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Children’s Command of Plural Marking on Hebrew Nouns: Evidence from Russian-Hebrew Bilingual Acquisition

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Developing Language and Literacy

Part of the book series: Literacy Studies ((LITS,volume 23))

Abstract

The production of noun plurals in Hebrew requires the application of both morpho-lexical and morpho-phonological knowledge. Bilingual children bring in a knowledge of this system in another language offering an additional window into this linguistic process. This chapter presents the acquisition process of the Hebrew plural system by Russian-Hebrew bilinguals, bringing data from 91 bilinguals and 81 monolinguals, aged 4–8, using a Hebrew pluralization task. Bilingual children demonstrate an early and rapid acquisition of the morphological rules of pluralization alongside a restricted lexical and morpho-phonological knowledge. Despite a monolingual advantage, the acquisition process follows the same fixed order in both populations. The rapid acquisition of the Hebrew pluralization rules by Russian-Hebrew bilinguals is explained by the high regularity and transparency of the regular Hebrew system, and the similarity in gender marking in Russian and Hebrew. The advantage of monolingual children over bilinguals is mainly lexical, being an expression of the bilinguals’ lack of familiarity with different lexical forms due to insufficient experience. These central factors are discussed in light of the fundamental research on plural morphology acquisition among Hebrew monolingual children (Ravid D, Schiff R. Linguistics, 47(1): 45–63, 2009).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    There are five main types of stem changes: vowel reduction or deletion; vowel change; insertion or deletion of t; stop/spirant alternation; full stem change (Ravid, 1995; Ravid & Schiff, 2009). The first three change types were classified under the category of subtle stem change, and the remaining types under the category of significant stem change.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Communication Disorders, Ariel University, Ariel, Israel

    Julia Reznick

  2. Department of English Literature and Linguistics and the Gonda Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel

    Sharon Armon-Lotem

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  1. Julia Reznick
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  2. Sharon Armon-Lotem
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Correspondence to Sharon Armon-Lotem .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Communication Disorders, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel

    Ronit Levie

  2. Department of Communication Disorders, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel

    Amalia Bar-On

  3. Department of Communication Disorders, Hadassah Academic College, Jerusalem, Israel

    Orit Ashkenazi

  4. Department of Communication Disorders, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel

    Elitzur Dattner

  5. School of Education, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel

    Gilad Brandes

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Reznick, J., Armon-Lotem, S. (2022). Children’s Command of Plural Marking on Hebrew Nouns: Evidence from Russian-Hebrew Bilingual Acquisition. In: Levie, R., Bar-On, A., Ashkenazi, O., Dattner, E., Brandes, G. (eds) Developing Language and Literacy. Literacy Studies, vol 23. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99891-2_23

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