Cover not available
Part of
Nominal Compound Acquisition
Edited by Wolfgang U. Dressler, F. Nihan Ketrez and Marianne Kilani-Schoch
[Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 61] 2017
► pp. 251–274

Chapter 11
Compounding in early child speech: Hebrew peer talk 2–8

|
| | Tel Aviv University
This chapter traces the emergence and consolidation of Hebrew compounds across the childhood years, treating compounds as constructions (Goldberg 2003). Hebrew compounds are strictly nominal, with three different structures, each relating lexicon, morphology, and syntax: The bound smixut, the free compound, and the double compound. The current study examines the distributions and functions of smixut and free compounds in the peer talk transcripts of Hebrew-speaking children aged 2–8. Findings indicate that smixut compounds increase in number with age, emerging as the major vehicle for expressing complex sub-categorization relations. Free compounds constitute the initial vehicle for the expression of nominal predication. The lexical, morpho-syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic facets of compound development in the childhood years are discussed in the chapter.
Keywords: Hebrew, smixut, morpho-syntax, free compounds, double compounds, development
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Hebrew compounds in child language development
      • 1.1.1Adjacency smixut compounds
      • 1.1.2Compounds based on shel ‘of’
    • 1.2Aims and theoretical frameworks of analysis
  • 2.Method
    • 2.1Analysis
  • 3.Results
    • 3.1General compounding measures
    • 3.2Grammatical compounds
    • 3.3Lexical compounding
  • 4.Discussion: From loose to specified relations across childhood
    • 4.12–2;6 year olds
    • 4.22;6–3 year olds
    • 4.33–4 year olds
    • 4.44–5 year olds
    • 4.55–6 year olds
    • 4.67–8 year olds
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 19 December 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lald.61.12rav
References (47)
References
Albert, A., MacWhinney, B., Nir, B. & Wintner, S.. 2013. The Hebrew CHILDES corpus: Transcription and morphological analysis. Language Resources and Evaluation 47: 973–1005.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bar-On, A. & Ravid, D.. 2011. Morphological decoding in Hebrew pseudowords: A developmental study. Applied Psycholinguistics 32: 553–581.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ben-Zvi, G. & Levie, R.. 2016. Development of Hebrew derivational morphology from preschool to adolescence. In Acquisition and Development of Hebrew: From Infancy to Adolescence [Trends in Language Acquisition Research 19], R. Berman (ed.), 135–174. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Berman, R. A. 1978. Modern Hebrew Structure. Tel Aviv: University Publishing Projects.Google Scholar
. 1985. Acquisition of Hebrew. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
. 1988. Productivity in the lexicon: New-word formation in Modern Hebrew. Folia Linguistica 21: 425–461.Google Scholar
. 2009. Acquisition of compound constructions. In Handbook of Compounding, R. Lieber & P. Stekauer (eds), 298–322. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Berman, R. A. & Clark, E. V. 1989. Learning to use compounds for contrast. First Language 9: 247–270.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Borer, H.. 1988. On the morphological parallelisms between compounds and constructs. Morphology Yearbook 1: 45–65.Google Scholar
Cahana-Amitay, D. & Ravid, D.. 2000. Optional bound morphology in the development of text production. In Proceedings of the 24th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, Vol. I, S. C. Howell, S. A. Fish & T. Keith-Lucas (eds), 176–184. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Clark, E. V. & Berman, R. A. 1984. Structure and use in acquisition of word-formation. Language 60: 542–590.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1987. Types of linguistic knowledge: Interpreting and producing compound nouns. Journal of Child Language 14: 547–568.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dressler, W. U. 2005. Word formation in natural morphology. In Handbook of Word Formation, P. Štekauer & R. Lieber (eds), 267–284. Dordrecht: Springer.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Elman, J. L. 1993. Learning and development in neural networks: The importance of starting small. Cognition 48: 71–99.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gesenius, W., Kautzsch, E. & Cowley, A. E . 2006. Gesenius’ Hebrew Grammar. North Chelmsford, MA: Courier Corporation.Google Scholar
Goldberg, A. E. 2003. Constructions: A new theoretical approach to language. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 7: 219–224.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Heine, B.. 1997. Possession: Cognitive sources, Forces, and Grammaticalization. Cambridge: CUP.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Heine, B. & Kuteva, T.. 2009. The genesis of grammar: On combining nouns. In Language Evolution: The View from Restricted Linguistic Systems, R. Botha & H. de Swart (eds), 139–178. Utrecht: LOT.Google Scholar
Kutscher, E. Y. 1982. A History of the Hebrew Language. Jerusalem: Magnes Press.Google Scholar
