Children's word creativity

Children's word-making is a phenomenon of speech formation, which has become widely known to readers after repeated reprints of the book “From Two to Five” by K. I. Chukovsky. The overwhelming majority of parents observe their children

kind of "word-formation explosion", which is manifested in the fact that children themselves begin to invent new words. As an example of such word creation, we will give a “childish” anecdote.

Three-year-old Vanya runs along the lawn with a net.

- I am a butcher catcher and their killer!

- Well, you. brother sadist - says his father.

- No, I am not a sadist, I am a hilly. I'll come home, sit on the mountains

shock and I'll be a sadist.

Studies of Russian psycholinguists A. M. Shakhnarovich and N. M. Yuryeva clarified the optimal terms for children's word creation: in their opinion, the peak of word-building activity falls at the age of three to seven years. Three years is the boundary between early and pre-school childhood. It is at this time that the child begins to vividly develop visual-figurative thinking, and it is by this age that he comprehends some of the patterns of the morpheme structure of words. The level of thinking allows the child to create new words on the basis of rather complex speech-thinking operations of analysis and synthesis. By the way, the phenomenon of word creation is noted only in the speech of healthy and intellectually

children, the mentally retarded of this phenomenon is either not observed at all or is observed in a very weakened form.

In preschool childhood, the nature of personality development changes dramatically: an independent creative speech and thought activity takes the place of imitation (imitation). In his word creation, the child creates new words, words that he has never heard from adults. However, the factor of communication with adults in the development of the language personality of a preschooler still plays an important role: the speech of others becomes the object of analysis for the child, the material in which he identifies the most frequent ways of word-building.

Imagine a situation: a four-year-old preschooler walks up to the window and sees the janitor sweep the street. The child says: "Uncle is sweeping the street ... Sweeper." Creating a new word for him (“sweeper”), the boy first analyzes the situation he sees (highlights the subject of the action, the predicate (the action itself) and the object of the action), then he synthesizes all the important components into one lexeme, the root of which indicates the action, and affixes convey the meaning of the singular, the masculine and the fact that we are the producer of the action.

Besides the fact that word-creation implies a certain level of development of thinking, it relies on the knowledge of word-formation supermodels of the language, revealed by the child in the speech of the adults around him. In this case, the law of analogy works: newly created words are formed by analogy with those already formed. Thus, in the above anecdote, the words “child catcher” and “killer” were created by analogy with the words “teacher”, “driver”, “reader”, “sender”, “receiver”, etc .; and the word sweeper - by analogy with the words "porter", "draftsman", "driller", "smoker", "fan", etc.

Children's creativity is limited to the word-formation resources of the structure of a specific national language. Most often, preschoolers use affixes to create new words. "The dog opened its mouth, then zazinula"; "Let me unpack the packages"; “I, Mommy, am looking” (i.e., admiring my reflection in the mirror); “And Vova is pumping a bicycle”; “A cold scarf”; "I am all so smelly, I am all so soulful"; "Such lightness, and you are still asleep"; “Here the enemies are as if they were selling”; “I'd rather go home unmarked” and

etc. However, children in word formation can also use the foundation (“catwalking”, “heat meter”, “animal park”, “fish spoon,” “crazy” (crazy + amazing) ”I break”), the phrase (“Rain is a poor organizer”, “One cannot be a forest ";" Best me "," Crazy Aunt ").

