5.3. A linguist's point of view: children's speech as colloquial speech As mentioned above, English-speaking DR specialists are almost without exception psychologists. Analyzing DR, they relied on the authority of English-speaking linguists. The latter, being followers of Chomsky,

Considering the second half of life, we say that this period is a pre-verbal, preparatory period in the development of speech. At this stage, speech is replaced by other, non-verbal means - emotional expressions, facial expressions, and then gestures, postures, locomotion, vocalizations. In the third year of life, a child basically learns human language and begins to communicate using speech. Between these two periods there is an amazing stage when the child begins to speak, but not in ours, but in some of his own. This stage in child psychology is called the stage of autonomous children's speech.

Ch. Darwin was the first to describe autonomous children's speech. He noticed that before using the common language, the child speaks in a peculiar language, very vaguely reminiscent of the language of adults. This children's language differs from the language of an adult, firstly, by phonetics (the sound of words), and secondly, by its semantic side, i.e. the meaning of words.

The sound composition of the first words of the child differs sharply from the sound composition of our words. This speech from the articulatory and phonetic side does not coincide with the speech of adults. Sometimes these sound combinations are completely different from the words of adults (for example, “adika”, “ika”, “giliga”), sometimes fragments of our words (“pa” - fell; “bo-bo” - it hurts; “ka” - porridge and etc.), sometimes heavily distorted words of adults, but retaining their rhythmic pattern (for example, “titi” - a clock, “ninyanya” - no need, “abavlya” - an apple). But in all cases, this is not a reproduction of the words of an adult, but the invention of their own sound combinations. Another feature of children's words is the originality of their meaning.

Darwin first drew attention to the fact that the words of autonomous children's speech differ from our words in their meaning. He gave such an example.

The boy, once seeing a duck swimming in the pond, began to call her “wa”. These sounds were uttered by the child when he saw a duck swimming in the water by the pond. Then the boy began to call milk spilled on the table, a puddle, any liquid in a glass, and even milk in a bottle with the same sounds. One day a child was playing with old coins depicting birds. He began to call them "wa" too. Finally, all small, round shiny objects (buttons, medals, coins) began to be called “wa”.

There are many examples of autonomous children's words. So, the childish word “pu-fu” can mean iodine, a wound, hot porridge, a cigarette from which smoke comes, fire, the extinguishing process itself, and much more where you need to blow. The word “kh” can mean a cat, fur, hair, a hat, a fur coat, and many things that are associated with a feeling of softness and fluffiness. From an adult's point of view, these things have nothing in common. For an adult, this sign of softness and fluffiness is completely unimportant, but for a baby it can be the main one, because in his first generalizations he is guided, first of all, by direct sensation and his own, unique experience. It is interesting that objects can be called one word according to a variety of characteristics.

In one girl (1 year 3 months), the word “ka” had 11 meanings, which were constantly expanding. First (at 11 months) she called this word the yellow stone with which she played, then this word she called yellow soap, then stones of any color. At the age of 1, she called the word “ka” porridge, then lumps of sugar, then sweets, jelly, jam, then a coil, pencil, soap dish with soap, etc. You can see that some objects are part of the meaning of the word according to one attribute, others - differently. For example, yellow soap entered on the basis of color, jelly - on the basis of sweetness, and the reel and pencil - on the basis of sound similarity. All these meanings form a set of objects that are denoted by one word “ka”.

None of the words of children's speech can be adequately translated into our language, because children see and designate objects in a completely different way. It is interesting that the same children perfectly understand the meanings of all adult words: they easily distinguish a cat from their mother's hair or a bottle of iodine from a cigarette. But they continue to say “kh” or “pu-fu” not at all out of whim, but because their words have a different meaning.

From these two features of autonomous children's speech follows the third, associated with its use. If this speech is unlike the usual one, neither in its sound nor in its meaning, then only one who knows the child well, who can decipher his cipher, can understand it. No outsider can guess what “wa” or “pu-fu” means. But close people can easily understand the baby, because they are guided not only by his words, but also by the situation in which the child is. For example, if a child shouts “wah” while walking, it means that he wants to go to the pond, and if he says the same “wah” in the room, it means he wants to play with buttons. Communication with children during this period is possible only about a specific situation (which is why it is called situational). The word can denote the object that the child directly perceives. If the object is in front of the eyes, then it is immediately clear what the “speech” is about. But it is impossible to understand the meaning of these words when they are divorced from the situation. If our words can replace the situation, then the words of autonomous children's speech do not carry this function. They are used to highlight something important in a particular situation. They have an indicative function, a naming function, but they do not have a meaningful or significative function. The child's words cannot replace missing objects, but they can, in a visual situation, point to its individual aspects and give them names.

