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Functional speech system article on the topic

Functional speech system

To date, the brain has been studied by thousands of scientists from different countries, its anatomy, physiology, morphological and functional features, the dependence of a person’s mental, intellectual and emotionally volitional abilities on the structure and functions of the brain have been studied.

In Russia, the analysis of the neurophysiological mechanisms of speech, based on the principle of a dynamic system for localizing brain functions, was first formulated by I.P. Pavlov and was further developed in the research of N.A. Brenstein., P.K. Anakhina, A.R. Lurme, A.N. Leontyev. Today, thanks to their works, it has been established that the basis of any higher mental function is not individual “centers,” but complex functional systems that are located in various areas of the central nervous system and at its various levels are united by the unity of working action.

The human brain is organized in such a way that each of the cerebral hemispheres performs (though not immediately) its specific functions. Thus, in a right-handed adult, the right hemisphere differentiates and recognizes all non-speech, objective signs; the occipital lobes are responsible for the visual perception of their diversity of the world: from the perception of individual facial features, features of the entire plant, living and inanimate world; to a huge color palette, all shades of paint, rainbow, etc.

The temporal lobe perceives all non-speech sounds emitted by the world around us: various sounds of water, rustling sounds, wind noise, birdsong, the “voices” of animals, and moreover, the perception of speech intonations, voice timbre, and the whole variety of musical works.

The parietal lobe of the right hemisphere in a right-handed person allows a person to feel the structure of his body, its parts, and takes an active part in kinesthetic self-care skills: walking, running, dressing, etc.

The left hemisphere of a right-handed person is purely speech: the temporal lobe in an adult is “responsible” for the perception of phonemes of the native (and later foreign) language, for auditory-speech memory, “responsible” for the acoustic retention of a series of words in speech memory in order to understand the meaning of the unfolding in the time of the interlocutor's speech. The occipital lobe of the left hemisphere in a right-handed person has the function of recognizing spatially organized symbols: the alphabet, mathematical signs, road signs, that is, this lobe allows you to read and control the written word (text). In a right-handed person, the left parietal lobe performs an extremely important function: it is it that stores in its memory all articulatory skills, all the nuances of pronunciation of soft and hard sounds in combination with vowels or other consonants. In addition, it is the left parietal lobe that stores in its memory the entire human vocabulary, the understanding and use of complex speech patterns (proverbs, sayings, metaphors, the use of prepositions, adverbs and other parts of speech).

And finally, the left frontal lobe of a right-hander organizes the syntax of statements, which unfolds in time, the emotional-volitional sphere, forms the skills of logical thinking, logical behavior, planning and regulation of all our activities. All speech skills are reinforced only with the help of the functions of the frontal lobe.

It is here in the posterior part of the inferior frontal gyrus of the left hemisphere that Broca's center, which is the motor center of speech, is located. When this area is damaged, a disorder of speech motor skills occurs, often accompanied by a violation of general (motor) motor skills.

The child cannot control his speech-motor analyzer, his motor-articulatory images of words change, although sound images are significantly preserved, and the ability to imitate and pronounce oral speech is impaired, although it is relatively well understood.

Here, in the left hemisphere, the posterior third of the superior temporal gyrus, the auditory or gnostic speech center is located - Wernicke's center.

When it is affected, a pronounced symptom is a violation of phonemic hearing, memory, and attention. A child can sometimes speak, repeat what was said, but does not understand the meaning of the words, the speech addressed to him, he cannot carry out this or that instruction, although he hears what is said to him, cannot recognize the names of the object, because does not understand the meaning of the word, does not connect the word with its content.

In an absolute right-handed person, the leading ones are the left ear, eye, hand, and leg. In an absolute left-hander, the leading ones are the right occipital, parietal, temporal and frontal lobes, which implement all the speech and motor skills of this population group.

Various analyzers are related to the functional speech system. Consideration of their anatomical and physiological mechanisms and functions will allow us to carry out a systematic analysis of speech disorders in the future. each analyzer consists of a receptor apparatus that perceives stimulation of the pathways and a central section in the root of the brain, where a higher analysis of the received stimuli occurs.

The human auditory function is performed by the auditory analyzer, the peripheral perceptive apparatus of which is the organ of Corti of the inner ear, followed by the auditory nerves, central pathways and the cortical section of the speech-hearing analyzer, located in the left temporal lobe of the brain (Wernicke's center). The activity of the cortical section of the auditory-speech analyzer is called semantic-discriminating, or phonemic, hearing.

The auditory analyzer is responsible for the conductivity of information, strength, height, duration, sound and timbre of the voice. Recheslukhova for processing the information received, for the correctness of its perception, and phonetic-phonemic analysis. These analyzers work in close interconnection and form a single whole. In this case, the auditory analyzer will play a dominant role, because a child is born with a ready-made sound-perceiving receptor apparatus and from its integrity and usefulness. Under the influence of the surrounding language environment, the speech-hearing analyzer will develop in the process of language acquisition. But, at the same time, with a damaged speech-hearing analyzer, the best physical hearing turns out to be unsuitable for the perception and analysis of even elementary human speech because the perception of even individual speech sounds is not a simple auditory reception, but represents a complex process of interaction of functional systems.

Any deviations in both auditory and speech-auditory functions entail certain deviations in speech development. Moreover, the more their functions are impaired and the earlier the impairment arose, the more noticeable, other things being equal, this is reflected in the acquisition of speech.

How and in what way will be discussed further.

IN AND. Beltyukov in his work “On Children’s Acquisition of Speech Sounds” proves that the development of the speech-auditory analyzer depends not only on the safety of the auditory analyzer, but also on the acoustic properties of sounds, their pronunciation, and on the activity of the speech-motor analyzer, which is also the main component in the functional speech system. The speech motor analyzer performs the functions of static and dynamic coordination of movements and is responsible for the accuracy of pronunciation and prosody.

The formation of pronunciation depends on the capabilities of the speech motor analyzer. it is based on the articulatory properties of sounds.

The development of the speech motor analyzer is based primarily on the degree of articulatory contrast of sounds and the degree of complexity of their pronunciation, as well as the proximity of the articulation of these sounds to motor unconditional reflex reactions.

The speech motor analyzer develops through a gradual transition from coarse differentiations to increasingly subtle differentiations.

The activity of the speech motor analyzer is carried out by a complex system of organs in which peripheral and central speech apparatuses are distinguished. The central speech apparatus is located in the brain. It consists of the cerebral cortex (mainly the left hemisphere), subcortical ganglia, pathways, brainstem nuclei (primarily the medulla oblongata) and nerves going to the respiratory, vocal and articulatory muscles. The functions of the brain regarding speech are described above. The importance of the subcortical nuclei lies in the control of rhythm, tempo and expressive speech.

The pathways connect the cerebral cortex with the peripheral organs of speech by two types of nerve pathways: centrifugal and centripetal.

The centrifugal path begins in the cerebral cortex in Broca's center and goes to the muscles that regulate the activity of the peripheral speech apparatus. Conversely, from the periphery to the center there are centripetal pathways that begin in the proprioceptors and baroreceptors. Proprioceptors are located inside and on the articular surfaces of moving organs.

Proprioceptors are excited by muscle contractions. Thanks to proprioceptors, all our muscle activity is controlled. Baroreceptors are excited by changes in pressure on them and are located in the pharynx. When we speak, the proprio- and baroreceptors are stimulated, which follows a centripetal path to the cerebral cortex. The centripetal path plays the role of a general regulator of all activities of the speech organs.

The cranial nerves originate in the nuclei of the brainstem. All organs of the peripheral speech apparatus are intervened by cranial nerves. The main ones are: trigeminal, facial, glossopharyngeal, vagus, accessory and sublingual.

The trigeminal nerve intervenes the muscles that move the lower jaw; facial nerve - facial muscles, including muscles that carry out lip movements, puffing and retraction of the cheeks; glossopharyngeal and vagus nerves - muscles of the larynx and vocal folds, pharynx and soft palate. In addition, the glossopharyngeal nerve is the sensory nerve of the tongue, and the vagus nerve intersects the muscles of the respiratory and cardiac organs. The accessory nerve intervenes in the muscles of the neck, and the hypoglossal nerve supplies the muscles of the tongue with motor nerves and gives it the possibility of a variety of movements.

