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Part of
Developmental Perspectives in Written Language and Literacy: In honor of Ludo Verhoeven
Edited by Eliane Segers and Paul van den Broek
[Not in series 206] 2017
► pp. 119–135

The development of Hebrew conjunct constructions in narration

| Tel Aviv University
| Tel Aviv University

The current chapter describes a psycholinguistic study of the development of conjunct constructions, a multi-functional coordinated syntactic structure that lies at the heart of complex Hebrew syntax, which can express variegated content in syntactically complex structures. Conjunct constructions in narratives written by 150 Hebrew-speaking children, adolescents and adults were analyzed in terms of syntactic structure and function, lexical semantics, and discourse functions. Results indicate that this construction emerges as a simplex event-telling form, gaining in complexity and fulfilling more functions with age and schooling level, with a concomitant increase in the interface with other forms of complex syntax. The chapter concludes with an illustration of these developments in two narratives and a discussion of the role of language-specific constructions in language acquisition.

Keywords: syntactic acquisition, coordination, complex syntax, discourse functions, lexical development, narrative development, later language development, Hebrew
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Syntactic development
    • 1.2Complex syntactic constructions
    • 1.3Conjunct constructions
    • 1.4The current study
  • 2.Method
    • 2.1Quantitative and qualitative analyses
    • 2.2Levels on the scale
  • 3.Results
    • 3.1Text size
    • 3.2C-constructions
  • 4.Discussion
  • References
Published online: 21 December 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/z.206.08rav
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