Hostname: page-component-7dd5485656-wlg5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-10-31T03:10:19.438Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Language development and language knowledge: evidence from the acquisition of Hebrew morphophonology*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Ruth A. Berman
Ruth A. Berman
Affiliation:
Tel Aviv University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The study considers implications of our findings regarding pre-school acquisition of Hebrew inflectional morphology (Berman 1981). Children resolve ‘opacities’ by reference to various types of ‘paradigms’. These are related to the distinction between transient and more widespread deviations from prescriptive norms, in an attempt to account for interactions between child language and language change. While pre-school acquisition is crucially affected by peer input, the grammar is subsequently reshaped by orthography and by formal study, yielding a complex interaction between concrete vs. abstract bases of Hebrew linguistic competence. Further research is needed to examine when and how the peculiarly Semitic constructs of consonantal root plus morphological pattern are acquired.

Information

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 8 , Issue 3 , October 1981 , pp. 609 - 626
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1981

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

REFERENCES

Bar-Adon, A. (1959). Children's Hebrew in Israel. Doctoral dissertation, Hebrew University, Jerusalem. (In Hebrew.)Google Scholar
Barkai, M. (1972). Problems in the phonology of Israeli Hebrew. Doctoral dissertation, University of Illinois.Google Scholar
Baron, N. S. (1977). Language acquisition and historical change. Amsterdam: North-Holland.Google Scholar
Ben-Horin, G. & Bolozky, S. (1972). Hebrew b p k - Rule opacity or data opacity? Hebrew computational linguistics 5. 24–35.Google Scholar
Bentur, E. (1978 a). Some effects of orthography on the linguistic knowledge of Modern Hebrew speakers. Doctoral dissertation. University of Illinois.Google Scholar
Bentur, E. (1978 b). Orthography and the formulation of phonological rules. Studies in the linguistic sciences 8. 1–25.Google Scholar
Berman, R. A. (1978 a). Modern Hebrew structure. Tel Aviv: University Publishing.Google Scholar
Berman, R. A. (1978 b). Early verbs: comments on how and why a child uses his first words. IJPsycholing 5. 21–39.Google Scholar
Berman, R. A. (1979). Lexical decomposition and lexical unity in the expression of derived verbal categories in Modern Hebrew. Afroasiatic linguistics 6 (3). 1–26.Google Scholar
Berman, R. A. (1980). Child language as evidence for grammatical description: preschoolers' construal of transitivity in the verb system of Hebrew. Linguistics 18. 677–701.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berman, R. A. (1981 a). Regularity vs. anomaly: the acquisition of Hebrew inflectional morphology. JChLang 8. 265–82.Google Scholar
Berman, R. A. (1981 b). Children's regularizations of noun patterns. Paper given to Stanford Child Language Research Forum, April.Google Scholar
Berman, R. A. (in press). Verb-pattern alternation: the interface of morphology, syntax and semantics in Hebrew child language. JChLang 9. 1.Google Scholar
Bolozky, S. (1978 a). Some aspects of Modern Hebrew phonology. In Berman, R.. (ed.), Modern Hebrew structure. Tel Aviv: University Publishing.Google Scholar
Bolozky, S. (1978 b). Word formation strategies in the Hebrew verb system. Afroasiatic linguistics 5 (3).Google Scholar
Bowerman, M. (to appear). Evaluating competing linguistic models with language acquisition data: implications of developmental errors with causative verbs. In Tavakolian, S.. (ed.), Proceedings of the University of Massachusetts workshop on language acquisition and linguistic theory, 1978.Google Scholar
Bresnan, J. (1978). A realistic transformational grammar. InHalle, M., Bresnan, J. & Miller, G. A. (eds), Linguistic theory and psychological reality. Cambridge, Mass: M.I.T.Google Scholar
Derwing, B. L. (1973). Transformational grammar as a theory of language acquisition. Cambridge: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Derwing, B. L. (1977). Is the child really a ‘little linguist’? In Macnamara, J.. (ed.), Language learning and thought. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Donag-Kinrot, R. (1978). The language of students in Israeli schools: language usage, standard and norm. Doctoral dissertation, Hebrew University, Jerusalem. (In Hebrew.)Google Scholar
Fischler, B.-Z. (1975). The realization of ‘beth, kaph, pe’ in Israeli Hebrew. In Fischler, B.-Z. & Oman, U.. (eds), Rosen memorial volume. Jerusalem: Council on Teaching of Hebrew. (In Hebrew.)Google Scholar
Kiparsky, P. (1971). Historical linguistics. In Dingwall, W.. (ed.), A survey of linguistic science. Baltimore: University of Maryland.Google Scholar
Li, C. N. & Thompson, S. A. (1978). An exploration of Mandarin Chinese. In Lehman, W.. (ed.), Syntactic typology. Austin: University of Texas.Google Scholar
MacWhinney, B. (1975). Rules, rote, and analogy in morphological formations by Hungarian children. JChLang 2. 65–78.Google Scholar
MacWhinney, B. (1978). The acquisition of morphophonology. Monogr. Soc. Res. Ch. Devel. 43.Google Scholar
Maratsos, M. (1978). New models in linguistics and language acquisition. In Halle, M., Bresnan, J. & Miller, G. A. (eds), Linguistic theory and psychological reality. Cambridge, Mass: M.I.T.Google Scholar
Menn, L. (1979). Child language as a source of constraint for linguistic theory. Paper presented at the 1979 meeting of the LSA,Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Nahir, M. (1978). Normative and educated speech in Israeli Hebrew. IJSocLang 18. 249–67.Google Scholar
Oman, U. (1972). Ordered rules and the so-called phonologization of ancient allophones in Israeli Hebrew. In Heilmann, L.. (ed.), Proc. 11th Int. Cong. Ling. Bologna-Florence.Google Scholar
Ravid, D. (1978). Word-formation processes in Modern Hebrew nouns and adjectives. Master's thesis, Tel Aviv University.Google Scholar
Rivkai, Y. (1933). On the linguistic specificity of the speech of our children in Palestine. Leshonenu 4. 279–94. (In Hebrew.)Google Scholar
Rivkai, Y. (1938). The language of our children in Palestine. Tev Aviv: Shimoni.Google Scholar
Schlesinger, I. M. (1977). The role of cognitive development and linguistic input in language acquisition. JChLang 4. 153–69.Google Scholar
Schwarzwald, O. R. (1976). Theoretical and concrete approaches to the analysis of ‘begedkefet’ – b k p in Hebrew. Leshonenu 40. 211–32. (In Hebrew.)Google Scholar
Schwarzwald, O. R. (1978). The influence of demographic variables on linguistic performance. Quantitative linguistics 1. 173–97.Google Scholar
Schwarzwald, O. R. (1979). The regularity of irregular forms. Paper given at the 12th Annual Conference of the European Linguistic Society,Jerusalem.Google Scholar
Schwarzwald, O. R. (1980). The perception of the weak verb. Journal of the Israel Association for applied linguistics 2. 63–76. (In Hebrew.)Google Scholar
Slobin, D. I. (1973). Cognitive prerequisites for the development of grammar. In Ferguson, C. A. & Slobin, D. I. (eds), Studies of child language development. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.Google Scholar
Schwarzwald, O. R. (1977). Language change in childhood and history. In Macnamara, J.. (ed.), Language and thought. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Weinreich, U., Labov, W. & Herzog, M. I. (1968). Empirical foundations for a theory of language change. In Lehmann, W. P. & Malkiel, Y.. (eds), Directions for historical linguistics. Austin: University of Texas.Google Scholar