Through this system of cranial nerves, nerve impulses are transmitted from the central speech apparatus to the peripheral one. Nerve impulses move the speech organs.

But this path from the central speech apparatus to the peripheral one constitutes only one part of the speech mechanism. Another part of it is feedback - from the periphery to the center.

Now let's turn to the structure of the peripheral speech apparatus (executive).

The peripheral speech apparatus consists of three sections:

Respiratory, consisting of a system of respiratory muscles of the chest. With the lungs, bronchi and trachea;
Vocal, consisting of the larynx and the vocal folds located in it;
Articulation represented by an extension pipe. The supernatus is everything that is located above the larynx: the pharynx, oral cavity and nasal cavity.

The main organs of articulation are the tongue, lips, teeth, jaws (upper and lower), hard and soft palate, alveoli.

When producing speech sounds, the extension pipe performs a dual function: a resonator and a noise vibrator (the function of a sound vibrator is performed by the vocal folds, which are located in the larynx).

The noise vibrator is the gaps between the lips, between the tongue and teeth, between the tongue and the hard palate, between the tongue and the alveoli, between the lips and teeth, as well as the closures between these organs broken by a stream of air.

So, the first section of the peripheral speech apparatus serves to supply air, the second to form the voice, the third is a resonator that gives the sound strength and color and thus forms the characteristic sounds of our speech, arising as a result of the activity of individual active organs of the articulatory apparatus.

All three parts of the peripheral speech apparatus work in systemic interaction. Any disruption in the system of work of departments, any functional anatomical and physiological disorders of the speech apparatus inhibit the function of the speech motor analyzer and adversely affect the speaker’s pronunciation.

So, impulses transmitted along centrifugal paths from the central speech apparatus set the organs of the peripheral speech apparatus in motion. But, for a correct speech act, control of hearing and kinesthetic sensations is necessary. Kinesthetic control allows you to prevent errors and make corrections before the sound is pronounced. Thanks to auditory control, a person hears an error. An impulse telling about an error is sent to the center, from there comes a reverse impulse causing precise articulation. This continues until articulation and auditory control are matched.

In other words, we correctly pronounce only what we can hear, we correctly hear only what we can pronounce.

Thus, the auditory, speech-auditory, speech-motor analyzers work in systemic interaction, complement and correct, or, on the contrary, deepen each other’s defect. This is how the interdependence of the above analyzers appears in the most general form.

The motor analyzer is also related to the functional speech system. Recently, much attention has been paid to the issue of its significance on the formation and development of speech.

Domestic and foreign researchers note that with cerebral palsy, not only the musculoskeletal system, but also speech is seriously affected. EAT. Mastyukova O. This position is confirmed by the data of M.M. Koltsova about the importance of the motor analyzer in the development of a child’s motor and sensory speech. L.V. Fomina examined more than 500 children in various children's institutions and found that the level of speech development is always directly dependent on the degree of development of fine movements of the fingers.

Table 1.

Dependence of the level of speech development

on the degree of development of fine movements of the fingers.

Degree of development finger movements	Degree of development speeches	Degree of development gross motor skills
Norm	Norm	Norm
Above normal	Above normal	Above normal
Below normal	Below normal	Below normal

Neuropathologist and psychiatrist V.M. Bekhterev wrote that the function of hand movement is always closely related to the function of speech and the development of the first contributes to the development of the second.

MM. Koltsova and the staff of the Research Institute of Physiology of Children and Adolescents of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR established:

about a third of the entire area of the motor projection of the brain is occupied by the projection of the hand, which is located next to the projection of the speech motor zone;
working on the movements of the fingers really stimulates the maturation of the central nervous system, which manifests itself, in particular, in accelerating the development of the child’s speech.

Statement by I.P. Pavlov’s statement that “speech is primarily muscle sensations that go from the speech organs to the cerebral cortex” is confirmed by many researchers of children’s speech. Therefore, when studying the problem of how to stimulate the development of a child’s speech, the idea arose of using muscle sensations from the speech apparatus. Looking at the “map” of the brain, we see that the motor speech area is located very close to the motor area, and the area of the motor projection is occupied by the projection of the hand, located very close to the speech motor area. The size of the projection of the hand and its proximity to the motor speech zone (homonculus - “Penfield’s man”) led many scientists to the idea that training fine movements of the fingers will have a great impact on the development of a child’s active speech.

L.F. Fomina amazingly quickly managed to induce onomatopoeia in 10-month-old children when training fine movements of the fingers (7 times faster than using the traditional method). In further research, she proved that in children the level of speech development is directly dependent on the degree of development of fine movements of the fingers. Until finger movements become free, speech development will not be achieved.

It has also been proven that the development of the motor analyzer has a beneficial effect on the child’s entire body as a whole. The impact of proprioceptive afferentation on brain activity is especially great. The influence of motor activity on the functional state of the brain is expressed in two forms: specific and nonspecific. The first is the direct participation of the motor analyzer in conditioned reflex activity as a component of the effective link of the reflex act. The second is that the movement creates favorable conditions for the development of new temporary connections and the functioning of existing ones.

Scientists have proven that the motor projection of the hand in the cerebral cortex is one speech zone of the brain. This means that there is every reason to consider the hands as an organ of speech, the same as the articulatory apparatus. And in this case, the role of finger movement in relation to speech function can be assessed as specific.

Thus, today scientists have proven several important points regarding the motor analyzer.

Among the motor functions, the movements of the fingers are of particular importance, since they have a huge impact on the development of the child’s higher nervous activity.
The function of hand movement is always closely related to the function of speech, and the development of the first contributes to the development of the second.
The development of the functions of both hands ensures the development of speech “centers” in both hemispheres, and as a result, provides advantages in intellectual development, since speech is closely related to thinking.
About a third of the entire area of the motor projection of the cerebral cortex is occupied by the projection of the hand, which is located next to the projection of the speech motor zone; finger movements actually stimulate the maturation of the central nervous system, which is particularly evident in the acceleration of the child’s speech development.
Rhythmic finger movements are a means of increasing the functional state of the cerebral hemispheres and generally enhancing the associative function of the brain.
The development of articulation of speech sounds in children is greatly facilitated if finger movements are trained.

The visual analyzer is also of great importance in the functional speech system. It is primary in the perception of surrounding reality. Thanks to him, the child observes what is happening and comprehends. He learns about objects by touching them and listening to the sounds they make. The image of the object with its name is gradually fixed. The names of objects and objects of the surrounding reality develop and replenish the child’s vocabulary. The importance of the visual analyzer in the emergence of speech and its perception is confirmed by the fact that children blind from birth begin to speak much later. A sighted child carefully observes the movements of the tongue and lips of speakers, tries to repeat them, and imitates exaggerated articulatory movements well. Limited vision also prevents the full development of general and fine motor skills and motor activity, which, as proven above, in due course inhibits the development of speech.

Thus, between all analyzers there is a system of conditional connections, which is constantly developing and strengthened by repeated connections.

Conclusion: Speech is a higher, complex function of the brain, which is performed by the systemic activity of all cortical analyzers and physiologically consists of the work of the conductive pathways of the central speech apparatus, and according to the feedback principle is regulated through the brain by proprioceptors and baroreceptors.

Literature

Anokhin P.K. Selected works: Philosophical aspects of the theory of functional systems. – M.: Nauka, 1978. – 400 p.
Badalyan L.O. Neuropathology. – M.: Asadema, 2000. – 224 – 234 p.
Becker K.P., Sovak M. Speech therapy. – M., 1981. – P. 11 – 84.
Beltyukov V.I. Interaction of analyzers in the process of perception and assimilation of oral speech (in normal and pathological conditions) - M.: Pedagogika, 1977. - 176 p.
Beltyukov V.I. Ways to study the mechanism of speech. // Defectology. – 1984. – No. 4. – 24 – 30 p.
Zhinkin N.I. Mechanisms of speech. – M., 1958.

Let's look at the basic principles

psycholinguistics.

