The paper deals with word-formation devices in Modern Hebrew as reflecting word-class distinctiveness rather than polycategoriality, defined here as characterizing lexical items that share the same surface morpho-phonological form, yet function in different lexico-grammatical categories. Relevant typological features of the Modern Hebrew lexicon are outlined in terms of: the two major derivational processes of interdigitation of consonantal roots with affixal patterns and linear affixation to a stem; the relative morpho-phonological distinctiveness of the categories of N, V, and A; and the special status of benoni ‘intermediate’ participial forms as allowing polycategoriality in the shape of form-function shifts between these three lexical categories. Empirical evidence is then reviewed concerning preferred patterns of new-word formation in current Hebrew usage, and findings from structured elicitations and naturalistic speech samples are detailed for acquisition of word-class distinctions by pre-school Hebrew-speaking children, including the relatively minor role played by benoni polycategoriality in early child language. The concluding section discusses these findings in terms of the impact of linguistic typology and the lengthy developmental route in this, as in other domains, from initial non-analysis via morphological decomposition of lexical items and on to proficient, literacy-based construal of the elements constituting the mental lexicon.
2007Chapter 44: Hebrew. In International Perspective on Speech Acquisition, S. McLeod (ed.), 437–456. Clifton Park NY: Thomas Delmar Learning.
Berman, R.A
1978aModern Hebrew Structure. Tel Aviv: University Publishing Projects.
Berman, R.A
1978bEarly verbs: How and why a child uses her first words. International Journal of Psycholinguistics 5: 21–29.
Berman, R.A
1980Child language as evidence for grammatical description: Preschoolers’ construal of transitivity in Hebrew. Linguistics 18: 677–701.
Berman, R.A
1982Verb-pattern alternation: The interface of morphology, syntax, and semantics in Hebrew child language. Journal of Child Language 9: 169–191.
Berman, R.A
1985Acquisition of Hebrew. Hillsdale NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Berman, R.A
1986The acquisition of morphology/syntax: A crosslinguistic perspective. In Language Acquisition, 2nd edn, P. Fletcher & M. Garman (eds), 429–447. Cambridge: CUP.
Berman, R.A
1987Productivity in the lexicon: New-word formation in Modern Hebrew. Folia Linguistica 21: 425–461.
Berman, R.A
1988Word-class distinctions in developing grammars. In Categories and Processes in Language Acquisition, Y. Levy, I.M. Schlesinger & M.D.S. Braine (eds), 45–72. Hillsdale NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Berman, R.A
1989The role of blends in Modern Hebrew word-formation. In Studia Linguistica et Orientalia Memoriae Haim Blanc Dedicata, P. Wexler, A. Borg & S. Somekh (eds), 45–61. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
Berman, R.A
1990Acquiring an SVO language: Subjectless sentences in children’s Hebrew. Linguistics 28: 1135–1166.
Berman, R.A
1993aDevelopmental perspectives on transitivity: A confluence of cues. In Other Children, Other Languages: Issues in the Theory of Acquisition, Y. Levy (ed.), 189–241. Hillsdale NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Berman, R.A
1993bMarking of verb transitivity by Hebrew-speaking children. Journal of Child Language 20: 641–669.
Berman, R.A
1994Formal, lexical, and semantic factors in the acquisition of Hebrew resultative participles. In Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistic Society, S. Gahl, A. Dolbey & C. Johnson (eds), 82–92. Berkeley CA: BLS.
Berman, R.A
1997Israeli Hebrew. In The Semitic Languages, R. Hetzron (ed.), 312–333. London: Routledge.
Berman, R.A
2000Children’s innovative verbs vs nouns: Structured elicitations and spontaneous coinages. In Methods for Studying Language Production, L. Menn & N. Bernstein-Ratner (eds), 69–93. Mahwah NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
2003bGenre and modality in developing discourse abilities. In Discourse across Languages and Cultures [Studies in Language Companion Series 68], C.L. Moder & A. Martinovic-Ziv (eds), 329–256. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
2008The psycholinguistics of developing text construction. Journal of Child Language 35: 735–771.
Berman, R.A
2009Acquisition of compound constructions. In Handbook of Compounding, R. Lieber & P. Stekauer (eds), 298–322. Oxford: OUP.
