M. Ksenz, O. Lomova
LINGUISTIC CHARACTERISTICS OF SPEECH BEHAVIOR OF MODERN GERMAN- AND RUSSIAN-SPEAKING CHILDREN OF SENIOR PRESCHOOL AGE
Abstract. The article is devoted to the study of linguistic features of speech behavior of German- and Russian-speaking children of senior preschool age (5-7 years), given a specific situation of speech communication. The nature of speech behavior determined the research material ‒ episodes from the television programs «Dingsda: Müller», «Dingsda», «Out of the mouth of babes», videos of a similar format («Children try to guess things from the USSR», «Old things and modern children»). Children’s speech is studied and compared in the following aspects: vocabulary, word formation, grammar and phonetic features of speech peculiar to this age group. Similarities were revealed mainly at the phonetic level, differences – in word formation and grammar. Similarities in the field of phonetics are explained by universal processes characteristic of many languages, for example, the order of assimilation of consonants. The lexical features of children’s speech include the use of nominations of typical phenomena, explained both by the influence of society (mass culture, modern realities), and the age stage (evaluative vocabulary) and a specific speech situation (words expressing doubt and uncertainty). Differences were found in the processes of word formation; for example, for a German–speaking child, word formation by word composition became the most productive way, and for a Russian-speaking child, the suffix method, which was reflected in the more frequent use of diminutives by Russian-speaking children. The differences in grammar are explained by the types of languages that German and Russian belong to. Analytical German pays great attention to the order of words in a sentence, and for synthetic Russian, the relations between words are expressed through word- and formative morphemes.
Keywords: children’s speech, ontolinguistics (linguistics of children’s speech), psycholinguistics, speech behavior, age features of speech, speech of an older preschooler.