First principle

(or the leading conceptual position) on which psycholinguistics relies is the presence of an organic connection between speech activity and non-speech activity; conditionality (determinism) of the first type of activity by the needs and goals of life and activity (primarily social) of a person and human society as a whole.

The place of speech activity in the system of human activity

Second

The fundamental methodological principle of psycholinguistics is the recognition of speech activity as
a complex functional organization
as its main property.

Speech is a functional system,

i.e. goal-driven, aimed at achieving a certain result.[4]
This system is diverse and unstable.
It (on a temporary and permanent basis) combines certain characteristics of its constituent operations (semantic, syntactic, lexical, morphological, morpho-syntactic, phonemic and phonetic) to achieve the
specific goal of one or another (speech or non-speech) activity that is performed in specific situation of speech communication (7).
The nature of these temporary associations depends on many external and internal conditions: on the nature and goals of the activity being carried out, the situation in which the activity takes place, on the personal characteristics of the speaker (the individual receiving the speech), his knowledge of culture (in the broad sense of the word), on the linguistic context, etc. For example, in some cases we use spoken language, and in others we use written language; in different situations of speech communication we speak extensively or extremely succinctly (“collapsed”), use literary language or a “slang” version (for example, youth, professional), etc. Thus, the content (meaning, sense) and form of speech activity in are largely determined by non-speech activities and the conditions in which non-speech and speech activities are performed. PC. Anokhin, an outstanding Russian physiologist, philosopher and psychologist, proposed a universal scheme of a functional system (with the highlighting of structural “blocks”):

Universal scheme of activity as a functional system (according to P.K. Anokhin)

The third principle is integrity

speech activity.

It finds its expression in the combination of all or a number of forms (and subforms) of speech in speech processes. The integrity of speech activity is also manifested in the mandatory interaction of all its constituent operations (semantic, syntactic, lexical, morphological, morpho-syntactic, phonemic and phonetic), all stages and levels of the speech process. In other words, various horizontal and vertical, direct and feedback connections “permeate” the processes of generation and perception of speech, the entire internal structure of language as the main means of speech activity.

The fourth principle is the defining meaning of “speech semantics”:

conditionality, “subordination” of all components of speech activity to the meaning and meaning of the products and results of this activity. Speech activity is aimed at extracting (when perceiving speech) or creating and transmitting (when generating speech) the meanings of language signs (i.e., generally significant contents) and meanings (personal, individual meanings).

Fifth principle -

the inextricable
connection between speech activity and personality.
This connection is diverse, complex and rather ambiguous. When characterizing it, it is necessary to take into account what level of personality organization (the so-called “highest” - worldview, ideals, social orientation, etc.; “middle” - character, characteristics of mental processes, etc., “lower” - emotions, temperament, etc.) and which component of this level comes into contact with a certain component of speech (for example, lexical, phonetic, etc.). Therefore, some components of one or another level of personality may correlate with some components of speech, while others may not.

Let us pay attention to only one characteristic of a personality that is extremely important for understanding speech activity – its activity.

Both the process of generating speech and the process of its perception can take place and acquire the corresponding characteristics only with the (mental, intellectual) activity of the individual. For example, the degree of activity (involvement) of a person in the process of perception largely determines the completeness and depth of perception. At the same time, in response to the incoming message, the listener actively puts forward hypotheses related to all semantic and linguistic operations - semantic, syntactic, lexical, etc., and only under this condition, i.e. the active production of “speech” operations, does the perception process proceed in a normative manner option. Otherwise, it is simply absent or becomes “reduced”.

The sixth principle is genetic.

In particular, it is manifested in the fact that at different age periods a person masters different forms of speech (first - oral and “kinetic”, then written) and different operations of speech activity (first “primitive”, then complex), the characteristics of which change in the course of time. the course of a person’s life (cf.: the speech of a one-year-old and a three-year-old child, who has already formed the main “core” of the language system; the speech of a teenager and an adult, etc.). Of course, the principle of development (dynamics) is realized in the processes of generation and perception of speech formed in ontogenesis.

Research methods.

There are 4 groups of research methods used in psycholinguistics: organizational, empirical, processing, interpretive.[5]

Using the methods of the first group, a psycholinguistic study of the patterns of formation and implementation of speech activity is organized. These include:

(a) Comparative method,

the essence of which is to compare different groups of subjects or different (but “comparable”) aspects of speech activity. For example, groups of people with normal and pathological speech (aphasia, alalia, dysarthria, dysgraphia, etc.) are compared.[6] The method is very popular, and with its help a lot of valuable information has been obtained about the processes of speech production and perception.[7] For example, the study of aphasia made it possible to talk about speech as a multi-stage and multi-operational process (F. Gall - early 19th century, X. Jackson - 60-80s of the 19th century, A. Kussmaul - 70-90s of the 19th century century, A. Pick - the beginning of the 20th century, etc.), about the functional nature of speech and the existence of different levels of its organization (X. Jackson), about the reality and autonomy of various operations in the speech process, in particular, semantic, syntactic, lexical operations, etc.[8]

Groups of subjects of a different kind can be compared: for example, children and adults, “native speakers” of different languages, people who have and have not yet mastered literacy, etc.

To comparative

The method of “transverse” sections also applies. In this case, a phenomenon is studied in people of different ages. For example, the ability to compose detailed coherent statements in children two and a half, three and three and a half years old; or the writing characteristics of students in the first and second half of the year, etc. The comparative method was brilliantly applied by L.S. Vygotsky to study the patterns of formation of external “egocentric” and internal speech during the ontogenetic development of the child.

(b) Longitudinal

(longitudinal) method.[9] These are “longitudinal”, usually long-term observations of the development of one or another component of speech activity in a certain person or group of people. Most often, the longitudinal method is used in studies of language acquisition by children.[10]

This is interdisciplinary research. An example is the study of the process of memorizing sentences of various structures in various conditions of speech perception (in the presence of any psychological “noise”, “interference” and under normal conditions) in combination with the use of EEG and myography.

return 4

Speech as a functional system is discussed in more detail in Chapter 8 of this manual, which is devoted to the processes of speech generation and perception. (Approx. author V.G.)

return 5

We took as a basis the classification of scientific research methods proposed by B.G. Ananyev (see: Ananyev B.G. On the problems of modern human knowledge. - M, 1977). (Approx. author V.K.)

return 6

Aphasia is a complete or partial loss of the ability to operate with linguistic signs due to organic damage to the cerebral cortex. Alania is a systemic underdevelopment or absence of speech due to congenital or early acquired, usually bilateral, damage to the cerebral cortex. Dysarthria is a disorder of articulation (speech production) of a motor nature, caused by organic lesions of various subcortical parts of the brain that provide the motor component of articulatory operations. Dysgraphia is a pathology of learning or loss of writing due to various types of organic or functional disorders.

return 7

However, this method is also “insidious”; this is due to the fact that pathology and normality are phenomena of different “worlds”, and it is unlawful to transfer the characteristics of one phenomenon to another. In addition, in the process of spontaneous or directed compensation of pathology, functional rearrangements occur, and therefore it is sometimes very difficult to distinguish “pathology proper” (specific manifestations of pathology) from these functional rearrangements. Nevertheless, speech pathology studies are often very helpful in establishing many particularly significant characteristics of speech processes. (Approx. author V.K.)

return 8

A special role here belongs to G. Head (1926) and, of course, L.S. Vygotsky (1931, 1934).

return 9

Longitudinal - from French. Longitude - longitude; resp. – longitudinal – fr. longitudinal – prolonged (extended).

return 10

As an example, we can cite the “classical” works of A.N. Gvozdeva (1948, 1961, etc.).

Speech and speech activity. Types and functions of speech.

Correlation of speech-language concepts

Speech is a historically established form of communication between people through linguistic structures created on the basis of certain rules.

In modern psychological science, language

is understood as a system of signs that serves as a means of human communication, mental activity, a way of expressing a person’s self-awareness, transmission from generation to generation and storage of information. The historical basis of language is the work and joint activities of people. Language exists and is realized through speech. Words in language are carriers of concepts, making it possible to meaningfully reflect reality, store and transmit information, and control human behavior. The process of language acquisition has a huge impact on all aspects of the human psyche and is a condition for the formation of his consciousness.