Berman, R.A
2012. Revisiting roots in Hebrew: A multi-faceted view. In Festschrift for Ora R. Schwarzwald, M. Muchnik & Z. Sadan (eds) 132 158 Ramat Gan Bar-Ilan University Press
Berman, R.A
2016. Typology, acquisition, and development: The view from Israeli Hebrew. In Acquisition and Development of Hebrew: Infancy to Adolescence, [Trends In Language Acquisition Research 19], R. A. Berman (eds) 1 38 Amsterdam John Benjamins
Berman, R.A. & Armon-Lotem, S
1996How grammatical are early verbs?. In Actes du Colloque International sur l’Acquisition de la syntaxe, C. Martinot & N. Torrance (ed.), 17–60. Besançon: l’Université de Franche-Comté.
Berman, R.A. & Dromi, E
1984On marking time without aspect in child language. Papers and Reports on Child Language Development 23: 21–32.
Berman, R.A., Hecht, B.F. & Clark, E.V
1983The acquisition of agent and instrument nouns in Hebrew. Papers and Reports on Child Language Development 21: 16–24.
Berman, R.A. & Katzenberger, I
2004Form and function in introducing narrative and expository texts: A developmental perspective. Discourse Processes 38: 57–94.
Berman, R.A. & Nir, B
2011Manner adverbials in Modern Hebrew: Text-based analyses. Helqat Lashon 43–44: 178–200. (in Hebrew).
Berman, R.A. & Nir-Sagiv, B
2004Linguistic indicators of inter-genre differentiation in later language development. Journal of Child Language 31: 339–380.
Berman, R.A. & Ravid, D
2009Becoming a literate language user: Oral and written text construction across adolescence. In Cambridge Handbook of Literacy, D.R. Olson & N. Torrance (eds), 92–111. Cambridge: CUP.
Berman, R.A. & Sagi, Y
1981Children’s word-formation and lexical innovations. Hebrew Computational Linguistics Bulletin 18: 31–62. (in Hebrew).
Berman, R.A. & Seroussi, B
2011Derived nouns in Hebrew: Structure, meaning, and psycholinguistic perspectives. Italian Journal of Linguistics 23(1): 105–125. Special issue Nouns and Nominalizations Cross-linguistically
.
Berman, R.A. & Slobin, D.I
1994Relating Events in Narrative: A Crosslinguistic Developmental Study. Hillsdale NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Bick, A.S., Goelman, G. & Frost, R
2001Hebrew brain vs. English brain: Language modulates the way it is processed. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 23: 2280–2290.
Bolozky, S
1978Some aspects of Modern Hebrew phonology. In Modern Hebrew Structure, R. Berman, 11–64. Tel-Aviv: University of Tel-Aviv Publishing Projects.
Bolozky, S
1986Semantic productivity and word frequency in Modern Hebrew verb formation. Hebrew Studies 27: 38–46.
Bolozky, S
1999Measuring Productivity in Word Formation: The Case of Israeli Hebrew. Brill: Leiden.
1992On the derivation of Hebrew forms with the -ut suffix. Hebrew Studies 33: 51–69.
Bowerman, M
1977The acquisition of rules governing ‘possible lexical items’: Evidence from spontaneous speech errors. Papers and Reports on Child Language Development 13: 148 156.
Bowerman, M
1982Starting to talk worse: Clues to language acquisition from children’s late errors. In U-Shaped Behavioral Growth, S. Strauss & R.Stavey (eds), 101–146. New York NY: Academic Press.
Bowerman, M
1994From universal to language-specific in early grammatical development. Philosphical Transactionos of the royal Soicety of London B 346: 34–45.
Bowerman, M
1996The origins of children’s spatial semantic categories: Cognitive vs linguistic determinants. In Rethinking Linguistic Relativity, J.J. Gumperz & S.C. Levinson (eds), 145–176. Cambridge: CUP.
Bowerman, M. & Choi, S
2001Shaping meanings for language: Universal and language-specific in the acquisition of spatial semantic categories. In Language Acquisition and Conceptual Development, M. Bowerman & S.C. Levinson (eds), 475–511. Cambridge: CUP.
Clark, E.V
1993The Lexicon in Acquisition. Cambridge: CUP.
Clark, E.V
2004Resultant states in early language acquisition. In Perspectives on Language and Language Development, D. Ravid & H. Bat-Zeev Shyldkrot (eds), 175–190. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Clark, E.V. & Berman, R.A
1984Structure and use in acquisition of word-formation. Language 60: 542–590.
Clark, E.V. & Berman, R.A
1987Types of linguistic knowledge: Interpreting and producing compound nouns. Journal of Child Language 14: 547–568.
Clark, E.V. & Berman, R.A
2004Acquiring morphology. In Morphology Handbook on Inflection and Word Formation, G. Booij, C. Lehmann, & J. Mugdan (eds), 1795–1805. Berlin: de Gruyter.
