TYPES OF SEMANTIC DEFINITIONS OF THE SPEECH OF 5-6-YEAR OLD PRESCHOOL CHILDREN AS REPRESENTATION OF CATEGORIZATION PROCESS

Abstract

. The present study is aimed at the research of linguistic cognitive problem of the object categorization. The objective of the study is to identify the main ways of the object categorization (a language unit) used in speech of children of preschool age by means of detecting the most frequent semantic definitions. The study includes two basic stages. The first stage of the research (collecting factual material) implies a direct linguistic experiment. The subjects (31 five- or six-year old children), attending MAEO “Lesnaya Skazka”, Kemerovo, were given a task to say definitions to the words: snow, new year, ski and valenki. During the experiment the tested subjects were asked to answer the following question: “Imagine, if suddenly a boy came to visit you from Africa, the country where it never snows, how would you explain to him the meaning of New Year, snow, ski and valenki?” The answers of the tested children were written by the researcher on paper. During the second stage of the experiment the researcher determined the major ways of semantic interpretations used by the subjects and based on the classification by D.I. Arbatsky. It is found that the most frequent way of interpretation is descriptive as well as giving definitions by means of wider semantic range of lexical items and distinctive features. The numerous results of verbalization of mental representations of objects, events and etc. are determined by visual figurative thinking generally typical of senior preschool children. Whereas synonymic and enumerative methods of object semantization occur less frequently as their implementation requires logical and abstract thinking which is only in its initial level at the age of 5 and 6 years old. It is found that lexical definitions are used individually by the certain subjects and based on their personal life experience. They are supplemented by their sensory images and memories about particular situations which can be explained by basic characteristics of children’s visual thinking. In conclusion, the linguistic interpretations used by senior preschool children perfectly reflect childish gullible worldview which focuses on everything that forms a unique child’s language personality.