The peculiarity of autonomous children's speech reflects the peculiarities of the child's thinking at this transitional stage of development. At the stage of children's speech, there is still no possibility of verbal thinking, divorced from the visual situation. The child still cannot think with the help of words outside the visual situation. Although his thinking acquires some initial features of speech, it cannot yet be divorced from the visual. The child's words reflect only the direct relation of things. The meaning of the words of children's speech are not in relation to each other, i.e. one value is not related to another value. For example, if “f-f” means fire and “ding” is an object that moves, “fa-ding” could mean a train. Meaningful, non-situational connections of things are still inaccessible to the child. His thinking is not independent in nature, it seems to be subject to perception, and the affective moment prevails in it over the thinking. The child's statements do not correspond to our judgments, but rather to our exclamations, with the help of which we convey an emotional reaction to the situation. It conveys perceived impressions, states them, but does not generalize or conclude. It is characteristic that the words of children's speech do not have a permanent meaning - in each new situation, something different is indicated than in the previous one. The first children's words mean almost everything or a lot, they are applicable to any subject. Their meaning is extremely unstable - it slides over the surrounding objects, absorbing all the new ones. These are more indicative voice gestures than real words.

There is a period of autonomous children's speech in the development of every child. During this period, it is impossible to say whether the child has speech or not, because he does not have speech in the adult sense of the word and at the same time he is already speaking. The next stage in the development of a child's speech is marked by the appearance of his first real words.

Approximately in the second half of the 2nd year, an extraordinary event occurs in the child's life - he begins to speak.

For a long time it was assumed that children's speech arises from direct imitation of the speech sounds of an adult. Such imitation does take place (after all, children always begin to speak the same language as their parents). However, it is not the main one. A child can easily reproduce this or that word at the request of an adult, but at the same time never use it in a real situation of interaction with others. This means that the ability to imitate, perceive and reproduce other people's words does not yet lead to the appearance of the child's own words.

At the same time, it is obvious that the first words appear only in communication with an adult. But the “speech-producing” situation of interaction between an adult and a child cannot be reduced to a direct copying of speech sounds, but must represent their substantive cooperation. We have already said that the word is, first of all, a sign, i.e. substitute for another item. This means that behind each word there must be what it means, i.e. its meaning. If there is no such object, if a mother and a child up to 1.5 years old are limited to manifestations of mutual love, the first words may not appear, no matter how much the mother talks to the child and no matter how well he reproduces her words. In the event that the child enthusiastically plays with objects, but prefers to do it alone, the appearance of active words in the child is also delayed: he does not have a need to name the object, turn to someone with a request, or express his impressions. The need and need to speak presuppose two main conditions: the need to communicate with an adult and the need for an object to be named. Neither one nor the other in isolation leads to the word. And only the situation of substantive cooperation between a child and an adult creates the need to name an object and, therefore, pronounce one's own word.

In such substantive cooperation, an adult sets a speech task for the child, which requires a restructuring of his entire behavior: in order to be understandable, he must produce a completely definite word. And this means that he must turn away from the desired object, turn to an adult, single out the word he utters and use this artificial sign of a socio-historical nature (which is always the word) to influence those around him.

The process of generating the first words in a child was studied by M.G. Elagina. The essence of her experimental situation was to cause the child to actively use a certain word as the only adequate means of communication with an adult.

For some time, the adult acted with objects (matryoshka, chicken, testicle) in front of the child's eyes and distinctly named this object. At some point, the adult interrupted the game and placed the object in a position in which the child saw but could not reach the desired object. There was a difficult situation for the child. An adult, who was nearby, gave the object to the child only if he turned to him for help in words and called the object with the appropriate word. If the request was made by other means (babble, autonomous words, expressive gestures, etc.), the adult distinctly named the object, but did not give it. The adult did this until the child, addressing the adult, either correctly named the object or refused to communicate.

Out of 33 children from 13 to 19 months old, 27 learned in this experimental situation to correctly name objects.

Of particular interest in this work is the process itself, as a result of which the children switched to the adequate use of the word. On the basis of fixing the behavior of children and their visual reactions, M.G. Elagina identified three main periods, each of which has its own semantic center for the child.

At the first stage, the object is such a center. The child directly reaches out to him, accompanying his futile attempts with mimic and intonation-expressive movements that bear the character of influencing an adult. In some cases, these manifestations developed into expressions of anger, displeasure and even crying. However, in most children, the focus gradually shifted to the adult.

