Chapter 21
Trajectory of children’s verb formation in Hebrew as a heritage
language
The trajectory of language shift and attrition
in the Israeli immigrant community in the United States represents a
complex interaction between Hebrew, a revitalized language of
heritage, and English, a language that is highly pervasive in the
Israeli urban landscape. The language of the children whose Hebrew
is still developing at the onset of contact with English attests to
morphological interaction and innovative lexical constructions that
are unprecedented in monolingual language development for Hebrew or
English. Analysis of longitudinal, narrative, and innovative verb
formation data in children’s Hebrew language oral production
confirms the vulnerability of derivational morphology and verb
formation in Hebrew and the increasing diffusion of English lexical
formation devices as proficiency in Hebrew declines.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Hebrew as a heritage language
- 3.The impact of the English language in Israel
- 4.Israelis in the United States: Dual allegiance to Hebrew and English
- 5.Maintaining the heritage language: A challenging endeavor
- 6.Attrition of the heritage language: Focus on Hebrew verb formation
- 7.Oral narrative data
- 8.Innovative denominal verb production
- 9.Longitudinal data: Emergence of innovative blends and an idiosyncratic verb
form
- 10.Conclusion
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References