Introduction. The article substantiates the relevance of observing the development of an individual’s speech, the process of forming such an important language competence as syntactic. The purpose of the article is to analyze observations of the process of a child mastering grammatical ways of expressing syntactic relations.

Materials and methods. The main research methods are observation, classification and comparative analysis. The latter allows us to compare the levels of formation of syntactic competence in different age periods.

Results. Analysis of the syntax of statements as a whole allows us to conclude that the system of surface syntax in ArsenyKh. was basically formed by the beginning of the fourth year of life. It includes mastering almost all syntactic connections and grammatical ways of expressing them in both simple and complex sentences, both in units of minimal structure and in units of complex structure.

Discussion. It has been established that at the age of two and a half years to three years and one month, a revolutionary transition from communicative-semantic syntax to superficial syntax occurs in a child’s speech. The child’s syntactic system during this period is heterogeneous, in which elements of colloquial speech coexist with elements of a codified literary language. Thus, the child’s syntactic competence reflects the structure of the native language system only partially, in its most general patterns.

Conclusion. As a result, we can conclude that longitudinal observations of the process of speech development of a particular child make it possible to trace the general patterns of this process, clarify the concept of its norm and variation within the norm, which makes it possible to develop refined practical recommendations for the development of a child’s speech. At the same time, the obtained results are significant not only in applied terms, but also in general theoretical terms, allowing us to pose questions related to clarifying the structure of the language system as a whole.

The thesis has been confirmed that the formation of cognitive structures precedes the formation of the child’s language competencies.

Basic syntactic relations are formed in the child’s ideas already in the third year of life.

At the beginning of the fourth year, the child masters the basic grammatical ways of expressing the syntactic relations known to him.

The grammatical system formed by the child does not fully coincide with the norms of the native language.

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