Language is developed by society and is a form of reflection of their social existence in the public consciousness of people. Moreover, one of the phenomena of language is that each person finds a ready-made language spoken by those around him, and in the process of his development assimilates it. However, having become a native speaker, a person becomes a potential source of development and modernization of the language he speaks.

Every language has, first of all, a certain system of meaningful words, which is called the lexical composition of the language. In addition, a language has a certain system of various forms of words and phrases, which constitutes the grammar of the language, and also has a certain sound, or phonetic, composition, characteristic only of a specific language.

In psychology, the following main functions of language

1) a means of existence, transmission and assimilation of socio-historical experience;

2) a means of communication (communication);

3) a tool of intellectual activity (perception, memory, thinking, imagination).

Performing the first function, language serves as a means of encoding information. Performing the function of a means of communication, language allows you to influence the interlocutor - direct or indirect. The last function of language is associated with conscious planning of one’s actions and solving mental problems.

If language is a system of signs and symbols, then speech is the process of using language.

Speech is a historically established form of communication between people through language. Speech communication itself is carried out according to the rules of a specific language. Speech is carried out according to the rules of the language, and at the same time, under the influence of a number of factors, it changes and improves the language (for example, under the influence of social practice, the development of science, the mutual influence of languages, etc.). Without speech, it becomes unthinkable for a person to master knowledge and form his consciousness.

If words and sentences are considered the main structural units of language, then in verbal communication these are utterances as units of meaning. The main feature of such statements is their appeal and targeting.

Speech production models

Learning theory.

Generation and reinforcement are the main mechanisms for the formation and development of speech in humans.

This theory is not able to explain the speed with which a child masters speech in early childhood. In addition, for the development of any abilities, inclinations are necessary, which in themselves cannot be acquired as a result of learning. From this position it is difficult to explain children's word creation.

Chomsky's theory
. From birth, the human body and brain have some specific inclinations for the acquisition of speech in its basic attributes. These inclinations mature by approximately 1 year and open up opportunities for accelerated speech development from 1 to 3 years. Within broader age boundaries, it covers the period of life from 1 to puberty (this refers not only to the acquisition of language as a means of communication, but also to its mastery at the conceptual level as a means of thinking). During this period, speech development occurs without complications, but outside of this period, language acquisition is difficult or even impossible.
cognitive theory
. The development of speech depends on the child’s inherent ability from birth to perceive and intellectually process information. This explains children's spontaneous word creation. It is assumed that speech development depends on brain development, and not vice versa (Piaget). It has been established that the first statements made by children usually refer to what they already understand. Children usually talk about what interests them. Consequently, the development of speech is also influenced by the child’s motivation.
psycholinguistic position
. The formation of an increasingly perfect structure of speech: the transition from thought to word and from word to thought, which become more and more conscious and rich in content.

Functions of speech

communicative function of speech
– includes its functions as a means of expression and as a means of influence. There are three aspects to the communicative function of speech:

informational (knowledge transfer),
expressive (helps convey the speaker’s feelings and attitudes towards the subject of the message)
volitional (aimed at subordinating the listener to the speaker’s intention).

educational
(its other name is accumulative). Most of what an adult knows about the world came to him with language.
nominative
or nominative. Naming is an integral part of cognition. A person, generalizing a mass of specific phenomena, highlighting the essential ones, feels the need to consolidate the acquired knowledge in words. This is how the name appears. If not for it, the concept would remain an ethereal, speculative abstraction. The nominative function of language serves to orient a person in space and time, and it also goes hand in hand with the cognitive function, it participates in the process of understanding the world.
regulatoryI
function. This function is noted in external and internal speech. Both play the role of a plan of behavior and actions of the subject: this is a textual or mental project of his upcoming actions; projects of moral relations and everyday life, the structure of the social structure of society, these are work plans, mental preparation for certain actions, including statements.

External and internal speech

Modern psychological science has adopted the differentiation of speech into several types

External speech

- verbal communication using linguistic means perceived by ear.
Oral speech is verbal communication using linguistic means that are perceived by ear. The processes of generating oral speech include the links of orientation, simultaneous planning, speech implementation and control. Oral speech is divided into: monologue and dialogic
.

Written speech is verbal communication using written texts. This type differs from oral speech not only in that it uses graphics, but also in grammatical and stylistic terms. Written speech is characterized by a complex compositional and structural organization, which must be specially mastered.

Inner speech

- silent speech process. These are different types of language use outside the process of real communication. There are several types of inner speech:

internal pronunciation, i.e. “speech to oneself”, this type retains the structure of external speech, but lacks phonation;
inner speech as a means of thinking, in this case it uses specific units and has a specific structure;
internal programming - the formation and consolidation of the intention of a speech utterance in specific units.

Kinetic speech.

This type of speech has been preserved in humans since ancient times.
Initially, this was the main and only type of speech. Over time, this type of speech has lost its functions and is now used mainly as emotional and expressive elements of speech - gestures. Very often we accompany our speech with gestures, which
gives it additional expressiveness.

Egocentric speech according to Vygotsky and Piaget.

In elementary and middle preschool age, children tend to monologue. Children at this age sometimes speak out loud without addressing anyone. J. Piaget called this monologue speech egocentric. Egocentric speech, according to Piaget:

1) does not serve the purpose of the message, does not perform communicative functions; this speech is for yourself; it proceeds regardless of whether it is listened to and understood;

2) being a speech for oneself, speech comes from one’s own point of view, not taking into account the point of view;

3) it is primarily the child’s speech about himself.

Piaget contrasts monologue speech as egocentric speech with socialized speech. Socialized speech is speech that performs the function of a message. This includes communicating thoughts, criticism, questions and answers, requests, orders, etc.

Piaget believes that egocentric speech is genetically primary; social speech develops from it, or at least by repressing it. Egocentric speech seems to Piaget to be only an accompaniment to action, essentially not performing any function.

L.S. Vygotsky, who paid considerable attention to the problem of egocentric speech, believed that egocentric speech lies on the path of development going from external to internal speech. According to Vygotsky, it performs the child’s intellectual function of comprehending and planning action. Intellectualizing inner speech, which is not only speech-thinking and planning, it is often saturated with intense emotionality.

Contrary to Piaget, it must be recognized that egocentric speech is social in nature. Egocentric speech is formed on a social basis and represents the most striking proof of how deeply, at its very roots, human nature is social. Contrary to Vygotsky, it can be argued that egocentric speech differs from inner speech in its psychological nature: in any case, it is not only speech-thinking.

Development of monologue and dialogue

The main initial type of oral speech is speech in the form of a conversation. This kind of speech is called colloquial speech,

or
dialogical (dialogue).
Its main feature is that it is a speech actively supported by the interlocutor, using the simplest turns of language and phrases. As a result, colloquial speech is psychologically the simplest form of speech. It does not require a detailed expression of speech. In such cases, one word can replace an entire phrase.

Another form of speech is speech delivered by one person, while the listeners only perceive the speaker's speech, but do not directly participate in it. Such speech is called monologue ,

or
a monologue .
Monologue speech is, for example, the speech of a speaker, lecturer, rapporteur, etc. Monologue speech is psychologically more complex than dialogic speech. It requires the speaker to be able to express his thoughts coherently and strictly consistently. At the same time, the speaker must evaluate how the information transmitted to him is assimilated by the listeners, i.e., he must monitor not only his speech, but also the audience. And also a monologue is a speech alone with oneself. The monologue is not directed to the immediate listener and, accordingly, is not designed for a response from the interlocutor.

A monologue can be either unprepared or pre-thought out.

When characterizing these two types of oral speech - dialogical and monological speech - we must keep in mind not their external, but their psychological difference. In their external form, these two types of speech may be similar to each other. So, for example, a monologue can be constructed in its external form as a dialogical speech, that is, the speaker periodically addresses either the listeners or an imaginary opponent.

