Functioning of the derivational-associative mechanism in the perception of the text (an experimental study)

The article presents an experiment on elicitation of real and novel words in lexical-derivational contexts within a coherent text. The informants were school children 8 and 12 y.o., medical students and linguistic students, university lecturers 30 y.o. and older (a total of 153 people). There were produced more than 2800 answers. The result of the experiment makes it possible to identify the place of derivational associations in the process of speech perception and to consider the impact of various systemic and sociolinguistic factors. Age dynamics of derivation association is as follows. The younger pupils do not have enough derivational skills to affect the perception of the text. In children of 12-13 years of age derivational relations are being formed and act as a means of interpretation of semantics of both known and unknown words. At this age the word-formation system of individual language is not yet complete, which is attested by misinterpretation or neglect of affixal semantics, by the erroneous identification of the formal producing base, the use of occasional word-formation types. By the age of 17-18 the word-formation rules of the language have been mastered, but the derivational-associative mechanism loses its active cognitive function in line with the vocabulary expansion. Medical students as well as sixth graders use derivational response as their default strategy. However, when there is disagreement between the formal requirements of the word-formation type and semantic motivational plausibility, the students follow the grammatical analogy, forming innovative verbs according to usage-based word-formation types, and the сhildren draw upon their knowledge of reality and search their vocabulary for a motivated word. The difference in the responses according to their study major or special field observed with college-age informants. Medical students do not show interest in the background text, and more closely follow relevant standards and samples in their phrase elicitation. Humanities majors aim to create a coherent literary text. This tendency manifests itself in the structure of the reaction fields of art students, and in the following specific features: obligatory filling of strong syntactic valencies of the verb, using a paraphrase, explaining the semantic connection of the derivative and the producing base, general reflection on the situation described. Experienced philologists attribute more meaning to a wide (not only derivation) variety of systemic word relations. Compared to students, the lecturers are more into language game, their game aimed a word form, while the students also make play around the entire text, and the extra-linguistic situation behind it.

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