of the children's language, we refer the reader to numerous interesting and fascinating studies by scientists at the Leningrad school of ontolinguistics, headed by Professor Stella Naumovna Tseitlin.

The formation of child morphology proceeds simultaneously with the formation of the syntactic structure of the child’s speech.

When correlating our statements with reality, we, adults, use detailed sentences, in which the dissected expression of the subject of action, the action itself (predicate), the object of action are usually present. In the child's speech, all these elements are initially merged into one word. Children's single-word sayings are called holofras. The first statements of the child are due to the affective nature of his thinking; they are associated with specific situations and have a symplectic (A. R. Luria) character. Golofrazy not so much transmit any information, how many express the emotional state in connection with this situation. The situation itself appears in holofrase as an undifferentiated whole unity, where there is no distinction between the subject of the action, the action itself, the object of the action, etc. Depending on the situation, the same word can convey a different meaning. For example, a sentence consisting of the word “Mom” may contain a call for communication, a request to pick up, a joyful message that mother entered the room, a request that mother open the matryoshka doll, and more. others

Grammatical meanings of one-word sentences develop simultaneously with the development of a child’s thinking. One-word sentences that convey an emotional state are being improved: a distinction appears in them in the designation of the subject and the action. In the speech of a one-year-old child, the designation of the fact of the presence of an object (“Mama”; “Ma-chi-ki” [Boys], etc.), and the fixation of any processes, actions (“Buh” [What- it fell]; "Lisi" [Write]; "Kx-x" [Dad sleeps], etc.). A little later, the child discovers the presence of signs in the subject, the designation of which also becomes the content of a holofrase ([Pointing to the shoes] "Mother" [Mother's shoes]; "Sasha" [Sasha's Doll], etc.).

The transition from one-word to two-word sentences in speech formation occurs gradually. Intermediate form here are statements that contain the combination “word + gesture”. In this case, an object with a gesture is formed in the statement that what linguists call "theme", "known", "given", and the word or quasi-term - "rem", that is, new in speech, "what is said about topic. " All together, this kind of statement may be: “gesture on an object” + “yab”, i.e. “this is an apple”, and “gesture of holding out” + “yab” - “give

me an apple. " Then, somewhere to the age of one and a half, the child has disyllabic statements: “A doll is here.” “There is a machine”, “Still to read”, etc. Non-verbal components play a big part in them, without which it is sometimes impossible to understand that the child wants. With the help of two-word sentences, children can describe different situations: the location of a person in space, a request (“Give me up”), a denial (“Goose bye”), an indication of the subject matter, etc. The first logical-grammatical relations which are formed in the two-word sentences of children usually camp Relationship “action is the object on which the action is directed” (“I want kitty, kitty”; “Move bikiki”). The number of two-syllable sentences is growing like an avalanche: from 1.5 years to 2 years month after month -14, 24, 54, 89, 350, 1400, 2500). After two years, the child masters the ways of shaping subjective relations in speech (“Mom Played”), which push him to use three-part constructions in speech (“Katya draw tank”). According to the Moscow ontolinguist NI Lepskaya, “by the beginning of the third year of life we ​​can find the whole system in the child’s language th transmitted in Russian case forms: subjective, object, adverbial, attributive. However, due to the lack of pretexts and the mixing of inflections, the methods of their transmission remain very imperfect. ”

After the child has mastered the three-term sentences, he quickly turns to sentences containing four or more words. At the same time, at first, his monologue sentences are a combination of two-word sentences (“Mama cup” + “Writing cup” = “Mama give cup”)

After two years, children have their first attempts to convey information about several situations. In this case, the child at first simply fixes the existence of a connection between the two situations. The union is added to the intonation method: the union AND (it expresses a connecting and adversary relationship) is assimilated first (“Dad has come, and we will read”, “The sun has come out, and we are not going for a walk”, etc.). Somewhat later, the child learns subordinate relationships that convey the idea of ​​the inequality of different situations reflected in the statement. The development of preschooler thinking leads to an understanding of the various relationships between situations, facts and phenomena.

reality: juxtaposition and opposition, temporal, spatial, cause-effect, etc. (“Give the paddle with which the sand is put”, “Let's play where the sand is”, “The leg hurts, yesterday fell from the bike”, etc. .).

Already at the age of 5-6 years old, the child usually learns almost the entire grammar of the native language in its elementary forms and speaks mostly correctly. However, book syntactic constructions (participial, adjectival and adverbial revolutions, etc.) present difficulties for him even at the early school age.