The linguistic expression of causal relationships in early statements by Russian-speaking children about things and physical phenomena
DOI:10.30842/alp230657371723872
Galkina Ye. V. Vyrazheniye
prichinno-sledstvennoy svyazi v rannikh vyskazyvaniyakh
russkoyazychnykh detey o yavleniyakh fizicheskogo mira. Acta
Linguistica Petropolitana. 2021. 17(2): 38–72.
This paper examines linguistic expression of causal relations by children aged 1–3.5 years in their statements about physical objects or natural phenomena. The study is based on [Sergienko 2009] postulating the existence of separate ways for understanding causality: understanding physical causality as a way to explain the “behavior” of inanimate objects, and understanding mental causality as a way to explain the behavior of living things. The goal of the study is to trace the acquisitional patterns for verbalization of certain types of causality at the earliest stages of language development. Such statements appear in children’s speech at the stage of one-word phrase generation and, up to the age of 30–32 months, represent “descriptions” of the child’s interaction with objects from the nearest environment. They reflect the child’s understanding of the fact that states and properties of physical objects can change following active influence on them and can act as modifying factors themselves. Due to the peculiarity of the early-age speech behavior, children may declare both external and internal motives (characteristic of living beings) to be the causes of physical events. The main means of expressing of the cause-effect relationship (in children under the age of 3.5 years) are causative verbs, complex asyndetic sentences, or nominal syntax with a causal meaning. Complicated and complex sentences with subordinate causal clauses are also sometimes used by children of this age, though not yet as the main means for description of logical relationships. Children demonstrate individual differences in assimilation sequences and the repertoire of the means used. Our findings agree with the idea voiced in [Sergienko 2006, 2008; Gelman, Wellman 1991] that there exist various levels of organization of mental models which form the base for interpretation of physical and mental events and become more complicated with the development of understanding of physical objects.
Keywords
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