Kompetencje językowe małego dziecka – zarys problematyki

Abstract

The article discusses linguistic competences of children under three years of age. The author presents selected periodizations of the speech development of a young child (including the ones proposed by L. Kaczmarek, P. Smoczyński, J. Aitchison, E. H. Lenneberg, J. E. Gomberg, I. Kurcz, P. K. Kuhl, J. Porayski-Pomsta, M. Kielar-Turska). She proceeds to focus on the issue of language immersion as the basic factor in speech development and individual mastering of a language discussed in the latest psycho-pedagogic literature. She describes the character of the early stage of children’s speech development, from cries to cooing, babbling, coherent phonetic signals through to the first words. Later the article discusses selected concepts of vocabulary acquisition by young children, including the associative learning theory, the restriction theory and the socio-pragmatic theory. The author proceeds to briefly address the stereotypes concerning the early stages of speech development in children of both sexes. Referring to recent research, she identifies the difference in speech development of boys and girls. She then presents the features of the speech of children over one year of age in various aspects, including vocabulary, grammar, communicative competency and ability to construct dialogues. Theoretical reflections are supplemented by examples of utterances of children between eighteen and thirty-six months of age.