Children’s linguistic personality in ontogenesis: mono-and bilingual specificity

Abstract

The aim of the article is to clarify psycho-and cognitive characteristics of children’s linguistic personality in ontogenesis taking into account mono- and bilingual specificity. To achieve this goal, linguistic personality is considered consistently at a certain stage of formation (speech activity of children from three to five years); the authors reveal and confirm the dominance of the right-hemisphere cognitive style in the child’s thinking, which is reflected in the illogicality, imagery, clarity, concreteness of his thinking, the predominant anthropomorphism of cognitive representation at this stage of the development of the speech-thinking mechanism; for the stage of primary socialization is characterized the dominance of the prevailing cognitive style of thinking in ontogenesis, regardless the linguacultural identity of the individual. Then the features of speech of Russian-, Armenian- and English-speaking children are examined in the comparative aspect. First, the analysis of the specifics of the formation of monolingual child’s linguistic personality, and then – bilingual (natural and/or artificial), while using the longitudinal method, content analysis and elements of psycholinguistic experiment. In the analysis of the nature of mastering the language system of any type in the early period of development of child’s linguistic personality it is necessary to take into account the ontological specificity – the dominance of the right-hemisphere type of thinking. Mono- and bilingual specificity is determined by psycho- and sociolinguistic factors, as well as linguacultural

Keywords

• ontogenesis of speech
• cognitive thinking styles
• speech-thinking activity
• language personality
• children’s discourse