THE SPECIFICS OF PRIMING-EFFECT DURING REPRODUCTION OF A NON-USUAL UTTERANCE BY A CHILD

Abstract

In his work How Children of the Preschool Age Observe Language, Gvozdev argued that a child of two-three years old could fix and correct errors in the speech of other people. At the same time, numerous priming-experiments built on the data of synonymous constructions of common language indicate that least frequency constructions willingly used by children in this age make the greatest influence on children’s speech. The aim of this article is to analyze speech behavior of a child who hears phrases with errors or receives a task to repeat wrongly constructed statements. Nobody has already studied constructions with speech errors in priming-experiments on Russian data. We analyzed the results of a pilot experiment on Russian data developed by non-native speakers of Russian from the Max Plank Institute for Evolutional Anthropology. There were 33 three-year-old children involved in the experiment. The texts included random deviations from both speech norms and frequency usage accepted in the Russian register of communication with children. Experiment results allow making some interim conclusions. The priming-effect on the perception of uncommon forms is low. Speech production mechanisms started to work when performing a task to repeat phrases heard by a child; that was followed with modifications of unusual forms, probably unconscious. Syntactic level (word order and choice of cases and prepositions) is least influenced by the prime. The previous speech experience also influences the ability to repeat what a child heard. The experience includes already formed grammatical representations of a certain child, the frequency of lexical units (including special contexts). While facing unusual constructions, the mechanism of evaluating the statement as “possible/impossible”, and “right/wrong” is launched which leads to its conscious or unconscious modification. Refs 18.