Review of the book by N.M. Yuryeva «oral narration in the ontogenesis of speech. experimental study" / n.m. Yuryeva; grew up academic Sciences, Institute of Linguistics. M. Yaroslavl: Chancellor, 2020, 192 p.

 

REVIEW OF THE BOOK N.M. YURIEVA «ORAL NARRATORY IN THE ONTOGENESIS OF SPEECH. EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH" / N.M. YURIEVA; ROS. ACADEMY SCIENCES, INSTITUTE OF LINGUISTICS. M. YAROSLAVL: CHANCELLOR, 2020, 192 P.

In recent years, Russian ontolinguistics has increasingly shifted its interest from the individual elements of children's speech (vocabulary, morphology, or syntax) to the construction of a coherent utterance, a narrative. Narrative is the most ecologically sound form of speech. The ability to construct a coherent, coherent text that responds to a given situation and fulfills a specific purpose is the level of language proficiency that any person must ultimately achieve for normal functioning. Yet, in Russian-language scientific literature, children's narratives have received extremely limited attention. Purely psycholinguistic research, especially that based on the study of narrative development in children with typical speech development, is rare. Rather, we see either research in linguopathology (Kornev, 2014, 2015) or the study of narrative in a neuropsychological context [4].

Nadezhda Mikhailovna Yuryeva's new book aims to fill this gap. It examines the genesis of narrative in typically developing children aged 3 to 7. The book returns us to the origins of psycholinguistics, to L.S. Vygotsky's cultural-historical paradigm. It demonstrates how children's speech today can be understood within the context of this cultural-historical paradigm.

In the first chapter, N.M. Yuryeva analyzes the main Russian studies on the development of narrative in childhood. A crucial point is the idea that speech develops only through joint object-based activities between a child and an adult. This is often overlooked by the authors of numerous speech therapy and special education publications, which focus on building a child's vocabulary in isolation from their everyday object-based activities. In this context, the author demonstrates the importance of dialogic interaction with an adult for a child's speech development. In particular, the reference to J. Bruner and his concept of scaffolding, which N.M. Yuryeva correlates with the concept of "mediation" in Russian psychology (B.D. Elkonin), seems relevant.

Finally, N.M. Yuryeva correlates the stages of speech production (according to A.R. Luria) with the stages of development of utterance in a child from motivational to semantic, and from it to semantic and linguistic.

In the second chapter of the book, N.M. Yuryeva dwells in detail on the cognitive approach of Arthur Appleby, who correlated the stages of conceptual development and concept formation in children, identified by L.S. Vygotsky, with the development of the main types of narrative in children. Unfortunately, we cannot agree with the esteemed author that it was «A. Appleby who was one of the first to point out the dependence of the speech narrative form on the changes occurring in the cognitive sphere of child development» (p. 59), since the development of this problematic was, after all, initiated by J. Piaget [6]. However, it seems extremely important that Nadezhda Mikhailovna introduced this scientific work into Russian scientific circulation, since it perfectly demonstrates how modern and in demand, not only in our country but also abroad, the ideas of the cultural-historical approach to the formation of the child’s psyche and his higher mental functions remain.

In the third chapter, the author analyzes children's narratives created based on the picture series "Frog, Where Are You?" [5] by children aged 3 to 7. In each group of children, N.M. Yuryeva identifies narrative types identified by Appleby and demonstrates that with age, the number of primitive narrative forms in each sample decreases, while more complex ones increase. For each age group, we examine the mechanisms for the complication of narrative structures, with examples. It appears that this material will be highly sought after by scholars who analyze children's narratives, as it offers a new approach to assessing narrative development.

The fourth chapter of the monograph is devoted to the cognitive structure of children's narrative. It is based on the triad "goal - attempt - outcome" identified by van Dijk [7] and developed in many works with a cognitive focus (e.g., Berman, Slobin, 1994; Altman, Armon-Lotem, 2015). N.M. Yuryeva, in a detailed analysis of the work [10], comes to the conclusion that, among Russian-speaking children, the complexity of narrative also follows the path of developing the purposefulness of the story. This approach also appears to be quite productive, as demonstrated by our own study of children's narratives using different material [11].

The following chapters of the book are devoted to a consistent analysis of various aspects of child-adult interaction in the development of children's narrative. In particular, Chapter 5 demonstrates the relationship between interaction and cognition in children's narrative. It emphasizes that conversational narrative, a complex discursive phenomenon, can be considered one type of narrative. Chapter 6 presents the methodological foundations for developing the concept of oral narrative, which allows us to move on in Chapter 7 to the actual construction of a hypothesis about the interactive component in the oral narratives of preschool children.

The author's research establishes that during child-adult interactions, the adult is focused on developing the child's mental representation of the structural and event-driven sequence of history. This leads to the hypothesis that the very mechanisms of narrativization that develop in children at this age are dialogically based.