Clark, E.V. & Clark, H.H
1979When nouns surface as verbs. Language 55: 767–811.
de Jong, N., Baayen, R.H. & Schreuder, R
2000The morphological family size effect and morphology. Language and Cognitive Processes 15: 329–365.
Dromi, E
1987Early Lexical Development. Cambridge: CUP.
Dromi, E. & Berman, R.A
1986Language-general and language-specific in developing syntax. Journal of Child Language 14: 371–387.
Ephratt, M
1997The psycholinguistic status of the root in Modern Hebrew. Folia Linguistica 31: 78–103.
Fisherman, H
1986Foreign Words in Contemporary Hebrew: Structural, Developmental, and Social Perspectives. PhD dissertation, Hebrew University, Jerusalem. (in Hebrew).
Frost, R. & Plaut, D
2001The word-frequency database for printed Hebrew. [URL]
Frost, R
2012Towards a universal model of reading. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 35(5): 263–279.
Frost, R., Deutsch, A. & Forster, K.I
2000Decomposing morphologically complex words in a nonlinear morphology. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition 26: 751–765.
Frost, R., Forster, K.I. & Deutsch, A
1997What can we learn from the morphology of Hebrew? A masked-priming investigation of morphological representation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition 23: 829–856.
Gai, A
1995The category “adjective” in Semitic languages. Journal of Semitic Studies 1: 1–9.
Gesenius
1910Gesenius’ Hebrew Grammar, E. Kautzsch (ed.), revised by A.E. Cowley. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Goldfajn, T
1998Temporality and the Biblical Hebrew Verb. Oxford: Clarendon.
Goldenberg, G
1994Principles of Semitic word-structure. In Semitic and Cushitic Studies, G. Goldenberg & S. Raz (eds), 29–64. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
Gordon, A
1982The development of the participle in Biblical, Mishnaic, and Modern Hebrew. Afroasiatic Linguistics 8: 21–179.
Halle, M
1973Prolegomena to a theory of word formation. Linguistic Inquiry 4: 3–16.
Henik, A., Rubinstein, O. & Anaki, D
(eds)2005Norms for Hebrew words Beer-Sheva: Ben-Gurion University. (in Hebrew).
Junger, J
1987Predicate Formation in the Verbal System of Modern Hebrew. Dordrecht: Foris.
Laks, L
In press. An investigation of verb innovations. In Hebrew: A Living Language, Vol. VI, R. Ben-Shachar, G. Toury & N. Ben-Ari (eds) Haifa Haifa University Press in Hebrew
Lustigman, L
2012. Non-finiteness in early Hebrew verbs. Brill’s Annual of Afroasiatic Languages and Linguistics (BAALL), 4: 213–231.
Lustigman, L
2013Developing structural specification: Productivity in early Hebrew verb usage. First Language 33: 47–67.
Lustigman, L
2016Interfaces between linguistic systems: Evidence from child language. Linguistics 54: 273–303.
MacWhinney, B
1975Rules, rote, and analogy in morphological formations by Hungarian children. Journal of Child Language 2: 65–77.
Nir, R
1993Word Formation in Modern Hebrew. Ramat Aviv: Open University of Israel. [in Hebrew].
Nir, R
1995Word Formation in Modern Hebrew. Tel Aviv: Open University of Israel. [in Hebrew].
Ravid, D
1990Internal structure constraints on new-word formation devices in Modern Hebrew. Folia Linguistica 24: 289–346.
Ravid, D
1995Child Language and Language Change: Psycholinguistic Perspectives. Oxford: OUP.
Ravid, D
2001Learning to spell in Hebrew: Phonological and morphological factors. Reading and Writing 14: 459–485.
2006Word-level morphology: A psycholinguistic perspective on linear formation in Hebrew nominals. Morphology 16: 127–148.
Ravid, D
2012Spelling morphology: the psycholinguistics of Hebrew spelling. New York: Springer.
Ravid, D. & Bar-On, A
2005Manipulating written Hebrew roots across development: The interface of semantic, phonological and orthographic factors. Reading & Writing 18: 231–256.
Ravid, D. & Avidor, A
1998Acquisition of derived nominals in Hebrew: Developmental and linguistic principles. Journal of Child Language 25: 229–266.
Ravid, D. & Levie, R
2010Adjectives in the development of text production: Lexical, morphological and syntactic analyses. First Language 30: 27–55.
Ravid, D. & Malenky, A
2001Awareness of linear and nonlinear morphology in Hebrew: A developmental study. First Language, 21: 25–56.