Both dialogic and monologue speech can be active

or
passive.
Both of these terms are, of course, conditional and characterize the activity of the speaker or listener. The active form of speech is the speech of the speaking person, while the speech of the listening person appears in a passive form. It should be noted that in children the development of active and passive forms of speech does not occur simultaneously. The child first of all learns to understand someone else’s speech, and then begins to speak himself. However, even at a more mature age, people differ in the degree of development of active and passive forms of speech. It often happens that a person understands another person’s speech well, but poorly conveys his own thoughts. Conversely, a person can speak quite well, but does not know how to listen to another.

Basic properties of inner speech, its connection with thinking

Inner speech can precede external speech (oral and written) and be a planning phase in its implementation. Since it is addressed to oneself, there is no need to carry out the statement in an expanded form. From here we can deduce the properties of inner speech

curling,
conciseness,
fragmentation

and can exist on the basis of mental reproduction of individual words that carry the main semantic load. The words that a person uses in internal speech differ from the words of external speech in that they are fragmentary, abbreviated and can merge with other words. On the basis of inner speech, the intellectual and spiritual life of the individual is carried out, his moral views and beliefs, dreams and ideals, desires and aspirations, doubts and beliefs are manifested.

The word is the “sign” that allows human thinking to develop to the level of abstract thinking. However, the word is also a means of communication, so it is part of speech. At the same time, a specific feature of the word is that, being devoid of meaning, the word no longer refers to either thought or speech, but, acquiring its meaning, it immediately becomes an organic part of both. Taking into account this feature of the word, Vygotsky believed that the unity of speech and thinking lies precisely in the meaning of the word. Moreover, the highest level of such unity is verbal thinking.

Thinking and speech have different genetic roots. Initially they developed separately. The original function of speech was communication, and speech itself probably arose out of the need to organize the joint activities of people. In turn, there are types of thinking that are generally not associated with speech, for example, visual-effective, or practical. But the further development of thinking and speech proceeded in close interrelation. Thus, at the early stages of development, when people’s thinking took place in the form of practical intellectual activity in relation to objects that could satisfy human needs, speech consolidated knowledge about these objects, expressing them in the form of names.

At these early stages of historical development, speech consisted of not yet differentiated individual speech units with very general meanings. Therefore, verbal communication could only take place in a specific situation, where practical action was the process in which words acquired specific meanings. Therefore, at these stages of development, speech was always included in practical activities. Such speech is called sympraxic.

Subsequently, as language becomes more complex, thinking gradually frees itself from its immediate unity with action and increasingly acquires the character of internal, “ideal” activity. As a result, a period comes when thinking completely begins to take place in the form of an internal process of reflecting reality, using verbal concepts for this. This level of development of thinking required more developed speech corresponding to the level of development of thinking. This type of speech is called internal speech.

Thus, speech and thinking form a complex unity with each other.

Speech system of a non-standard native speaker

Goal of the work

The goal of the project was to discover the specific and typical features of this system, to describe the individual variation of speech strategies, means of expressing intent and systemic trends in the development of non-standard variants of language against the background of the speech standard.

Methods used

Throughout the project, source texts for corpus collections are created by informants in a directed conversation (interviews are recorded and transcribed by project participants), as well as during classroom and independent (home) written educational assignments. Collections make it possible to register the speech production of foreign speakers, naive translators, heritage speakers, students mastering the academic register of the Russian language, and schoolchildren. Computer typing is carried out by the author - a non-standard speaker and writer.

The corpus allows you to statistically process large amounts of homogeneous data, record diachronic changes in vocabulary and grammar, qualify the output depending on the type of text and the nature of its attribution, and clarify the requested lexical and grammatical context.

The 2021 project includes the reconstruction and modeling of rules - objectively existing systemic patterns that make it possible to describe deviations from the recommendation scheme regulating speech production by non-standard speakers and writers; improvement of linguistic corpora (replenishment of collections, optimization of annotation and search mechanism), debugging and updating of the stylistic simulator, automation of speech rules described during the implementation of the project; the formation of educational principles, competency-oriented linguistic tasks based on a description of the shift in norms in comparison with normatively organized speech; description of the peculiarities of language functioning in the speech of heritage speakers (unbalanced bilinguals), foreign speakers mastering a new register of Russian speakers; current trends in the development of the modern Russian language, reflected in speech products presented in the Internet space. It is important that within the framework of the proposed approach, an error is understood not as a shameful and punishable violation of a rule, but as a valuable linguistic material that reveals current trends in the development of the language system.

Empirical basis of the study

During the project, linguistic corpora of non-standard speech are created and improved:

Corpuses of Russian and English educational texts (KRUT, REALEC). Listeners write texts as part of assignments for academic disciplines, the texts are provided with meta-marking (information about the informant in accordance with a detailed questionnaire reflecting the relevant sociolinguistic parameters of speech production), passed through a morphological analyzer (MYSTEM, a program that allows you to recognize inflectional classes and qualify the grammatical form of a word) , are marked in the Les Crocodiles 2.0 program, the marked files are added to the corpus.

Heritage Corpus (RLC) (inherited language) and speech of foreigners. Texts provided by teachers of Russian as a foreign language. Genre variants of speech production are presented: a short free answer to a question, an argumentative essay on the stated problem, a mini-essay on the presented stimulus in a paragraph, an analytical note, a report on analytical work, the result of comparison, abstracting, annotating and commenting on source texts. The level of language proficiency is indicated. It is possible to expand the context. It is possible to define a subcorpus according to meta-marking parameters: texts of one informant, texts of foreign speakers separately from texts of heritage speakers, texts of the same genre. Errors are marked in accordance with the typology developed within the framework of KRUT.

Corpus of regional speech (folklore texts). The interviewer records the informant's speech on a voice recorder, transcribes and encodes it for inclusion in the corpus collection, and provides metadata.

Results of work

Results obtained during the implementation of the project in the field of theory:

in the Russian Learning Corps (RLC) project https://www.web-corpora.net/RLC/ microsyntactic tracing papers from the dominant language, incorporated into the grammatical system of the mastered Russian, are interpreted; systemic errors of students studying Russian as a foreign language (RFL) were classified depending on the level of language proficiency (initial acquaintance with the idiom, continued language acquisition, improvement of language and speech skills at different levels);
in the project Corpus of Russian Educational Texts (CoRST) https://web-corpora.net/learner_corpus/, as a result of the analysis of predicative agreement with quantified noun groups headed by nouns (row, half, part, set), the dependence of the choice of the form of the predicate and the degree was determined fluctuations in the choice of this form on the morphosyntactic and semantic properties of the vertex - the quantifier noun; the influence of contextual factors was revealed and the dynamics of changes in the choice of the form of the predicate during the 19th-20th centuries was recorded; grammatical limitations and semantic features of the construction were identified, something to surprise was found, its place in the typological context of subordinate constructions with an exclamatory interpretation was determined;
in the project Corpus of Errors of Russian Speakers Learning English (REALEC) https://realec.org/, typical errors in English texts were identified, lining up in a system of features of the Russian English language (as a result of the interference of two systems), a correlation was determined between indicators in academic writing in Russian and the grade level for the written part of the English language exam.

Results obtained in the field of methodology for organizing corpus resources:

in the Russian Academic Corps (RLC) project https://www.web-corpora.net/RLC/ an encoding has been compiled for each metadata item, intended for use instead of pseudonyms of anonymous authors of a collection of texts;
in the project Corpus of Russian Educational Texts (CoRST) https://web-corpora.net/learner_corpus/ the algorithm for removing quotations, tables, graphs, examples, title pages, bibliographies, appendices and other meta-information from texts has been reorganized;
in the project Corpus of Errors of Russian Speakers Learning English (REALEC) https://realec.org/, the stages of annotating errors in exam English essays of HSE students studying English as a foreign language and speaking Russian as a native language are automated.

Results obtained in the field of practice in the functioning of linguistic corpora

1. The Russian Academic Corpus (RLC) project https://www.web-corpora.net/RLC/ continues to expand the collection, improve the markup, and expand the range of dominant writing languages.

