Intonation and rhythm in the preverbal period of speech development

Already in the cry of a newborn, a certain intonation pattern is outlined. The interesting thing is that the intonation of the infant

The scream is preserved and subsequently reproduced in the lament of older children and even in the lament of adults (especially in women). This first intonation becomes a means of unidirectional communication: an adult (mother) "becomes infected" with feelings that are transmitted intonation. By the end of the 1st month of the child’s life, his mother can, by the nature of the cry, recognize the reason for her child’s dissatisfaction.

Later, as a result of interaction with adults, the baby learns other types of intonational expressiveness. From the 2nd month in his vocalizations, the intonation of free walking appears; from the 3rd - the intonation of joy. By the 6th month, the intonation of joy begins to be subdivided into joyful exclamations and sounds expressing pleasure. From the 7th month intonation of the child appears in the phonations of the request, and from the beginning of the second year of life - the intonation of the question.

The development of the intonation capabilities of the child in the pre-verbal period of his speech development is associated with the expansion of his social outlook. The observations of scientists have shown that in different communicative situations the intonation of the sound manifestations of a child changes. He begins to identify typical situations of verbal communication as a whole, as intonationally completed. In this case, the child focuses on the communicative situation as a whole, at the unconscious level, highlighting for himself elementary speech genres. As M. Bakhtin rightly wrote, “intonation plus the corresponding situation is the simplest ideological apparatus (before articulate speech).” It can be said that elements of proto-common thinking manifest themselves in the early stages of speech development (at the intonation level) .

The emergence of all new intonation capabilities in a child indicates the presence of reverse electrical and acoustic connections in the “adult-child” system, with the dominant value of an adult.

In the early stages of speech development, the child responds not to individual words, but to the entire phrase. And if, for example, a child at 8 months is trained to respond to the question “Where is tick-tac?” In such a way that it will show on the clock, then the same reaction will be on the pseudo-question “A la-la?” Asked with that same intonation. This idea is confirmed by other experiments. For example, a one-year-old child shows on the window and then,

when they ask him in Russian “Where is the window?”, and then when the question is asked with the same intonation, but in French or German.

Early in the formation of speech, the rhythm of the word begins to play a special semantic role. By the age of 6 months, the child begins to distinguish the general sound image of the word, its rhythmic contour. Such a reaction to words is characterized by phonetic diffusivity: the child’s auditory analyzer is not yet capable of distinguishing phonemes. Therefore, such a "pseudo-understanding" is carried out within the framework of the first signal system; it, as shown by the work of zoopsychologists, seems to be “understood” by higher animals of verbal commands. In experiments with a child, an adult would utter the words “take” and “buzz” or the words “ladies-ladies” and “captain-captain" with the same rhythmic-melodic and intonational characteristics. In the same situations of communication, this substitution does not changed the child's behavioral reactions. In other experiments, the usual question “Where is the dad?” was replaced by a simple repetition of the syllables “Yes, yes, yes?”, pronounced with the same intonation. The reaction of the child was the same.

Observations of scientists have shown that the response of a child of 7-8 months to a word depends on the position of the body, on the degree of familiarity of the child with the environment, on the one who utters the phrase. So on a sentence uttered by a loved one, he gives a different reaction than to the same statement in the mouth of a “stranger.” Being, for example, in an upright position on the mother’s arms, he can respond differently to the speech of adults than in a bedside on the back, etc. The emergence of a true understanding of words begins in the child only in the second year of life.It is connected with the transition from the diffuse to phonemic perception of the sound structure of the word, i.e., the identification of sounds by their relationship to certain phonemes.