Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T03:48:10.550Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Input–output relations in Hebrew verb acquisition at the morpho-lexical interface

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2019

Orit ASHKENAZI ,
Steven GILLIS  and
Dorit RAVID
Orit ASHKENAZI*
Affiliation:
Tel Aviv University, Israel
Steven GILLIS
Affiliation:
Antwerp University, Belgium
Dorit RAVID
Affiliation:
Tel Aviv University, Israel
*
*Corresponding author: Tel Aviv University – School of Education, Tel Aviv, Israel. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This study examined early Hebrew verb acquisition, highlighting CDS–CS relations across inflectional and derivational verb learning. It was carried out on a corpus of longitudinal dense dyadic interactions of two Hebrew-speaking toddlers aged 1;8–2;2 and their parents. Findings revealed correlated patterns within and between CDS and CS corpora in terms of verbs, structural root categories, and their components (roots, binyan conjugations, and derivational verb families), and clear relations between lexical-derivational development and inflectional growth in input–output relations, measured by MSP. It also showed that both corpora had few, yet highly semantically coherent, derivational families. Lexical learning in Hebrew was shown to be morphologically oriented, with both inflectional and derivational learning supporting and being supported by the development of the verb lexicon. These findings support findings in the general literature regarding the close relationship between parental input and child speech, and the affinity between lexical and grammatical growth.

Keywords

verb acquisitionmorphologylexiconCDS–CS relationsHebrew
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 47 , Issue 3 , May 2020 , pp. 509 - 532
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

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.)