Number of texts 8002
Word count 1508277
Number of offers 129342
Number of annotations 59898

2. The project Corpus of Russian Educational Texts (CoRST) https://web-corpora.net/learner_corpus/ expands the text base and unifies the presentation of metadata:

Number of texts 3677
Word count 3115212
Number of offers 301079
Number of annotations 31472

3. The project Corpus of Errors of Russian Speakers Learning English (REALEC) https://realec.org/ expands the genre range of collection elements and algorithmizes the presentation of texts:

Number of texts 11265
Word count 2833828
Number of annotations 10947

An expedition “Folklore Tradition of the Holy Lake” was carried out (July 2018) to the Ivanovo region, Yuzhsky and Pestyakovsky districts, as part of work on the resource of folklore speech (regiolect) with the task of describing the everyday and ritual speech practices of regiolect speakers, recording stories about sinkholes (who disappeared under the waters) cultural sites). Leader Yu. M. Kuvshinskaya, a group of 9 students and 2 employees was organized.

As part of the annual April international scientific conference of the National Research University Higher School of Economics, from April 12 to 14, a section “Russian language in a multilingual world” was organized by members of the project working group. The reports were devoted to issues of teaching methodology and techniques for mastering Russian as a non-native language and the functioning of the Russian language in conditions of bilingualism, as well as corpus research and work with RLC (https://www.hse.ru/ma/foreign/news/217989758.html) .

As part of the regional component of the project, the hypothesis about the influence of social extralinguistic factors (gender, age, mobility, education) on the recognition of regionalisms and their use in the speech of Tver residents, mainly young people, was tested, and the current state of regional urban vocabulary was determined. Previously, the regional vocabulary of Tver had not been studied from the point of view of sociolinguistics, although similar attempts were made by linguists in other areas, often focusing on a specific social group (regiolects of Novosibirsk, Vyatka, Pskov are described). The research method chosen was a sociolinguistic survey, which consisted of asking informants questions from a written questionnaire and working with regionalisms using checklists. The survey was conducted in two stages with a short time interval. For each stage, our own questionnaire and checklist of regionalisms were created, which were offered to two different samples of respondents. The first consisted exclusively of residents of Tver (divided into two groups by age - under 25 years old and over 25 years old), and the second included three groups of girls living in Tver, Moscow and St. Petersburg. Survey data were analyzed in the statistical program R (the main method is regression analysis) for the relationship between social factors and the use and recognition of regionalisms. As a result of the analysis, the following conclusions were obtained: a) none of the indicated extralinguistic factors has a significant influence on the use of regionalisms; the older and younger generations of Tver residents use and recognize “their” regionalisms with the same degree of success; b) the vocabulary of the city of Tver is not at the stage of destruction, but is part of a regional norm, recognizable by bearers of other norms (Moscow, St. Petersburg) and intuitively used by the Tver residents themselves in everyday speech; c) the experimental model (sociolinguistic two-level survey with the presentation of a checklist) can be considered satisfactory, although more targeted questioning about some other social factors (which made up the “Social Networks” parameter) may in the future give statistically significant results on new parameters.

As part of a diachronic analysis of speech norms and a comparative study of the standardization of related languages, the historical alternations of consonants in the Ukrainian language were examined: a corpus and experimental study was carried out. The project continues a series of studies conducted as part of the linguistic laboratory on corpus technologies on the material of the Russian language and devoted to the loosening of the system of historical consonant alternations. In the Ukrainian language, unlike Russian, alternations in the paradigms of nouns associated with the second palatalization have been preserved (for example, hand - in ruci). It is described how systematically native speakers use these alternations in words-neologisms and in quasi-words, and a comparison of these alternations with alternations associated with the first palatalization (for example, hand - pen), which exist in both the Ukrainian and Russian languages.

The linguistic factors influencing the choice of gender in the formation of new words in the Russian language are described: an experimental and corpus study was carried out. In descriptions of the literary Russian language, it is noted that diminutive and augmentative suffixes do not change the grammatical gender of the word to which they are attached (for example, a small house, a huge domina). However, you can notice that speakers often say “huge domina” and even “wretched little house”. Corpus and experimental research is designed to show on what factors the prevalence of this phenomenon depends.

As part of the study of the acquisition of a non-native language, the lexical preferences of native English speakers and English language learners are described. The purpose of the work is to establish, using collocations (frequency elements of the text), the proximity between segments of the corpus of native speakers of English and those studying it as a foreign language, to test the ability of several methods of collocation analysis to find similarities and differences between educational corpora, and also to try to find phrases that are most typical for the studied corpora. lects. The way to achieve the goal is corpus analysis using statistical methods. According to the results of hierarchical clustering, the vocabulary in the corpus of native Russian speakers learning English turns out to be more standardized, and the corpora of essay texts of a given format are closer to each other. According to the results of the analysis, the segment of the REALEC corpus closest to the texts of native speakers is the argumentative essays of MSPU students. This can be explained by the fact that the remaining constituent elements are texts of a strict format, consisting of units of the recommended vocabulary, while student argumentative essays belong to a freer format and include reviews of works of fiction. For all clustering options, the IELTS and MAGOLEGO subcorpora of the REALEC corpus are the closest, while the Academic Writing corpus turns out to be the most distant from all clusters.

As part of the analysis of exclamatives, Russian complex sentences with interrogative pronouns what, how many and who are considered in a subordinate clause that has an exclamatory reading. Based on an analysis of the joint frequency distribution of matrix predicates and subordinate clauses in the National Corpus of the Russian Language, indirect evidence is provided in favor of the insubordination hypothesis. This hypothesis, as applied to exclamations, is that independent exclamations arose as a result of the subordination of a number of subordinate constructions with interrogative pronouns. Thus, the analysis carried out is a step towards confirming that there is no need to talk about subordinate exclamations, at least in the Russian language.

Based on the results of the project, a textbook on academic writing was prepared for students of non-philological specialties, exercises for which were compiled based on data from academic corpuses and are aimed at correcting typical errors in reading, analyzing and creating texts of scientific and business orientation. The manual was accepted for publication by the publishing house "Urayt" (a letter dated May 10, 2018 was received from the book publishing expert of the publishing house "Urayt" A.D. Ezerina, an author's agreement was concluded, publication is scheduled for December 2018).

Degree of implementation, recommendations for implementation or results of implementation of research results

As the corpus is formed, it becomes publicly available for the needs of specialists in the humanities and pedagogy (historians, anthropologists, ethnographers, regional scientists, philologists, linguists, translators and translation scholars, sociologists, psychologists, speech therapists and speech pathologists, school teachers, methodologists and teachers of higher and additional disciplines). education) – as material for research and the basis for drawing up educational assignments:

https://www.web-corpora.net/RLC/

https://web-corpora.net/learner_corpus/

https://realec.org/

The concept of “speech” in the theory and practice of sciences

Mishina G.A., Chernichkina Yu.D.

Modern trends are such that a scientific problem is considered from the perspective of different branches of scientific knowledge. This leads to the emergence of new sciences, as if “at the junction” of existing ones. In relation to speech, these include psycholinguistics (C. Osgood, Pierce, T. Sibeok, A.A. Leontyev, I.N. Gorelov, A.A. Zalevskaya, N.I. Lepskaya, etc.), psychosemiotics (M V. Gamezo, V. F. Rubakhin, E. I. Isenina, etc.), neurolinguistics (A. R. Luria), linguopsychology (I. A. Zimnyaya), ontopsycholinguistics (M. Tomasello, E. Bates), neuropsycholinguistics (K.F. Sedov), neuropsychoparalinguistics (E.N. Vinarskaya), logopathology (A.N. Kornev), etc. On the one hand, this allows us to consider the phenomenon being studied holistically with the use of evidence obtained in other sciences, seeing the place this phenomenon in the overall picture. However, on the other hand, the terms of one science are borrowed by another, reinterpreted, supplemented, and their “erosion” is observed.

The enduring importance of speech in phylo- and sociogenesis, the variety of functions it performs, the multidimensionality of speech as an object of study, various technical capabilities (for example, computer analysis) for processing the data obtained still contribute to maintaining great interest in this problem among scientists from various scientific fields. An analysis of the literature has shown that in many scientific works, domestic authors use the terms “language”, “speech”, “speech activity” as synonyms, interchanging each other.