As shown by research scientists, children's word creation within the framework of the preschool age has its own evolution. N. Yuryeva conducted an experimental study of the development of this linguistic phenomenon in Russian children. The study was based on a series of experiments that took place in the form of an individual game. The child was shown pictures of people and animals in different situations (“a man on a horse”, “a man sweeping the street”, “a man on a bicycle”, “a man on a tank”, “a man lifting a barbell”, “two people” those sitting with a fishing rod in a boat ”,“ a grasshopper with a violin ”,“ a hare playing the drum ”, etc.), the subjects were asked to give the name of the depicted object. Younger preschoolers preferred to limit themselves to the description of the situation depicted (“uncle rides a horse”, “uncle's boat ride”), at the turn of junior and middle preschool age (4 years) children began to invent new derivative words (neologisms) based on a speech analysis of the situation ( “Uncle rides a horse — a horseman”, “catches a fish, sits a sitnik”, “paddles paddles - rowers”), further, as they mature - for the older preschool age - children create new words without having to rely on speech analysis (looking at picture, they "immediately" issue: "Skrypn IR, Udocnik, Horse, and so on), finally, to the end of preschool age (6.5-7 years), more and more often, subjects resorted to standard (adult) vocabulary (Cyclist, Tankist, "Weightlifter", etc.). Summarizing, we can trace the nature of the development of the children's word-formation system. Initially, the child’s nominations represent descriptive designations of the situation, then synthesis is added to the analysis of designation objects - a new derived word, finally, the analysis goes deep into consciousness (internalized) - a new word appears as the only designation of the object or phenomenon. By the end of preschool age, the child’s vocabulary increases , the need for new words disappears - the word creation goes out.

The other side of the speech creativity of children is the attempts to realize and comprehend the meanings of words in its internal form (recall the “Etymological Dictionary” of B. Yu. Norman). Hearing an unfamiliar word in an adult’s speech, the child tries to recreate its origin, often taking the wrong path. "The coop is the uncle who smokes"; "I became infected, and then it affected"; "Mom is angry, but quickly fertilized"; "We have rotten electricity" (goes dead); “Pike perch is who is being tried”; "The loafer is the one who makes the boats"; “The village is where there are a lot of trees”; "The city is where there are mountains"; “Primary school is where bosses study”

Interpretation of derivative words as well as word creation develops in a child simultaneously with the development of his thinking. N. M. Yuryeva conducted a series of experiments to identify the nature of the formation of an understanding of the internal form of derived words, that is, the interpretation of the meaning of a word based on its origin. At this time, children of different ages were offered for interpretation (he had to answer the question: “What does this mean?”) Derived words (“alarm clock”, “reboiler”, “lamp”, “reader”, “writer”, “joker” , "Mushroom picker", "shoemaker", "sugar bowl", "chicken coop", etc.). Interpretations changed as the subjects grew older. Moreover, if in the younger preschool age, mastering the meaning of words relies mainly on the subject-practical experience of the child (at this age, the child refuses to interpret the word according to its internal form), on average, the language experience, which often pushes the child to the wrong interpretations {“an alarm clock - it wakes up”, “a stove-maker who is baking”, “a mushroom-keeper who is mushrooming”, “a milkman-who eats milk soup”, “a bee-keeper is the father of bees” and so on.). This experience is developing and improving more and more: from interpretations on the basis of a single sign or association (“the boiler - it boils”, “the chicken coop - the chicken bites”), the child goes on to master the values ​​of affixes (“alarm clock, calls and wakes people”, “A lamp is a lantern that shines”), and misinterpretations decrease by the end of preschool childhood (by 7 years), but are also found in seven-year-olds.

In mastering new words, a child is not limited to the interpretation of their etymology. He often remakes the lexeme he does not understand so as to clarify its origin. This is a phenomenon

as the reader remembers, it is called "folk etymology" "This is not a ruler, but a long line"; "Not a desert, but a bush" (from the word - bush); "Not a garland - steklada"; "Not an alarm clock - a bell"; "Why say short-sighted? It is necessary - near-sighted or short-eyed ";" Not a plane, but planed board ";" Not an escalator, but a sand-digger "," Boots are not rubber, but muddy ", etc.

In general, by the beginning of school childhood, children master the word-formation system of their native language. This is reflected in a sharp decrease in the intensity of word creation, the assimilation of traditional norms in the interpretation of words, in a critical attitude to one's own speech activity.