References

Abbott-Smith, K., & Tomasello, M. (2006). Exemplar-learning and schematization in a usage-based account of syntactic acquisition. Linguistic Review, 23, 275–90.Google Scholar
Ackerman, F., & Malouf, R. (2013). Morphological organization: the low conditional entropy conjecture. Language, 89, 429–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aikhenvald, A. Y. (2010). Imperatives and commands. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Albert, A., MacWhinney, B., Nir, B., & Wintner, S. (2013). The Hebrew CHILDES Corpus: transcription and morphological analysis. Language Resources and Evaluation, 47, 973–1005.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ambridge, B., Pine, J. M., Rowland, C. F., & Young, C. R. (2008). The effect of verb semantic class and verb frequency (entrenchment) on children's and adults’ graded judgements of argument-structure overgeneralisation errors. Cognition, 106, 87–129.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arnon, I., & Clark, E. V. (2011). Children's word production is facilitated in familiar sentence-frames. Language Learning and Development, 7, 107–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ashkenazi, O. (2015). Input–output relations in the early acquisition of the Hebrew verb (Doctoral dissertation). Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv.Google Scholar
Ashkenazi, O., Ravid, D., & Gillis, S. (2016). Breaking into the Hebrew verb system: a learning problem. First Language, 36, 505–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bassano, D. (2000). Early development of nouns and verbs in French: exploring the interface between lexicon and grammar. Journal of Child Language, 27, 521–59.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bassano, D., Laaha, S., Maillochon, I., & Dressler, W. U. (2004). Early acquisition of verb grammar and lexical development: evidence from periphrastic constructions in French and Austrian German. First Language, 24, 33–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beckner, C., Blythe, R., Bybee, J., Christiansen, M. H., Croft, W., Ellis, N. C., … Schoenemann, T. (2009). Language is a complex adaptive system: position paper. Language Learning, 59, 1–26.Google Scholar
Behrens, H. (2006). The input output relationship in first language acquisition. Language and Cognitive Processes, 21, 2–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berman, R. A. (1978). Modern Hebrew structure. Tel Aviv: University Publishing Projects.Google Scholar
Berman, R. A. (1985a). Acquisition of Hebrew. In Slobin, D. I. (Ed.), The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition (pp. 255–371). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Berman, R. A. (1985b). Acquisition of tense-aspect by Hebrew-speaking children. Final report, Bianual Science Foundation (BSF) US-Israel.Google Scholar
Berman, R. A. (1986). A step by step model of language learning. In Levin, I. (Ed.), Stage and structure: re-opening the debate (pp. 191–219). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.Google Scholar
Berman, R. A. (1993a). Marking of verb transitivity by Hebrew speaking children. Journal of Child Language, 20, 641–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berman, R. A. (1993b). Developmental perspectives on transitivity: a confluence of clues. In Levi, Y. (Ed.), Other children, other languages: issues in the theory of language acquisition (pp. 189–240). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Berman, R. A. (2003). Children's lexical innovations: developmental perspectives on Hebrew verb-structure. In Shimron, J. (Ed.), Language processing and language acquisition in a root-based morphology (pp. 243–91). Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Berman, R. A. (2016). Typology, acquisition, and development: the view from Israeli Hebrew. In Berman, R. A. (Ed.), Acquisition and development of Hebrew: infancy to adolescence (pp. 1–38). Amsterdam: Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berman, R. A., & Armon Lotem, S. (1996). How grammatical are early verbs? Annales Littéraires de l'Université de Franche-Comté: Actes du Colloque International sur l'Acquisition de la Syntaxe, 17–60.Google Scholar
Bittner, D., Dressler, W. U., & Kilani-Schoch, M. (Eds.) (2003). Development of verb inflection in first language acquisition – a cross linguistic perspective. Berlin: de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bolozky, S. (1999). Measuring productivity in word formation. Leiden: Brill.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bolozky, S. (2007). Israeli Hebrew morphology. In Kaye, A. S. (Ed.), Morphologies of Asia and Africa (including the Caucasus) (pp. 283–308). Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns.Google Scholar
Borovsky, A., Ellis, E. M., Evans, J. L., & Elman, J. L. (2016). Semantic structure in vocabulary knowledge interacts with lexical and sentence processing in infancy. Child Development, 87, 1893–908.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Borovsky, A., Elman, J., & Fernald, A. (2012). Knowing a lot for one's age: vocabulary skill and not age is associated with anticipatory incremental sentence interpretation in children and adults. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 112, 417–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bybee, J. (1998). A functionalist approach to grammar and its evolution. Evolution of Communication, 2, 249–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caselli, C., Casadio, P., & Bates, E. (1999). A comparison of the transition from first words to grammar in English and Italian. Journal of Child Language, 26, 69–111.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Clark, E. V. (2004). How language acquisition builds on cognitive development. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8, 472–78.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Clark, E. V. (2017). Conversational partners and common ground: variation contributes to language acquisition. In Hickmann, M., Veneziano, E., & Jisa, H. (Eds.), Sources of variation in first language acquisition: languages, contexts, learners (pp. 163–82). Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Clark, E. V., & de Marneffe, M. C. (2012). Constructing verb paradigms in French: adult construals and emerging grammatical constructs. Morphology, 22, 89–120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dattner, E. (2015). Mapping Hebrew dative constructions. Unpublished Doctoral dissertation: Tel Aviv University.Google Scholar
Devescovi, A., Caselli, M. C., Marchione, D., Pasqualetti, P., Reilly, J., & Bates, E. (2005). A cross linguistic study of the relationship between grammar and lexical development. Journal of Child Language, 32, 759–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dromi, E., & Berman, R. A. (1986). Language-specific and language-general in developing syntax. Journal of Child Language, 13, 371–87.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Egoz-Liebstein, T. (2010). Mental verbs in Hebrew preschool peer talk. (Unpublished MA thesis). Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv.Google Scholar
Ellis, E. M. (2008). Defining and investigating monolingualism. In Ellis, E. M. (Ed.), Monolingualism (pp. 311–30). London: Equinox.Google Scholar
Ellis, N., O'Donnell, M., & Römer, U. (2015). Usage-based language learning. In MacWhinney, B. & O'Grady, W. (Eds.), The handbook of language emergence (pp. 163–80). London: Wiley.Google Scholar
Elman, J. (2001). Connectionism and language acquisition. In Tomasello, M. & Bates, E. (Eds.), Essential readings in language acquisition (pp. 295–306). Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Elman, J. (2003). Development: it's about time. Developmental Science, 6, 430–3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frost, R. (2015). Cross-linguistic perspectives on letter-order processing: empirical findings and theoretical considerations. In Treiman, R. & Pollatsek, A. (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of reading (pp. 88–98). London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Goldberg, A. (2006). Constructions at work: the nature of generalization in language. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Golinkoff, R. M., & Hirsh-Pasek, K. (2006). Action meets word: how children learn verbs. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Haspelmath, M., & Sims, A. D. (2010). Understanding morphology (2nd ed.). London: Hodder Education.Google Scholar