A significant amount of research devoted to speech in various sciences - philosophy (E. Condillac, P.V. Kopnin, M.S. Kozlova, etc.), linguistics (A.N. Gvozdev, S.N. Tseitlin, E.S. Kubryakova, N.M. Yuryeva, etc.), psychophysiology (A.G. Ivanov-Smolensky, M.M. Koltsova, N.I. Krasnogorsky, I.P. Pavlov, P.K. Anokhin, L.A. Chistovich and others), psychology (L.S. Vygotsky, K. Buhler, A.V. Zaporozhets, N.I. Zhinkin, T.E. Konnikova, M.I. Lisina, M.G. Elagina, S. L.V. Kornitskaya, S.Yu. Meshcheryakova, G.M. Lyamina, V.I. Lubovsky, A.K. Markova, N.A. Menchinskaya, L.F. Obukhova, S.L. Rubinstein; J. Piaget , N.H. Shvachkin, etc.), psycholinguistics (T.V. Bazzhina, I.N. Gorelov, I.A. Zimnyaya, A.A. Leontyev, N.I. Lepskaya; T.N. Ushakova, PM Frumkin, A.M. Shakhnarovich and others), paralinguistics (G.V. Kolshansky), semiotics and psychosemiotics (A.A. Vetrov, E.I. Isenina, E.E. Sapogova, N.G. Salmina), neuropsychology (T.V. Akhutina, A.R. Luria, E.D. Khomskaya, L.S. Tsvetkova, A.V. Semenovich), speech therapy (R.E. Levina, M.E. Khvattsev, L.S. Volkova, G.V. Chirkina, V.A. Kovshikov, V.P. Glukhov, A.N. Kornev, etc.), etc. - showed that today there is no single definition of such a concept as “speech”. In some works (G.M. Andreeva, G.V. Kolshansky, R. Yakobson, Kodzasov, Krivnova, V.I. Postovalova) speech is synonymous with the concept of “language”, in others it is considered “as part of a broader concept - language. At the same time, language means an instrument (means) of communication, and speech is the type of communication produced by this instrument (Linguistic Encyclopedic Dictionary), thirdly, on the contrary, “speech contains language as one of its sides” (A.A. Vetrov). There is no unity among psychologists either. Thus, speech is understood both as a means of communication (M.I. Lisina, M.G. Elagina, S.V. Kornitskaya, S.Yu. Meshcheryakova, etc.), and as a form of communication between people through language (V.P. Zinchenko , B.G. Meshcheryakov), both as an independent activity (A.N. Leontiev, A.A. Leontiev), and as a psychological process of formulating and transmitting thoughts through language (A.R. Luria).

In linguistic, psycholinguistic and psychophysiological works of recent years (2000–2010) devoted to speech ontogenesis, a number of authors point to the close relationship between speech and language, designating processes, functions and mechanisms as speech-linguistic (T.N. Ushakova, 2008), with this subject research becomes a “psychological component”, observed from the first days of life even in the cry (T.N. Ushakova, 2008).

The concepts of “speech” and “language” were most clearly separated initially in linguistics (language was considered as a set of phonetic, lexical and grammatical means). The Swiss linguist F. de Saussure defined language, different from speech, as the basis for its mastery. There was also an undoubted indication of the close relationship (not interchangeability!), the dichotomy of speech and language: language is a system of signs, and speech is a process, “the act of individual use of language” (I.A. Zimnyaya, 2001).

I.A. was very close to this understanding of a language “consisting of random symbols connected in the most varied ways” (i.e., a system of signs). Baudouin de Courtenay (A.A. Leontiev, 2003). However, the scientist’s contribution is that he formulated the position on the need to distinguish between the unconscious flow and conscious regulation of language processes (L.V. Shcherba). Thus, we can observe attempts to highlight in the holistic process of speaking, on the one hand, the very system of signs (and rules, and patterns of its development and functioning), on the other, the conscious regulation of “linguistic life” (A.A. Leontyev, 2003). Essentially we are talking about language and speech competence. The continuation of this direction was observed in the works of L.V. Shcherby (they were allocated speech organization, language system and language material).

Modern linguistics, based on the understanding of language as “a complex system of codes denoting objects, signs, actions or relationships that carry the function of encoding, transmitting information and introducing it into various systems” (A.R. Luria), as well as “a set of linguistic units of different ranks (sounds, morphemes, words, sentences), rules for their construction and use (S.N. Tseitlin, 2000), “...systems of existing, socially assigned signs that correlate conceptual content and typical sound, as well as systems of rules for their use and compatibility..." (G.V. Chirkina), as "a form of existence of knowledge in the form of a system of signs" (N.G. Salmina, 1988), gradually changes the subject of her science, considering linguistic means in relation to the system of meanings in the process of verbal communication ( A.A. Leontyev, 2003). Hence, in modern linguistics two approaches are distinguished - linguistic, i.e. a structural-functional way of studying language as a system, including its different levels (phonetic, morphological, etc.) (O.S. Akhmanova) and a semiotic approach - as an orientation towards studying the connection between sign and meaning, highlighting the syntactic, semantic and paradigmatic levels (Y.S. Stepanov, E.I. Isenina, M. Halliday, etc.). Moreover, linguistic signs are only one of the classes of signs (N.G. Salmina, 1988).

The concept of “speech” is not so clearly presented in the literature. For a very short period in Russian science (psychology), speech was considered as a mental phenomenon, as an independent higher mental function, as a cultural form of behavior (L.S. Vygotsky), as “a form of existence of consciousness (thoughts, feelings, experiences) for another, serving as a means communication with him, and the form of a generalized reflection of reality" (S.L. Rubinshtein), "a peculiar, specific human way of forming and formulating thoughts through language" (A.N. Leontyev), as "... one of the forms of human communication that ensures formation, transmission and perception of information..." (L.A. Orbeli).

In the early works of S.L. Rubinstein considered speech as “language functioning in the context of individual consciousness,” while he pointed out that speech is not identical to language “just as individual consciousness is different from social consciousness, psychology from ideology...”. Later, speech was presented by him as “a means of conscious influence and communication carried out on the basis of the semantic content of speech.” According to S.L. Rubinstein, speech can become conscious only if the speaker understands the purpose. Attention should be paid to the indication that speech exists only where there is semantics, meaning, having a material carrier in the form of sound, gesture, visual image, etc. Considering the relationship between thinking and speech (which was the subject of many works by both domestic and foreign researchers), Rubinstein was of the opinion that it is unlawful to reduce thinking to speech, recognizing the leading position behind thinking.

Further development of the psychological approach to understanding speech was associated with the works of I.P. Pavlov: “speech, being a means of communication, becomes at the same time a means of in-depth analysis and synthesis of reality, and, most importantly, the “highest regulator of behavior.” Taking this approach into account, A.R. Luria pointed out the enormous role of speech in the formation of mental processes.

A fairly extensive experimental study of speech as a means of communication was carried out in the context of the concept of the genesis of communication as a communicative activity (M.I. Lisina, V.V. Vetrova, D.B. Godovikova, A.K. Markova, etc.).

In our opinion, the approach of D.B. is also interesting. Elkonin (1958) to this process: “the intensive development of speech at an early age indicates that speech should be considered not as a function, but as a special object that the child masters in the same way as he masters other tools (spoon, pencil, etc. ). The development of speech is a “twig” in the development of independent objective activity. And in many ways this development depends on the conditions in which the child is raised.”

However, speech as a psychological concept was presented most holistically in the theories of L.S. Vygotsky and J. Piaget. L.S. Vygotsky considered speech in the context of the concept of “higher mental function.” Dividing mental functions into natural and cultural, L.S. Vygotsky called natural mental processes that are carried out without mediation by signs, and higher mental functions are those that are carried out thanks to auxiliary means. HMFs represent the active form of personality in its manifestations. The problem of HMF is considered in cultural-historical theory precisely as a higher form of behavior, differing from elementary behavior by the creation and use of artificial stimuli as aids for mastering one’s own reactions. “In infancy, the genetic roots of two main cultural forms of behavior are laid - the use of tools and human speech.” Mediation is “the basis of the analogy between a sign and a tool,” the common point that unites these forms. And the main “point of divergence” (L.S. Vygotsky) is their direction: the tool is “directed outward”, it is a means of external activity... (causing changes in the object), and the sign is directed inward, it is “a means of psychological influence on someone else’s behavior or your own, a means of internal activity” (G.G. Kravtsov). “The initial unit of analysis when considering the problem of mediation is an action, determined by its goal and method, consisting of operations and the corresponding tools” (G.G. Kravtsov). A.N. Leontyev O.

