Language Change in Child and Adult Hebrew: A Psycholinguistic Perspective (Oxford Studies in Sociolinguistics)

The study of language acquisition has taken on new meaning in the last decade. Now seen as part of the study of other forms of language variation across time and space, such as dialects and sociolects, and the study of pidgins and Creoles, it can help to provide a new understanding of how language evolves and what directs its development. Dorit Ravid here provides a study of contemporary speakers of Hebrew, focusing in particular on inflectional morphology. She traces language development from childhood to adulthood in Hebrew speakers, and explores strategies of language acquisition and language processing leading to variation in the spoken Hebrew of speakers of different ages and socioeconomic backgrounds. 9780195090369 Contents 8 Technical Notes 12 1. Background 16 1.1. Introduction 16 Sources of Variation in Contemporary Hebrew 16 1.2. Language Variation and Modern Hebrew 29 Classification of Varieties of Spoken Hebrew Usage 29 Perspectives on Language Variation 33 2. The Study 40 2.1. The Experiment 40 Research Instruments 40 The Language Domains 44 Research Categories 50 Procedures 64 Test-Related Hypotheses 66 Statistical Methods 67 2.2. Results 67 The Current Status of Study Domains 70 Summary of Findings 75 3. Analysis of Results: The Effects of Literacy and Maturation 77 3.1. Appropriate Responses: The Factor of Maturation 78 3.2. Normative Responses: The Factor of Literacy 80 3.3. Interaction between Age and SES: The Locus of Language Change 83 Employing Tactical Measures 84 Language Strategies in Children and Low-SES Adults 89 4. Structural Opacity 91 4.1. Opacity in Language Change 91 4.2. Domains of Instability 94 Stop/Spirant Alternation 94 e/a Alternation in Hif'il 97 Weak Final Syllable 98 Case-Marked Pronouns 99 Junction 101 5. Principles and Strategies in Language Acquisition and in Language Processing 103 5.1. Rote 105 Transitivity 106 Primary and Secondary Rote 109 5.2. Formal Simplicity 112 FS in Backformation 115 5.3. Formal Consistency 118 Consistency in Final Weak Syllables 118 Consistency in Double-a Stems 120 Reconstructing Missing Root Radicals 121 Consistency in Choosing y-Final Stem Vowels 121 Paradigm Leveling in Future-Tense Verbs 122 5.4. Semantic Transparency 124 Spirantization and Semantic Transparency 125 Semantic Transparency and Tense-Form Splitting 126 Overmarking Semantic Content 129 Semantic Coherence 129 5.5. Saliency 130 Saliency in the Segolates 131 Saliency in Present-Tense Marking 132 Salient t 132 Salient -it 134 Seeking Analytic Structures 135 5.6. Typological Consistency: Attending to Canonical Sentence Structure 137 SVC Order 137 P-First Order 138 Consequences 138 5.7. Summary 141 6. Linguistic Variation and Cost 143 6.1. Linguistic Instability: Some Answers 144 Why Does Language Change? 144 Why Do Specific Language Domains Undergo Change? 145 6.2. Transient Deviations 149 Analytic to Synthetic 149 Redundant Tense-Marking 151 The Double-a Strategy 153 -it Structures 154 Defective Roots 154 Pronominal Suffixes 155 6.3. Nonstandard Forms: Literacy-Related Phenomena 157 Weak Final Syllable Stems 160 The New Status of Stop/Spirant Alternation 165 Stem Changes 170 Future Tense Person Marking 172 Regularizing CaCeC Verbs 172 Lexical Exceptions 174 2nd Person Case-Marked Pronouns 174 6.4. Areas of Language Change 176 Vowel Alternation in Hif'il 176 Subject-Verb Concord 178 Regularizations 179 tistakel belal 'look' 181 7. Language Variation and Language Change: Some More Answers 182 Who Initiates (and Perpetuates) Language Change? 182 Why Indeed Are Naive Speakers More Apt to Produce Deviations Than Others? 183 Why Are Certain Changes "Successful" Whereas Others Are Blocked? 184 Why Are Some Changes Restricted to Certain Segments of the Speech Community, Especially Less Educated Speakers and Children, While Others Spread Quickly Throughout the Whole Population? 184 What Is an "Error"? 185 Language, Literacy, Register 186 Notes 188 References 194 Appendices 218 Subject Index 236 A 236 B 236 C 236 D 236 E 237 F 237 G 237 H 237 I 237 J 237 K 237 L 237 M 238 N 238 O 238 P 238 R 239 S 239 T 240 U 240 V 240 W 240 Author Index 242 A 242 B 242 C 243 D 243 E 243 F 243 G 243 H 244 I 244 J 244 K 244 L 244 M 244 N 245 O 245 P 245 R 245 S 245 T 245 V 246 W 246 Y 246 Z 246 # Publisher: Oxford University Press,USA # Number Of Pages: 256 # Publication Date: 1995-08-17 # ISBN-10 / ASIN: 0195090365 Tracing the language development in Hebrew-speakers from childhood to adulthood, this study focuses on inflectional morphology (the grammatical form of words). It explores strategies of language acquisition in speakers of different ages and socioeconomic backgrounds.