Abstract
Important characteristics of normal mental development of a child are the characteristics of his speech, vocabulary, mastery of grammatical constructions. According to the peculiarities of speech, one can judge the ability of a person to reflect not only the external, perceived properties of objects, but also internal, significant correlations and relationships. In our work, we call these properties constructive and semantic characteristics of speech. The child’s speech develops only in interaction with the people around him, the main figure of which is the mother. The aim of the study was to determine how the constructive and semantic characteristics of the mother’s speech influence the development of the child’s speech, vocabulary and speech activity. The study involved 30 children aged 6.5–7.5 years and their mothers. For diagnostics, the subtest ‘Dictionary’ of the WISC test was used. The traditional method of determining the level of speech development was supplemented by indicators of constructive-semantic characteristics (speech activity, propensity to use different speech structures associated with speech development levels, use of each of the four types of constructions in accordance with the stages of verbal development). Significant connections between individual indicators ofthe speech of the child and his mother were revealed. Relations allow us to talk about the constructive and semantic characteristics of adult speech as a factor in the development of the child’s speech. The study made it possible to reveal the mechanism of the implicit formation of concepts in the child by generalizing a largenumber of situational descriptions and features perceived from verbal judgments of the mother. Speech activity of children decreases in the conditions of primary use by the mother of speech structures ‘action with the object’, ‘functional purpose of the objects’. The results obtained make it possible to consider the constructive-semantic characteristics of maternal speech as a factor of the zone of the nearest developmentof the child’s speech.
 Keywords: speech development, factors of speech development, speech activity, zone of proximal development, speech behavior as a joint action, constructive semantic characteristics of speech, levels of speech development
Highlights
Speech occupies a key place in the system of higher mental functions of man, is the main mechanism of his thinking and conscious activity
The child’s speech development is considered as development of speech constructs reflecting internal connections: (1) a verbal dictionary reflecting the understanding of functional actions with the object, accompanying the child’s visual and practical actions, manipulating it with real objects; (2) use in the speech of nouns and adjectives, describing the situational and essential characteristics of specific objects, distinguishing the stage of visual-figurative thinking; (3) logical-verbal formulas that characterize the stage of logical-verbal thinking
The priority constructive-semantic characteristic of judgments about the meaning of words is the ‘concept’, which amounted to 45.0% of the total number of used constructs
Summary
Speech occupies a key place in the system of higher mental functions of man, is the main mechanism of his thinking and conscious activity. J. Piaget singled out the existence of egocentric speech, defined the main stages of its development in ontogenesis [1]. The child’s speech reflects his ability to understand the external, perceived properties of objects, and internal, essential, connections and relationships. The child’s speech development is considered as development of speech constructs reflecting internal connections: (1) a verbal dictionary reflecting the understanding of functional actions with the object, accompanying the child’s visual and practical actions, manipulating it with real objects; (2) use in the speech of nouns and adjectives, describing the situational and essential characteristics of specific objects, distinguishing the stage of visual-figurative thinking; (3) logical-verbal formulas (a concept, a generalized word, a metaphor) that characterize the stage of logical-verbal thinking
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
