The psychological approach of prof. A. Aleksandrov to the study of children's speech

Resumen

This article analyzes the study by the outstanding Russian linguist, a representative of the Kazan Linguistic School, Professor A. I. Aleksandrov (bishop Anastasia) “Children”™s Speech”, published in 1883. This article aims to reveal the role of A. I. Aleksandrov”™s work “Children”™s Speech” in the formation of psycholinguistics. The topicality of the article is to popularize the scientific and spiritual heritage of the Kazan Linguistic School and the Kazan Theological Academy, important for the development of psycholinguistic research. The analysis of A. Aleksandrov”™s article made it possible to come to the following conclusion. Being an adherent of the Kazan linguistic school, A. Aleksandrov viewed the language as a psychosocial entity manifested in speech activity. A. Aleksandrov”™s language understanding as a combination of physical and mental principles furthered his interest in child speech, in the study of which A. Aleksandrov developed I. A. Baudouin de Courtenay”™s concept on a phoneme and the theory of alternations of N. V. Krushevsky”™s sounds, and also revealed specific linguistic means in the children”™s speech that are significant for studying the development of speech in modern child psychology, mainly for the purpose of teaching the mother tongue and developing speech in case of pathology. The means of language for speech communication noted by A. Aleksandrov are as follows: a greater number (in comparison with the speech of adults) of onomatopoeias and figurative words, the use of irregular forms according to regular patterns, occasional word formation. The study of A. Aleksandrov facilitated also in solving the issue on the main laws of children”™s speech - the formation of grammatical and semantic generalizations and the rules of their functioning. The examples of ontogeny of a number of the most important semantic categories (temporality, aspectuality, possessiveness, personality) given by A. Aleksandrov resulted in the development of functional grammar (“the grammar of the speaker”) allowing scholars to abstract from the level fixation of the linguistic phenomenon and to consider functional semantic fields as the unity of means for performing a certain function.