Role of semilingualism in syntactic development of younger school age gypsy children

Abstract

Disorders accompanying speech and language development of Gypsy children limit the child’s educational development and require a special treatment and support. In practice, we find Gypsy children whose spoken language is extremely limited, difficult to analyze and examine, because of semilingualism. The research we made aimed at determining influence of semilingualism to syntactic development of Gypsy children. The research was conducted in the City of Belgrade in two elementary schools. Two sample groups of subjects, students of second and third grade of elementary school were examined:: an experimental group consisted of children Gypsy nationality (N = 42) and control group consisted of children do not Gypsy nationality (N = 37). The survey instrument used: Language corpus for assessing competence in achieving communicative sentence (Kašić). Based on the analysis of the gathered data we have concluded that the subjects from experimental and control groups differ very much in their achievements, mostly due to the presence of semilingualism. Given the stated differences and the results obtained after data processing, we may confirm superiority of the subjects in the control group over the subjects in the experimental group. Children of Gypsy ethnicity have significantly lower achievement compared to the control group. Gypsy children have the problem of syntactic structure in which the secondary parts of communicative sentence expressing through dependent clause. Serious difficulties for the children of Gypsy ethnicity represents the understanding of syntactic constructions of meaning and understanding of grammatical structures.

Teškoće koje prate govorno-jezički razvoj kod dece romske nacionalnosti u velikoj meri limitiraju dete u obrazovanju i vaspitanju i zahtevaju poseban tretman i podršku. Tako u praksi srećemo decu romske nacionalnosti kojoj je zbog semilingvizma govorno-jezički razvoj ograničen. Sprovedeno istraživanje je imalo za cilj da utvrdi uticaj semilingvizma na sintaksički razvoj romske dece mlađeg školskog uzrasta. Istraživanje je sprovedeno na teritoriji Beograda, u dve osnovne škole. Uzorak su činile dve grupe dece drugog i trećeg razreda osnovne škole: eksperimentalnu grupu koju su činila deca romske nacionalnosti (N=42) i kontrolnu grupu koju su činila deca neromske nacionalnosti (N=37). U istraživanju je korišćen instrument Jezički korpus za procenu kompetencije u ostvarivanju komunikativne rečenice (Kašić, 1999). Na osnovu analize dobijenih rezultata zaključili smo da postoje velike razlike u postignuću između dece eksperimentalne i kontrolne grupe, štose može objasniti, pre svega, prisustvom semilingvizma. Deca romske nacionalnosti imaju statistički značajno manje postignuće u odnosu na decu kontrolne grupe. Sintaksička konstrukcija u kojoj se sekundarni delovi komunikativne rečenice izražavaju zavisnom klauzom, razumevanje sintaksičkih konstrukcija i razumevanje značenja gramatičkih struktura je za decu romske nacionalnosti predstavljalo poseban problem.