INDICATORS FOR MEASURING DIALOGIC SPEECH AT PRE-SCHOOL AGE

Abstract

One of the most important achievements of child development is the learning of a language and its activation through speech. Ferdinand de Saussure believes that “people use the rules of language to produce speech” [1]. In his essay “Course in general linguistics” he distinguishes between language, speech and speech activity. In his view, language is an element of speech activity, but it itself is an integrality. He describes speech activity as heterogeneous and belonging to both the individual and the social sphere. Saussure defines speech as an individual expression of language. Language is a system; speech - its realization.As means of communication, language can be considered as a social, biological or socio-psychological phenomenon. Itsdevelopment begins with birth and continues throughout life. The most intensive processes are those of its adoption in pre-school age. Through spoken communication, children meet their natural need for self-expression, self-assertion and self-actualization. Through the adopted language knowledge they exchange information and express their needs, thoughts, desires and feelings. This dynamic exchange of personally meaningful information through verbal channels can be defined as a dialogic associated speech.In the second half of the last century ontogenetic psycholinguistics greatly expanded its knowledge of how children master the language system, focusing on the linkage of linguistic ontogenesis with the perceptual and cognitive development of children.Linguistics describes the language system as a complex set of three main components with five distinct areas of linguistic functioning, which are differentiated in accordance to the content. Bloom and Lahey (1978) define the basic components of the language system: “a form, content and use” [2].If we accept Bloom and Lahey’s theory of the basic components of language and Chomsky’s theory (speech is an individual expression of language) when looking for criteria to study the dialogue in children, we can assume that dialogue is a process of dynamic exchange of structured language units of speech united by a mutually recognizable form which is structured in accordance to content.The main problem in exploring dialogic speech is the selection of the indicators with the help of which it will be measured. The factually measurable structures - productivity, autonomy, lexical-grammatical shaping of dialogue and integrity (according to Daskalova) are selected for the purposes of the study.