Vocabulary diversity of kindergarten and preschool children

Jezik se razvija spontano, ne poučava se. Usvajanje jezika započinje još u majčinoj utrobi slušanjem glasova okoline. Time se stvaraju predispozicije za kasnije učenje jezika i govora. Kako ističu Apel i Masterson (2004), roditelji su primarni „jezični uzor“, no osim njih tu je i šira obitelj, okolina, vršnjaci, mediji te veliki utjecaj imaju i odgojitelji. Utjecajem okoline i polaskom u odgojno-obrazovnu instituciju naš govor se mijenja, od učenja novih riječi do korištenja drugačijih naglasaka. Usvajanje riječi vezano je uz opći leksikon jezika kojem je dijete izloženo, umni leksikon te razvojnu dob (Aladrović Slovaček, 2019). Rani dječji rječnik jedini sadrži određenu riječ, dok je drugi uopće ne koriste. Tu razliku čine djetetovo okruženje, odnosno ukućani i bližnji, odgojno-obrazovne ustanove i slično (Apel i Masterson, 2004 ). Unatoč tome što je morfologija hrvatskoga jezika vrlo složena, djeca sa svoje tri godine mogu bez problema slagati rečenice, jer do svoje treće godine usvoje osnove materinskog jezika. Djeca stvaraju svoju dječju gramatiku jer si tako olakšavaju shvaćanje i usvajanje hrvatskoga jezika (Aladrović Slovaček, 2019). Obilježja te dječje gramatike su: pojednostavljivanje, neprovođenje svih gramatičkih pravila, poopćavanje pravila i nepostojanje niti jednoga temeljnoga oblika. Rječnik se razvija postepeno te nakon prve godine kad većina djece usvoji prvu riječ on progresivno raste te dijete oko 3. godine ima oko 3000 riječi u svome mentalnom leksikonu. U ranoj su dobi prisutne riječi iz organskoga idioma, novotvorenice te neke standardne riječi. Stoga je temeljni cilj ovog rada bio ispitati rječničku raznolikost kod djece vrtićke i predškolske dobi, odnosno vidjeti koliki se postotak djece koristi standardnim književnim izrazima, a koliki postotak njih koristi dijalektalne izraze. Istraživanje je pokazalo kako većinu standardnih izraza djeca koriste za glagole i pridjeve, a dijalektne izraze više koriste kod imenica. S obzirom na spol, nema neke veće razlike kod odgovora između dječaka i djevojčica.Language develops spontaneously, it is not taught. Language acquisition begins in the mother's womb by listening to the sounds of the environment. This creates predispositions for later language and speech learning. As Apel and Masterson (2004) point out, parents are the primary "linguistic role model", but in addition to them, there is also the wider family, the environment, peers, the media, and educators also have a great influence. Due to the influence of the environment and going to an educational institution, our speech changes, from learning new words to using different accents. The acquisition of words is related to the general lexicon of the language to which the child is exposed, mental lexicon and developmental age (Aladrović Slovaček, 2019). An early children's dictionary is the only one that contains a certain word, while others do not use it at all. This difference is made by the child's environment, i.e. family members and relatives, educational institutions and the like (Apel and Masterson, 2004). Despite the fact that the morphology of the Croatian language is very complex, children at the age of three can put sentences together without any problems, because by the age of three they have mastered the basics of their mother tongue. Children create their own children's grammar because this makes it easier for them to understand and learn the Croatian language (Aladrović Slovaček, 2019). The characteristics of this children's grammar are: simplification, non-implementation of all grammatical rules, generalization of rules and the absence of a single basic form. Vocabulary develops gradually and after the first year, when most children adopt the first word, it grows progressively, and a child around the age of 3 has about 3000 words in his mental lexicon. At an early age, words from the organic idiom, newly created words and some standard words are present. Therefore, the main goal of this work was to examine the vocabulary diversity of kindergarten and preschool children, that is, to see what percentage of children use standard literary expressions, and what percentage of them use dialectal expressions. The research showed that children use most of the standard expressions for verbs and adjectives, and they use dialect expressions more for nouns. Regarding gender, there is no major difference in the answers between boys and girls