Ravid, D. & Schiff, R
2006Roots and patterns in Hebrew language development: Evidence from written morphological analogies. Reading and Writing 19: 789–818.
Ravid, D. & Shlesinger, Y
1987On the classification and structure of –i suffixed adjectives. Hebrew Linguistics 25: 59–70. (in Hebrew).
Ravid, D. & Zilberbuch, S
2003Morpho-syntactic constructs in the development of spoken and written Hebrew text production. Journal of Child Language 30: 395–418.
Romberg, A.R. & Saffran, J.R
2010Statistical learning and language acquisition. Cognitive Science 1: 906–914.
Schwarzwald, O.R
1976Comments on root-pattern relations in the Hebrew lexicon. Hebrew Computational Linguistics 9: 47–59. (in Hebrew).
Schwarzwald, O.R
1981Grammar and Reality in the Hebrew Verb. Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press. (in Hebrew)
Schwarzwald, O.R
1996Syllable structure, alternations and verb complexity: Modern Hebrew verb patterns revisited. Israel Oriental Studies 16: 95–112.
Schwarzwald, O.R
1998Word foreignness in Modern Hebrew. Hebrew Studies 38:115–142.
Schwarzwald, O.R
2001aModern Hebrew [Languages of the World/Materials 127]. Munich: Lincom.
Schwarzwald, O.R
2001bDerivation and innovation in Hebrew: Quantitative aspects. In Studies in Hebrew and Language Teaching in Honor of Ben Zion Fischler, O.R. Schwarzwald & R. Nir (eds), 265–275. Jerusalem: Even Yehuda. (in Hebrew).
Schwarzwald, O.R
2002Studies in Hebrew Morphology, Vols. I–IV. Ramat Aviv: Open University. (in Hebrew).
2009Three related analyses in Modern Hebrew morphology. In Egyptian, Semitic and General Grammar: Studies in Memory of Haim J. Polotsky, G. Goldenberg & A. Shisha-Halevy (eds), 277‑301. Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities.
Segall, O., Nir-Sagiv, B., Kishon-Rabin, L. & Ravid. D
2008Prosodic patterns in Hebrew child directed speech. Journal of Child Language 35: 1–28.
Seroussi, B
2004Hebrew derived nouns in context: A developmental perspective. Folia Phoniatricaet Logopaedica 56. 273–290.
Seroussi, B
2011The Morphology-Semantics Interface in the Mental Lexicon: The Case of Hebrew. PhD dissertation, Tel Aviv University.
1990The development from child speaker to native speaker. In Cultural Psychology: Essays on Comparative Human Development, J.W. Stigler, R.A. Shweder & G. Herdt (eds), 233–256. Cambridge: CUP.
Slobin, D.I
1996From “thought and language” to “thinking for speaking”. In Rethinking Linguistic Relativity, J.J. Gumperz & S.C. Levinson (eds), 70–96. Cambridge: CUP.
Slobin, D.I
1997The origins of grammaticizable notions: Beyond the individual mind. In Crosslinguistic Study of Language Acquisition 5, D.I. Slobin (ed.), 265–324. Mahwah NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Slobin, D.I
2001Form-function relations: How do children find out what they are? In Language Acquisition and Conceptual Development, M. Bowerman & S.C. Levinson (eds), 406–449. Cambridge: CUP.
Slobin, D.I
2004The many ways to search for a frog: Linguistic typology and the expression of motion events. In Relating Events in Narrative: Typological and Contextual Perspectives, S. Strömqvist & L. Verhoeven (eds), 210–257. Mahwah NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Slobin, D.I
2008The child learns to think for speaking: Puzzles of crosslinguistic diversity in form-meaning mappings. Studies in Language Sciences 7: 3–22.
Tolchinsky, L. & Teberosky, A
1998The development of word segmentation and writing in two scripts. Cognitive Development 13: 1–21.
Ussishkin, A
1999The inadequacy of the consonantal root: Modern Hebrew denominal verbs and output-output correspondences. Phonology 16: 401–442.
Velan, H., Frost, R., Deutsch, A. & Plaut, D
2005The processing of root morphemes in Hebrew: Contrasting localist and distributed accounts. Language and Cognitive Processes 20: 169–206.
Vihman, M. & Croft, W
2007Phonological development: Toward a ‘‘radical’’ templatic phonology. Linguistics 45(4): 683–725.
Waltke, B.K. & O’Connor, M
1990An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax. Winona Lake IN: Eisenbrauns.
Yannai, Y
1974Quadriconsonantal verbs in the Hebrew language. Leshoneu 35: 119–194. (in Hebrew).
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 21 april 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.