Levin, I., Ravid, D. & Rappaport, S.. 2001. Morphology and spelling among Hebrew-speaking children: From kindergarten to first grade. Journal of Child Language 28: 741–769.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nikolaeva, I., & Spencer, A.. 2013. Possession and modification – A perspective from Canonical Typology. In Canonical Morphology and Syntax, D. Brown, M. Chumakina & G. Corbett (eds), 207–238. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Ravid, D.. 1990. Internal structure constraints on new-word formation devices in Modern Hebrew. Folia Linguistica 24: 289–346.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1995a. Language Change in Child and Adult Hebrew: A Psycholinguistic Perspective. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
. 1995b. Neutralization of gender distinctions in Modern Hebrew numerals. Language Variation and Change 7: 79–100.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2004. Later lexical development in Hebrew: Derivational morphology revisited. In Language Development Across Childhood and Adolescence: Psycholinguistic and Crosslinguistic Perspectives, R. A. Berman (ed.), 53–81. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2006a. Word-level morphology: A psycholinguistic perspective on linear formation in Hebrew nominals. Morphology 16: 127–148.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2006b. Semantic development in textual contexts during the school years: Noun scale analyses. Journal of Child Language 33: 791–821.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2012. Spelling Morphology: The Psycholinguistics of Hebrew Spelling. Dordrecht: Springer.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ravid, D. & Avidor, A.. 1998. Acquisition of derived nominals in Hebrew: Developmental and linguistic principles. Journal of Child Language 25: 229–266.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ravid, D. & Berman, R.. 2010. Developing noun phrase complexity at school-age: A text-embedded cross-linguistic analysis. First Language 30: 3–26.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ravid, D. & Braun, A.. 2012. Semantic aspects of the acquisition of compound structures. In Studies in Modern Hebrew and Judaic languages, dedicated to O. R. Schwarzwald, M. Muchnik & T. Sadan (eds), 274–288. Ramat Gan: Carmel (in Hebrew).Google Scholar
Ravid, D. & Levie, R.. 2010. Adjectives in the development of text production: Lexical, morphological and syntactic analyses. First Language 30: 27–55.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ravid, D. & Schiff, R.. 2009. Morpho-phonological categories of noun plurals in Hebrew: A developmental study. Linguistics 47: 45–63.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2012. From dichotomy to divergence: Number/gender marking on Hebrew nouns and adjectives across school age. Language Learning 62: 133–169.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2015. It's all about gender: Hebrew speakers' processing of plural agreement morphology. Morphology 25: 327–343.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ravid, D. & Shalom, T.. 2012. Standards for the Assessment of 7th Grade Writing. Report to Yad Ha-Nadiv, Jerusalem (in Hebrew).
Ravid, D. & Shlesinger, Y.. 1995. Factors in the selection of compound-type in spoken and written Hebrew. Language Sciences 17: 147–179.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2001. Vowel reduction in Modern Hebrew: Traces of the past and current variation. Folia Linguistica 35: 371–397.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ravid, D. & Zilberbuch, S.. 2003a. Morpho-syntactic constructs in the development of spoken and written Hebrew text production. Journal of Child Language 30: 395–418.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2003b. The development of complex nominals in expert and non-expert writing: A comparative study. Pragmatics and Cognition 11: 267–297.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ravid, D., van Hell, J., Rosado, E. & Zamora, A.. 2002. Subject NP patterning in the development of text production: Speech and writing. Written Language and Literacy 5: 69–94.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ravid, D., Dressler, W. U., Nir-Sagiv, B., Korecky-Kröll, K., Souman, A., Rehfeldt, K., Laaha, S., Bertl, J., Basbøll, H. & Gillis, S.. 2008. Core morphology in child directed speech: Crosslinguistic corpus analyses of noun plurals. In Finding Structure in Data [Trends in Language Acquisition Research 6], H. Behrens (ed.), 25–60. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schiff, R., Ravid, D. & Levy-Shimon, S.. 2011. Children's command of plural and possessive marking on Hebrew nouns: A comparison of obligatory vs. optional inflections. Journal of Child Language 38: 433–454.  DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Shlesinger, Y. & Ravid, D.. 1998. The double compound in Modern Hebrew: Redundancy or independent existence? Hebrew Linguistics 43: 85–97.Google Scholar
Taylor, J.. 1989. Linguistic categorization: Prototypes in Linguistic Theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Tolchinsky, L.. 2003. The Cradle of Culture and What Children Know about Writing and Numbers before Being Taught. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Zwilling, R.. 2009. Noun Plurals in Children’s Spontaneous Peer Talk 2–8. MA thesis, Tel Aviv University.
Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

Berman, Ruth A.
2020. Chapter 14. Genitive (smixut) constructions in Modern Hebrew. In Usage-Based Studies in Modern Hebrew [Studies in Language Companion Series, 210], ► pp. 507 ff. DOI logo
Ravid, Dorit
2020. Chapter 8. Derivation. In Usage-Based Studies in Modern Hebrew [Studies in Language Companion Series, 210], ► pp. 203 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 27 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.