The Acquisition of Hebrew Phonology and Morphology

261 Pages·2014·3.36 MB·English

by  Outi Bat-El

Te Acquisition of Hebrew Phonology and Morphology

Te Acquisition of Hebrew
Phonology and Morphology
Editedby
OutiBat-El
LEIDEN•BOSTON
2015
OriginallypublishedasVolume4(2012)ofBrill’sAnnualofAfoasiaticLanguagesandLinguistics
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Contents
Preface 3
OutiBat-El
VowelHarmonyandUniversalityinHebrewAcquisition 5
Evan-GaryCohen
ChildConsonantHarmony:IdentificationandProperties 28
ChenGafni
TeDevelopmentofProsodicStructure:EvidencefromTypical
LongitudinalData 53
AvivitBen-David
MinimizingFaithfulnessViolationintheAcquisitionofHebrew
Onset 78
NoaKarni
TeRoleofProminenceandPositionintheAcquisitionofCodasinthe
SpeechofHearing-impairedChildren 102
LimorAdi-Bensaid
TargetSelectioninErrorSelectiveLearning 118
MichaelBecker
TeCorrelationbetweenPhonologicalSpellingErrorsandLanguage
DevelopmentinHebrew-SpeakingChildren 138
GilaTubul-Lavy
FillerSyllablesintheAcquisitionofHebrew:AProsodicAccount 160
AviadAlbertandHadassZaidenberg
PhonologicalConstraintsonMorphologicalDevelopment:
TeAcquisitionofHebrewVerbInflectionalSuffixes 187
OutiBat-El
2
Non-FinitenessinEarlyHebrewVerbs 211
LyleLustigman
TeAssignmentofGenderinL2Hebrew:TeRoleoftheL1Gender
System 230
SharonArmon-LotemandOritAmiram
Index 251
Preface
ManyWugtestshavebeenconductedsince1958,whenJeanBerkopublished
herarticleTechild’slearningofEnglishmorphology.Manyuniversalhierarchies
havebeenstudiedsince1941,whenRomanJakobsonpublished(inGerman)
hisbookChildlanguage,aphasiaandphonologicaluniversals.Tefieldoftheo-
reticallinguisticshasmadesomeprogresssincethenandsohasthestudyofthe
acquisitionofphonologyandmorphology.Tegrowingbodyofresearchinthis
domainallowsustoimproveourunderstandingofthemechanismsinvolvedin
languageacquisition,raisenewquestionsandreconsideroldones.
Tearticlesinthisvolumecontributetothejointenterprisebetweentheoret-
icallinguisticsandresearchinthedevelopmentofphonologyandmorphology.
Whenitcomestotheacquisitionofphonology,Hebrewisanewmemberinthe
limited pool of studied languages (English, Dutch, German, French, Spanish,
Portuguese,Japanese,Greek,andjustafewmore).Tepresentvolumeprovides
freshdata,allowingustoevaluateoldissuesandaddressnewones.
Te two papers on harmony highlight these two facets of research. Vowel
harmony in the acquisition of languages with no vowel harmony has hardly
been discussed in the literature, and some even argue that it does not exist.
Cohen’spapersuggestsotherwise.Consonantharmony,ontheotherhand,isone
oftheoldestandmostpopularissuesintheliteratureoflanguageacquisition,
but nevertheless there is disagreement with regard to the factors determining
directionality.Gafni’spaperaddsfreshdataandintriguinggeneralizationstothis
issue.
Goinguptotheprosodicstructure,Ben-Davidfollowsthedevelopmentof
theprosodicwordandthesyllablesstep-by-step,withreferencetothenumberof
syllablesinthewordandthesub-syllabicunits(onset,nucleus,coda).Tedevel-
opmentofthesub-syllabicunitsisfurtherstudiedinthethreeensuingpapers.
Karniconcentratesonwordinitialsimpleandcomplexonsets,accountingfor
the intriguing observation that children produce onsetless syllables for targets
withsimpleonsetsbutnotfortargetswithcomplexonsets.Adi-Bensaidstud-
iesthedevelopmentoffinalandmedialcodasinthespeechofhearingimpaired
children, with reference to stress and position in the word. From a somewhat
differentperspective,Beckeraddressestheissueofselectivityintheacquisition
ofonsetsandcodas,suggestingamethodfordiagnosingandquantifyingchil-