At the second stage, the adult becomes the main component of the situation. First, the child shifted his gaze from the object to the adult and back, and then fixed his eyes on the adult. Turning to an adult, the child tried a variety of verbal and non-verbal means. Instead of direct attempts to get the object, pointing gestures, active babble (give-give-give) and other ways of influencing the adult appeared. In some cases, children switched to an emotional impact on an adult (snuggled, caressed, stroked him), in others, on the contrary, they turned away and closed their eyes. These manifestations, different in appearance, were the same in their function: to bring the adult out of the state of neutrality and draw his attention to their attempts. However, the tactics of the adult remained the same: he uttered the right word and expected to hear it from the child.

As a result, at the third stage, the word becomes the center of the situation. The child began not only to look at the adult, but focused on his lips, looked closely at the articulation. The first attempts to pronounce the word appeared. In these attempts, the child built an articulatory image of the word. At the end of this stage, the child pronounces the required word more or less correctly and receives the desired object.

Elagina notes a very interesting fact: having named an object and received it, the children did not leave the adult, but called him to repeat the situation. Some of them returned the object to the adult, others themselves tried to put the toy where it stood, others only touched the object, as if indicating the fact of its receipt. The children lost interest in the toy and were happy to repeat the correct word. They seemed to discover the sound form of the word, and it was the word, and not the toy, that became the subject of their activity.

In the work of M.G. Elagina, it is important to emphasize that in her situation the word acted as a tool-means in its own communicative function. The process of forming the use of the word, traced in this experiment, shows that the child first orients himself in the general sense of the situation. At first, this situation acts as a communicative one for him (you need to turn to an adult); then the situation prompts him to use the word to involve the adult (you must turn to the adult with the word); at the third stage, a specific word turns out to be in the center of the situation, which becomes a means of communication (it is necessary to address an adult through a specific word). Thus, as in the case of the formation of objective tool actions, the child first learns the basic meaning of the situation, which makes his actions purposeful and meaningful. Mastering the operational-technical composition of the action (in the case of speech, the perception and articulation of the word) is worked out on the basis of the already discovered meaning of verbal communication and cooperation with an adult.

The generation of a word is fully developed only at the beginning. Subsequently, the process is curtailed, the child immediately proceeds to orientation in the articulatory-pronunciation features of the word, to the active creation of the articulatory image of the word. This indicates that the orientation in the sense of the situation and in the function of the word as an instrument of communication, once having arisen, is preserved and does not require special repetitions. At the same time, it is important to emphasize that the speech task, i.e. The task of conveying something in words is set before the child for the first time by an adult. Children begin to actively pronounce words only under the influence of the persistent influences of an adult, when he turns the word into the center of the child's attention.

The literature provides descriptions of long delays in the development of speech at the transitional stage. Often such delays are explained by the fact that adults, well understanding the meaning of the child's autonomous speech and guessing his slightest desires, do not stimulate him to turn to normal human speech, do not set him a speech task.

A more common cause of speech delay is insufficient communication between adults and the child. Although the child's individual games with objects free adults from the importunity of children, they in no way stimulate the child's speech development. Under such conditions, the very need of the child to communicate with an adult is drowned out: he stops communicating with him, immerses himself in stereotypical actions with objects, and as a result, the child’s mental development in general and speech development in particular is delayed.

The kid stretches out his little hands: “Give me abu-gu!”
Mother: "Now I'll take it, my good .........."
..... which is amazing, they are great
understand each other!

The concept of "autonomous children's speech"

Before moving on to the real language period, the child begins to speak his own language, understandable only to him and close people. Any mother encounters the first “gu”, “abu”, “av”, “guli”, “mo-mo”, etc., and this is a kind of language of her baby, which is called “autonomous children's speech”. These are the first steps in the development of children's thinking and speech.

When does such an autonomous language appear in a child? All this is very individual. If one baby is good at using certain words or sounds already at 6-8 months, then the other will pronounce them for the first time only by the age of one, or even later.

The first to describe autonomous children's speech, to understand and appreciate its great importance, was Charles Darwin, who did not directly deal with the development of the child, but, being a brilliant observer, managed to isolate "autonomous speech" from the child, following the development of his grandson.

The peculiarity of "autonomous speech"

The peculiarity of "autonomous speech" lies in the fact that, firstly, the sound composition of the words used by the child differs sharply from the sound composition of our words. This speech motor, that is, from the articulatory, from the phonetic side, does not coincide with our speech. These are usually words like "ba-boo", "gu-ha", sometimes fragments of our words. These are words that, in their external, sounding form, differ from the words of our language. Sometimes they are similar to our words, sometimes they diverge sharply from them, sometimes they resemble our distorted words. The words of autonomous speech differ from our words in meaning.

