Derivational Processes in the Speech of a Child from the Age of 5 to 6 Years Old: Normative and Occasional

The features of word-formation in the children’s speech of a child aged 5 to 6 years old, namely, word-formation occasionalisms and the use in speech of derivatives belonging to different parts of speech are in the focus of the study undertaken. In parallel, a comparison was made as to word-formation occasionalisms of the period from 5 to 6 years old with occasionalisms of previous stages. The greatest number of word-formation innovations in a child’s speech occurs between the ages of 3 and 4, and the least - from 5 to 6. The dominant means of word formation at all age stages is suffixation. All other means of direct derivation are considered as secondary. Reverse and substitution word formation are extremely rare. New derivational models of children’s innovations are described in comparison with the models mastered by a child from 1 year and 9 months to 5 years old: adjectival or substantive verbs formed according to non-productive models. Up to 3 years of age, innovations relate to three parts of speech: nouns, adjectives, verbs. From the age of 3 to 4, the number of nouns and verbs is the same, but the number of adjectives is less. From the age of 4 to 5 the ratio of nouns is still high and the ratio of verbs becomes much smaller. The ratio of adjectives in these three periods is the same. From the age of 5 to 6, verbs predominate - this stage can be called an explosion of verb word formation. Although the creation of innovations is one of the manifestations of a child’s metalinguistic activity, after the age of 5 the degree of awareness in the process of word formation increases. The child creates his own words through play and creative activities. Adults influence children’s creation of occasionalisms through reading books by poets and writers who play games with language.