dren’savoidanceofattemptingwordsthatdonotconformtotheirgrammar.
4 outibat-el
Teinterfaceofphonologicalknowledgewithwritingproficiencyisdiscussed
inTubul-Lavy’spaperonphonologicalspellingerrors.Childrenwithpastand
more so present phonological impairment make spelling errors identical to
speecherrorsinearlyacquisitionandimpairedspeech(e.g.consonantharmony,
codadeletion).
Tenexttwopapersbridgebetweenphonologyandmorphology.Albertand
Zaidenberg provide a prosodic account of filler syllables, which start as pure
prosodicextensionswithinthephonologicalwordandgraduallydevelopinto
prosodic extensions corresponding to morpho-syntactic particles. Phonology
doesnotonlyleadtomorpho-syntaxbutalsoremainsvigilantduringtheacquisi-
tionofmorpho-syntacticunits.TisisshowninBat-El’spaper,whichrevealsthe
roleofthedevelopmentofwordfinalcodasintheacquisitionofverbinflectional
suffixes.
Telasttwopapersaddressmorphologybyitself.Lustigmanshowshowchil-
dren’smorphologicalspecificationinearlynon-finiteverbformsgraduallydevel-
ops from bare stems to full infinitives and present tense (participial) forms.
Armon-LotemandAmiramstudytheinterferenceofL1systemsintheacqui-
sitionofL2gender,whereL1isEnglishandRussianandL2isHebrew.
Tedatapresentedinthearticlesaredrawnfromtypicalandatypicaldevel-
oping children, using longitudinal and cross-sectional experimental methods.
Seven out of the eleven papers in this volume are the fruit of the Child Lan-
guageProject (partiallysupported byISFgrant#554/04)of GalitAdamand
OutiBat-ElfromtheDepartmentofLinguisticsatTel-AvivUniversity.
VowelHarmonyandUniversality
inHebrewAcquisition
Evan-GaryCohen
DepartmentofLinguistics,Tel-AvivUniversity,Israel
[email protected]
Abstract
Teroleofuniversalsversuslanguagespecificgrammarsduringacquisitionisatthefocal
pointofthisstudy.Acorpus-basedinvestigationoftwochildren’sharmonypatternsduring
acquisition is carried out. It is shown that although Hebrew does not have a productive
harmony grammar, there is nevertheless a considerable amount of vowel harmony in the
children’sproductions,suggestingspeakershaveauniversalpredispositionforsuchpatterns.
Techildrenstartoutatroughlythesamepoint,theultimategoalbeingdeterminedbythe
ambientlanguage.Tedevelopmentalpaths,however,areindividual.Onechildshowsapref-
erenceforsegmentalconsiderationsindeterminingharmonypatterns,whiletheothershowsa
preferenceforprosodicconsiderations.Bothchildren,however,graduallymodifytheirgram-
mars,presentedhereinwithinanOptimalityTeoreticframework,ultimatelyreachingthe
samegoal,anadultgrammarwithoutactivevowelharmony.
Keywords
vowelharmony;variation;languageacquisition;universalconstraints;Hebrew
1.Introduction
Tereismuchdiscussionintheliteratureontheacquisitionofvowelharmony
inlanguageswithproductiveharmonysystems(Leiwoetal.2006forFinnish,
Altan2007forTurkish,amongothers).Tereis,however,littlediscussionon
vowelharmonyinlanguageswithoutanactiveharmonygrammar.InBen-David’s
(2001:148)studyoftheacquisitionofHebrew,finalsyllabledoubling,resulting
inidenticalsyllabicnucleiinthefinalandpenultimatesyllables,ismentioned
as the first stage of disyllabic productions (see also Ben-David this volume).
Tatis,whenadditionalsyllablesareadded,thevowelisfirstcopied(e.g.ʿbosem
→[ʿetem]‘Bosem(name)’).Tisdoublingisunaffectedbyvowelquality(Ben-
David2001:149)orstress(Ben-David2001:151),andisnotdirectlyattributed
tovowelharmony,butrathertoageneralpreferenceforreduplicatedformsand
faithfulness to word-final syllables (Ben-David 2001:150). Mintz and Walker
(2006)mentionarolethatvowelharmonypossiblyplaysinthesegmentation
©KoninklijkeBrillNV,Leiden,2012 DOI:10.1163/9789004280151_003