Darwin's famous example is often cited in textbooks. His grandson, one day, seeing a duck swimming in a pond, whether imitating its sounds or the name given by adults, began to call it "wa". These sounds were made by the child when he saw a duck floating on the water by the pond. Then the boy began to call with the same sounds milk spilled on the table, any liquid, water in a glass, even milk in a bottle, obviously transferring this name due to the fact that there was water, liquid. One day a child was playing with old coins depicting birds. He began to call them "wa" too. Finally, all small round shiny objects resembling coins (buttons, medals) began to be called "wa".

Thus, if we wrote down the meanings of the word "wa" in a child, then we would find some original meaning from which all the rest come (duck on the water). This value is almost always very difficult. It is not divided into separate qualities, like the meanings of individual words, such a meaning is a whole picture.

With autonomous speech, it never happens that the child is able to say "bottle", "milk", that he is able not only to say and distinguish the constant properties of objects, but only out of a whim continues to say "mo-ko". In fact, both our words and our concepts are inaccessible to the child.

From this, two features can be distinguished that distinguish autonomous children's speech from the general course of development of the child's language. The first difference is the phonetic structure of speech, the second is the semantic side of children's speech.

And the third feature of autonomous children's speech, which was appreciated by Darwin - if this speech differs from ours in sound and semantic respects, then communication with the help of such speech should differ sharply from communication with the help of our speech. After all, the truth is, using his autonomous speech, the baby can communicate only with those people who understand the meaning of his words - mom, dad, grandmother, or governess..........

Finally, the last, fourth of the main distinguishing features of an autonomous language is that the possible connection between individual words is also extremely peculiar. This language is usually agrammatical, does not have an objective way of connecting individual words and meanings into coherent speech (in our case this is done using syntax and etymology). Here, completely different laws of linking and combining words dominate - the laws of combining interjections, passing into each other, resembling a series of incoherent exclamations that we sometimes publish in strong affect and excitement.

Autonomous children's speech is not a rare case, not an exception, but a rule, a law that is observed in the speech development of every child:

“Before the child passes from the languageless period of development to mastering the language of adults, he discovers in development the autonomous speech of children.”

Why is children's speech called autonomous?

This is because it is built, as it were, according to its own laws, different from the laws of constructing real speech. This speech has a different sound system, a different semantic side, different forms of communication and other forms of binding. That is why it was called independent.

Autonomous children's speech is a necessary period in the development of any normal child.

In many forms of speech underdevelopment, with delays in speech development, autonomous children's speech appears very often and determines the features of abnormal forms of speech development. For example, a delay is often expressed, first of all, in the fact that the child’s period of autonomous speech is delayed up to 2-3-4 years ... Other speech disorders in childhood also lead to the fact that autonomous speech is sometimes delayed for several years and yet performs the main genetic function, i.e. serves as a bridge over which the child passes from the non-lingual period to the linguistic one. Autonomous speech plays an essential role in the development of normal and abnormal children.

Sometimes, it is believed that the formation (or formation) of autonomous speech is affected by the incorrect or diminutive pronunciation of words by close people. This is not entirely true, because "autonomous speech" is the language of the child himself, for all meanings are set by the child himself. The child creates his "mo-ko", "baka", etc. from fragments of normally pronounced words. For example, a mother says "dog" - a full word, and the child gets "tank, abacus" or something else ....

But autonomous speech does not exist by itself. Along with his own words (his speech), the child also has an understanding of our words, that is, the child, before he begins to speak, understands a number of words. He understands the words we have formulated: “give”, “go”, “bread”, “milk”, etc., and this does not interfere with the presence of a second speech.

Autonomous children's speech and its meanings are developed with the active participation of the child. When autonomous speech is delayed in a child who understands adult speech quite well, there is a need for coherent transmission, or the construction of phrases. But these phrases, due to the fact that speech is devoid of syntactic coherence, bear little resemblance to ours. They are more like a simple stringing of words or distorted phrases of our language: "You take me," etc.

Autonomous children's speech is not only an extremely unique stage in the development of children's speech, but an important stage in the development of thinking of a small personality, a small child. Before the child's speech reaches a certain level of development, his thinking also cannot go beyond a certain limit.

When does a normal child experience a period of autonomous infant speech?

It usually starts in the middle of the first year of life, and ends at the age of 2-3 .... Each child is individual, each child is a personality, with its own term for the development of thinking and the formation of speech.