Hoff, E. (2010). Context effects on young children's language use: the influence of conversational setting and partner. First Language, 30, 461–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoff-Ginsberg, E. (1985). Some contributions of mothers’ speech to their children's syntactic growth. Journal of Child Language, 12, 367–85.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kibrik, A. A. (2012). Toward a typology of verbal lexical systems: a case study in Northern Athabaskan. Linguistics, 50, 495–532.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ko, E. S. (2012). Nonlinear development of speaking rate in child directed speech. Lingua, 122, 841–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Koptjevskaja-Tamm, M. (2012). New directions in lexical typology. Linguistics, 50, 373–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lieven, E. (2008). Learning the English auxiliary: a usage based approach. In Behrens, H. (Ed.), Corpora in language acquisition research – history, methods, perspectives (pp. 61–98). Amsterdam: Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lieven, E. (2010). Input and first language acquisition: evaluating the role of frequency. Lingua, 120, 2546–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lieven, E., Behrens, H., Speares, J., & Tomasello, M. (2003). Early syntactic creativity: a usage-based approach. Journal of Child Language, 30, 333–70.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Luce, M. R., & Callanan, M. A. (2010). Parents’ object labeling: Possible links to conventionality of word meaning? First Language, 30, 270–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lustigman, L. (2013). Developing structural specification: productivity in early Hebrew verb usage. First Language, 33, 47–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacWhinney, B. (2000). The CHILDES project: tools for analyzing talk. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Maital, S., Dromi, E., Sagi, A., & Bornstein, M. H. (2000). The Hebrew Communicative Development Inventory: language specific properties and cross-linguistic generalizations. Journal of Child Language, 27, 43–67.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Maslen, R., Theakston, A., Lieven, E., & Tomasello, M. (2004). A dense corpus study of past tense and plural overregularization in English. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 47, 1319–33.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Matthews, D., Lieven, E., Theakston, A., & Tomasello, M. (2005). The role of frequency in the acquisition of English word order. Cognitive Development, 20, 121–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ninio, A. (2008). Language and the learning curve: a new theory of syntactic development. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Orvig, S., Marcos, H., Morgenstern, A., Hassan, R., Leber-Marin, J., & Parès, J. (2010). Dialogical factors in toddlers’ use of clitic pronouns. First Language, 30, 375–402.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ravid, D. (1995). Language change in child and adult Hebrew: a psycholinguistic perspective. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ravid, D. (2003). A developmental perspective on root perception in Hebrew and Palestinian Arabic. In Shimron, J. (Ed.), Language processing and acquisition of Semitic, root-based morphology (pp. 293–320). Amsterdam: Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ravid, D. (2012). Spelling morphology: the psycholinguistics of Hebrew spelling. New York: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ravid, D., Ashkenazi, O., Levie, R., Ben Zadok, G., Grunwald, T., Bratslavsky, R., & Gillis, S. (2016). Foundations of the root category: analyses of linguistic input to Hebrew-speaking children. In Berman, R. A. (Ed.), Acquisition and development of Hebrew: from infancy to adolescence (pp. 95–134). Amsterdam: Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ravid, D., & Vered, L. (2017). Hebrew passive morphology in later language development: the interface of verb temporality and register. Journal of Child Language, 44, 1309–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saffran, J. R. (2003). Statistical language learning: mechanisms and constraints. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 12, 110–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schachter, P. (1985). Parts of speech systems. In Shopen, T. (Ed.), Language typology and syntactic description: clause structure (pp. 3–61). Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Schiff, R., & Ravid, D. (2013). Morphological processing in Hebrew-speaking reading-disabled students. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 46, 220–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schwarzwald, O. R. (1998). Inflection and derivation in Hebrew linear word formation. Folia Linguistica, 32, 265–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schwarzwald, O. R. (2002). Modern Hebrew morphology. Tel Aviv: Open University.Google Scholar
Sereno, J., & Jongman, A. (1997). Processing of English inflectional morphology. Memory & Cognition, 25, 425–37.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Slobin, D. I. (2001). Form function relations: How do children find out what they are? In Bowerman, M. & Levinson, S. (Eds.), Language acquisition and conceptual development (pp. 406–49). Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Snow, C. (1995). Issues in the study of input: finetuning, universality, individual and developmental differences, and necessary causes. In Fletcher, P. & MacWhinney, B. (Eds.), The handbook of child language (pp. 180–93). Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Stephany, U. (1983). The development of modality in language acquisition. Working Paper. Linguistic Institute, Köln University, Köln. Online <https://core.ac.uk/display/14524445>.Google Scholar
Talmy, L. (2007). Lexical typologies. In Shopen, T. (Ed.), Language typology and syntactic description, Vol. III: grammatical categories and the lexicon (pp. 66–168). Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Timberlake, A. (2007). Aspect, tense, mood. In Shopen, T. (Ed.), Language typology and syntactic description, Vol. III: grammatical categories and the lexicon (pp. 280–333). Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tomasello, M. (2003). Constructing a language: a usage-based theory of language acquisition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Tomasello, M. (2004). Learning through others. Dedalus, 133, 51–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tomasello, M. (2006). Acquiring linguistic constructions. In Siegler, R. & Kuhn, D. (Eds.), Handbook of child psychology (pp. 256–93). New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Tomasello, M. (2009). The usage-based theory of language acquisition. In Bavin, E. (Ed.), The Cambridge handbook of child language (pp. 69–88). Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Velan, H., Frost, R., Deutsch, A., & Plaut, D. (2005). The processing of root morphemes in Hebrew: contrasting localist and distributed accounts. Language and Cognitive Processes, 20, 169–206.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Veneziano, E., & Parisse, C. (2010). The early acquisition of verbs in French: assessing the role of conversation and of child directed speech. First Language, 30, 287–311.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weist, R. (1986). Tense and aspect. In Fletcher, P. & Garman, M. (Eds.), Language acquisition (2nd ed., pp. 356–74). Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Xanthos, A., & Gillis, S. (2010). Quantifying the development of inflectional diversity. First Language, 30, 175–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Xanthos, A., Laaha, S., Gillis, S., Stephany, U., Aksu-Koc, A., Christofidou, A., … Dressler, W. U. (2011). On the role of morphological richness in the early development of noun and verb inflection. First Language, 31(4), 461–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar