Semantic environment of the Noun Child in John Dewey’s Monograph “The Child and the Curriculum”

The article dwells upon the semantic environment of the noun child as the most frequently used noun in J. Dewey’s monograph “The Child and the Curriculum”. Distributive analysis and continuous sampling methods applied to the noun “child” highlight lexical units semantically related to the noun “child”. The syntactic functions of the selected lexical units, their semantic classes according to the classification in Roget’s Thesaurus and the intersection areas of semantic classes are studied. The lexical units from the environment of the word “child” are allocated to semantic areas and subject rows. The structure of lexical units from the environment of the noun “child”, their semantic classes, semantic areas and subject rows, as well as the intersection areas of semantic classes are studied depending on the syntactic functions of the noun “child”. The results of the analysis are compared with the pedagogical ideas presented in the monograph under study, which allows making linguistically grounded conclusions concerning the topic of J. Dewey’s monograph. The description of a child in the framework of the monograph under study is analyzed and the nature of the described activity of the child is defined. The study of belonging of lexical units from the environment of the noun ’child’ to semantic classes, thematic rows, and semantic areas of words allows obtaining a collective image of a child and drawing conclusions about the practical application of J. Dewey’s ideas.