In general, the author was able to show that the formation of an oral narrative in a child is associated with a discursive way of organizing his personal experience, which reflects the «image of an event» and the cognitive structure, including the emotional-evaluative attitude and the level of linguistic and communicative competence of the child.

It can be concluded that N.M. Yuryeva's monograph, "Oral Narrative in the Ontogenesis of Speech: An Experimental Study," makes a significant contribution to the study of the development of oral narrative in children: it reveals the mechanisms of its development based on the cultural-historical approach laid out in the works of L.S. Vygotsky. As a result of reading the book, we see how speech activity theory can be used to analyze children's speech development.

 

Literature

1. Kornev A.N., Balchyuniene I. Reading and creation of oral texts in children with dyslexia: language or resource deficit? // St. Petersburg Psychological Journal. 2014. No. 9. Pp. 1-27.
2. Kornev A.N. et al. Quantitative approach to the study of language formation in children with normal and delayed speech development: a corpus study of spontaneous and elicited texts // New information technologies in automated systems. 2015a. Vol. 18, pp. 636-646.

3. Kornev A.N. et al. Language development in children with normal and delayed speech development: a corpus study of spontaneous and elicited texts // Acta Linguistica Petropolitana. Transactions of the Institute of Linguistic Research. 2015b. Vol. XI, No. 1. Pp. 605-624.
4. Akhutina T.V. and others. Methods of neuropsychological examination of children // Methods of neuropsychological examination of children 6-9 years old / Akhutina T.V. (ed.). M: V. Sekachev, 2016. P. 16-170.
5. Mayer M. Frog, where are you? NY. 1969.
6. Piaget J. Le langage et la pensee chez l'enfant. Etudes sur la logique de l'enfant. Neuchatel-Paris: Delachaux et Niestle, 1923. 214 p.
7. Van Dijk T. Semantic Macro-Structures and Knowledge Frames in Discourse Comprehension // Cognitive Processes in Comprehension / Just MA, Carpenter PA ‌: Taylor & Francis, 1978. p. 3-31.
8. Berman RA. and others. Relating events in narrative in 2 volumes. Hillsdale, NJ ‌: L. Erlbaum Associates, 1994.
9. Altman C. and others. Macrostructure, microstructure, and mental state terms in the narratives of English–Hebrew bilingual preschool children with and without specific language impairment // Applied Psycholinguistics. 2015. T. 37, No. 1. pp. 165-193.
10. Stein NL, Albro ER. Building complexity and coherence: children's use of goal-structured knowledge in telling stories. // Narrative development: Six approaches. – NY – London: Routledge, 1997, pp. 5-44.

11. Veraksa A.N., Bukhalenkova D.A., Oshchepkova E.S. The relationship between understanding emotions and semantic aspects of preschool children's narratives // Bulletin of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research. 2019, No. 4.

 

References

1. Kornev AN, Balchjuniene I. Reading and creation of oral texts in children with dyslexia: language or resource deficit? // Peterburg psychological journal. 2014. No. 9. pp. 1-27.
2. Kornev AN. and dr. A Quantitative Approach to Studying Language Development in Children with Normal and Delayed Speech Development: A Corpus Study of Spontaneous and Evoked Texts // New Information Technologies in Automated Systems. 2015a. Vol. 18, pp. 636-646.
3. Kornev AN. and dr. Language development in children with normal and delayed speech development: a corpus study of spontaneous and elicited texts // Acta Linguistica Petropolitana. Trudy instituta lingvisticheskikh issledovanij. 2015b. Vol. XI, No. 1. Pp. 605-624.
4. Ahutina TV i dr. Methods of neuropsychological examination of children // Methods of neuropsychological examination of children 6-9 years old / Akhutina TV (ed.). M: V. Sekachev, 2016. P. 16-170.
5. Mayer M. Frog, where are you? NY. 1969.
6. Piaget J. Le langage et la pensee chez l'enfant. Etudes sur la logique de l'enfant. Neuchatel-Paris: Delachaux et Niestle, 1923. 214 p.
7. Van Dijk T. Semantic Macro-Structures and Knowledge Frames in Discourse Comprehension // Cognitive Processes in Comprehension / Just MA, Carpenter PA: Taylor & Francis, 1978. p. 3-31.
8. Berman RA i dr. Relating events in narrative in 2 volumes. Hillsdale, NJ: L. Erlbaum Associates, 1994.
9. Altman C. i dr. Macrostructure, microstructure, and mental state terms in the narratives of English–Hebrew bilingual preschool children with and without specific language impairment // Applied Psycholinguistics. 2015. T. 37, No. 1. rp. 165-193.
10. Stein NL, Albro ER. Building complexity and coherence: children's use of goal-structured knowledge in telling stories. // Narrative development: Six approaches. – NY – London: Routledge, 1997, rr. 5-44.

11. Veraksa AN, Buhalenkova DA, Oshhepkova ES. The relationship between understanding emotions and semantic aspects of preschoolers’ narrative // RFFI Bulletin. 2019, No. 4.