Žodžių suvokimo ir ekspresyviosios kalbos ypatumai neišplėtotos kalbos atveju

Straipsnyje aptariami vaikų, turinčių neišplėtotą kalbą, leksikos ypatumai. Atlikta kiekybinė sukauptojo vaikų kalbos tekstyno ir eksperimentinių užduočių rezultatų analizė padėjo atskleisti žodžių supratimo, vartojimo ypatumus, leksinės įvairovės rodiklius. Lyginami vaikų, turinčių neišplėtotą kalbą, ir tipinės kalbos raidos vaikų rezultatai. Tyrimas atskleidė, kad vaikai, kuriems būdinga neišplėtota kalba, statistiškai reikšmingai prasčiau atliko daiktavardžių ir veiksmažodžių supratimo bei produkcijos užduotis. Žodžių supratimo ir produkcijos sunkumus lemia reta žodžio vartosena vaiko aplinkoje, žodžio ilgis, darybinė struktūra, sinonimija, panašios reikšmės žodžių gausa</jats:p>

Abstract (en)

The aim of the research described in this article is to investigate the lexical development of children (4;6–6;5) with language disorders. To achieve the goal, the following tasks are set: 1) to perform a quantitative analysis of the corpus of children’s language and to discuss the lexical diversity; 2) to perform a qualitative analysis of the corpus and to discuss semantic errors; 3) to perform the analysis of the results of the experimental comprehension task and to describe the peculiarities of comprehension of nouns and verbs; 4) to perform the analysis of the results of the experimental word production task and to describe the peculiarities of production of nouns and verbs. The results of children with language disorders (n = 80) and children with typical language development (n = 80) are compared. Several methods were used in the study. The method of natural observation was used to collect data on children’s spontaneous language (dialogues). Data were processed and analyzed using the method of corpus linguistics: dialogues of all children were transcribed, annotated and analysed using CHILDES program (MacWhinney, 2000). The study of word comprehension and production was conducted using an experimental research method. The children were tested in their educational institution, and the tasks of selecting and naming pictures were performed. The study revealed some features of the lexical development of children with DLD. Language disorder is characterized by the frequent use of pronouns and adverbs to replace unknown nouns, as well as by the frequency of onomatopeia and the rare use of adjectives. Children with DLD make many semantic errors. Most of these errors involve the replacing of an unknown word with a pronoun or phrase that attempts to describe an object or action. In contrast to typical language development, it is often difficult for these children to choose a different lexeme for an unknown word based on similarity of objects or other semantic word relationships. Thus, language disorder is characterized not only by a higher number of semantic errors, but also by a lack of compensation strategies: TD children usually replace an unknown word with another semantically related word, and children with DLD often do not find a similar word, replace it with pronoun or adverb. Insufficient ability to compensate for lack of vocabulary limits the ability to communicate, does not allow to express thought and develop narrative. The study revealed that children with DLD performed statistically significantly lower on both noun and verb comprehension tasks as well as noun and verb production tasks. Although TD children (especially the younger age groups) also have difficulties in words comprehension and production tasks, their errors are much less common and are usually associated with the infrequent use of some words in children’s communicative environment. Difficulties of children with DLD include frequently used words and concepts. The obtained results showed that during the study period (4;6–6;5) children with DLD only improved their ability to comprehend nouns. Both the ability to comprehend verbs and the production of nouns and verbs do not change statistically significantly during this period. It can be argued that in the case of language disorders, difficulties in comprehension and production persist until the 6;5 years and later. In order to find out when children with language disorders overcome these difficulties, it is necessary to analyze the language abilities of older children.