The formation of a reflex mechanism, on the one hand, and social life and interaction of people, on the other, are necessary conditions for the formation of cultural functions. Natural mental processes are characterized by a temporary connection that is established due to the coincidence of two stimuli that simultaneously affect the body. For cultural people, it is a temporary connection that is created by the person himself using an artificial combination of stimuli. Among all social communication systems, speech is central. At the same time, like any system, it goes through such stages in formation as interpsychological - a collective form of behavior and intrapsychological - an individual form of behavior.

In connection with the development of the activity approach in Russian psychology (A.N. Leontiev), initially in the works of N.I. Zhinkin, and then A.A. Leontief speech began to be viewed precisely as a speech activity, which had both target, motivational, and executive aspects (like any other activity). This made it possible to talk about “speech activity” (L.V. Shcherba, A.A. Leontyev) as “a special case of sign activity”, as “human activity (behavior), to one degree or another mediated by the signs of language” (A.A. . Leontiev, 2003), in which “the means (language system) and the method (speech) of forming and formulating a thought, which serves as the subject of speech activity, are highlighted” (I.A. Zimnyaya, 2001). Speech within the framework of this concept is understood as “the process of generating and perceiving speech utterances... a set of ways of carrying out speech activity” (V.A. Kovshikov, V.P. Glukhov, 2007).

Various features underlie numerous classifications of forms and types of speech (external oral (including dialogical, monological and polylogical forms), external written and internal speech; autonomous, egocentric, internal speech; expressive and impressive forms; manual and automated; situational, contextual and non-situational; rational and emotional; everyday, business, etc.). Modern psycholinguists in all these cases consider speech as “a type of implementation of speech activity” (V.A. Kovshikov, V.P. Glukhov, 2007). However, A.A. Leontyev pointed out later that “strictly speaking, speech activity as such does not exist. There is only a system of speech actions included in some kind of activity - entirely theoretical, intellectual or partially practical. A person has nothing to do with speech alone: it is not an end in itself, but a means, an instrument, although it can be used differently in different types of activity...” (2003).

In modern foreign literature, there are two terms to refer to the phenomena highlighted above - the terms “speech” (“speech”) and “language” (“language”). This division is associated with the theoretical approach of N. Chomsky, in the grammatical model of which a distinction is made between language ability (the ability to speak) and language activity (statements of a native speaker). Hence, the term “speech” refers to the physical process of speaking, by which we voice the language, including articulation, voice and fluency: “speech is a material physical process, the result of which are the sounds of speech” (D. Slobin). The term “language” means understanding others and the ability to express what we want, using words and sentences for communication, understanding oral and written text, pragmatics, morphology, grammar, word formation, phrase construction: “language is an abstract system of meanings and linguistic structures” (D. Slobin).

Huge experimental material collected by foreign (primarily American, English and partly German) linguists and psycholinguists is presented by research precisely within the framework of the concept of “language”: the model of language acquisition (N. Chomsky, H. Gardner, E. Bates, etc.) , theories of acquisition of phonology (D. Olmsted, R. Jacobson, D. Ingram, C. Ferguson, etc.), vocabulary (J. Fodor, E. Bates, D. Thal, V. Marchman, etc.), grammar (N. Chomsky , J. Bruner, D. Slobin, etc.), etc. A lot of research in line with foreign psycholinguistics has been carried out in connection with the study of the role of language in intellectual development.

Most modern foreign authors define the concept of “language” as a code for representing thought using a system of arbitrary signals in the process of communication. Moreover, this concept includes such blocks as “content” (i.e. what is being said or how the statement is understood), “form” (intonation, consistency in the statement) and “use” (motive of speaking) (L. Bloom, M .Lahey, 2000). We see that the content of this concept is quite close to the content of the domestic concepts “language”, “speech”, “speech activity”. However, the term “language” is translated from the English term “language,” which creates confusion in understanding the available foreign materials. This is important to understand because... at the present stage, domestic specialists, having wide access to English-language literature, conduct similar experimental studies on Russian-language material, using original terms, or putting similar content into the concept of “speech”.

Due to the fact that we are interested in the period from birth, which many call “pre-speech,” let us analyze the current situation. Based on the above-mentioned definition of “speech activity,” it turns out that this term can only be applied to the period when any linguistic means are formed and thought appears, i.e. after about two years (when the “crossover” of speech and thinking occurs according to Vygotsky). But how can we designate the processes observed in the first year of life and partly at an early age? Most researchers use the terms “speech development, prerequisites for speech, ontogenesis of speech, pre-speech period, early childhood speech, etc.”; in cases of dysontogenesis, the term “speech” is used mainly (including understanding, vocal production, and pragmatic aspects of communication , and the volume of the dictionary - delayed speech development, absence of speech, speech disorders, deviations in speech development (L.S. Volkova, R.I. Lalaeva, G.V. Chirkina, etc.)). Only some authors propose the term “speech-language” ability (T.N. Ushakova, 2008), or “initial stage of language development” (T.V. Bazzhina), or “protolanguage” (E.I. Isenina), or “disharmonious pathological development of the functional system of language and speech" (A.N. Kornev, 2006).

conclusions

Currently, when researchers say “speech,” they mean speech activity, which includes speech actions (with a “signified” - the subject of the utterance - and a “signifier” - the linguistic form of expression) and operations (comparison, selection of linguistic and semantic elements, substitutions and etc.) (I.A. Zimnyaya, A.A. Leontyev). That. speech activity is presented as a broader concept, including both “speech” and “language” (linguistic abilities), as a whole and parts (A.A. Zalevskaya, I.A. Zimnyaya, A.M. Shakhnarovich, etc. ).
Theoretical analysis allows us to say that today the issue of the content of the concept “speech” has not been resolved. Firstly, the status of speech is not defined (from a psychological position) - property, process, independent activity, communication activity, form of communication, means, etc. Secondly, following from the first as a consequence, the content of this concept depends on the approach within which it is considered.
Recently, a fairly large number of indications and references in literary sources have appeared on the presence of phenomena of two kinds observed in the initial period (“pre-verbal”) development:

- preference for a biological basis for language and a social basis for speech;

— by examining the screaming stage, it can clearly be shown that linguistic and communicative competence arise separately” (T.V. Bazzhina, 2008);

— “it would be advisable to have two “sciences of sounds,” one of which would be oriented toward speech, the other toward language” (N.S. Trubetskoy);

— “a cry represents a two-way unity of external sound manifestation and hidden mental subjective content” (T.N. Ushakova, 2008);

- “babble can be different - for oneself and for others” (S.N. Tseitlin, 2000);

- a well-known phenomenon in linguistics: in the semantic design of an utterance, the formation proceeds from “large” units to “small” ones, and in the sound form – from “small” to “large”;

- “lexical explosion” is observed only in expressive speech; in impressive speech, accumulation proceeds smoothly (S.N. Tseitlin, 2000);

- “much more significant from the psychological side is K. Bühler’s distinction between sympractic and symphysical speech (Male and Marken). Sympraxic speech is speech woven into a non-speech situation; symphysical - speech acting as a sign of a thing” (Leontyev A.A.).

In the context of cultural-historical theory, it is with the help of speech that natural mental functions become higher. However, the question arises in what period and how it does this.

To answer the questions posed, it is necessary to determine the psychological status of speech and carefully study the genesis of its formation.

Literature

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2. Kovshikov V.A. Psycholinguistics. Theory of speech activity/V.A. Kovshikov, V.P. Glukhov. – M., 2007

3. Kornev A.N. Fundamentals of speech pathology in childhood: clinical and psychological aspects. – St. Petersburg, 2006

4. Kravtsov G.G. The problem of mediation in personality psychology/School L.S. Vygotsky today / Rep. ed. V.T. Kudryavtsev. M.: RSUH, 2005.

5. Leontyev A.A. Fundamentals of psycholinguistics - M.; St. Petersburg, 2003

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