Acquisition of morphological forms is an important building block for acquiring syntax and meaning. Previous studies showed that infants acquire functional morphemes in the early stages of development, even at preverbal stages. Furthermore, evidence suggests that infants’ processing of morphology goes beyond rote learning and supports the idea that infants can process morphological forms analytically and form some generalizations, for example, segmenting words with the same morpheme or discriminating words based on affixes. Hebrew morphology has seldom been studied experimentally, especially in young and preverbal infants. Yet Hebrew and other Semitic languages are unique, as they are characterized by templatic morphology, a rare feature among the world’s languages. In order to use verbs across the different tenses in Hebrew, lexical roots consisting of two or three consonants must be inserted into a morphological vocalic template, together with affixation. For example, root s-x-q, meaning “play” in Piel pattern, in past first-person singular, added suffix -ti, sixaqti, in present mesaxeq and in future added prefex e-, esaxeq. Templatic morphology is thus not linear, unlike the morphology of the more commonly studied Indo-European languages. Thus, acquiring verbal morphology poses an interesting challenge for young infants. In line with previous evidence on babies' abilities to discriminate morphology, the present thesis is an online Looking Time Preference experiment, aiming to see whether infants between the ages of 8-24 show a preference for a group of verbs if they share morphological elements, the Hebrew past tense morphology, compared to a group of mixed verbs from all tenses in Hebrew. Thirty-three infants participated in the study. Results suggest that the infants could not discriminate tense in this particular task. The methodological and theoretical reasons for this finding are discussed.

Hebrew Verb Morphology in Early Language Development: Investigating Infants’ Preference to Morphological Forms

LANDA, TAL
2023/2024

Abstract

Acquisition of morphological forms is an important building block for acquiring syntax and meaning. Previous studies showed that infants acquire functional morphemes in the early stages of development, even at preverbal stages. Furthermore, evidence suggests that infants’ processing of morphology goes beyond rote learning and supports the idea that infants can process morphological forms analytically and form some generalizations, for example, segmenting words with the same morpheme or discriminating words based on affixes. Hebrew morphology has seldom been studied experimentally, especially in young and preverbal infants. Yet Hebrew and other Semitic languages are unique, as they are characterized by templatic morphology, a rare feature among the world’s languages. In order to use verbs across the different tenses in Hebrew, lexical roots consisting of two or three consonants must be inserted into a morphological vocalic template, together with affixation. For example, root s-x-q, meaning “play” in Piel pattern, in past first-person singular, added suffix -ti, sixaqti, in present mesaxeq and in future added prefex e-, esaxeq. Templatic morphology is thus not linear, unlike the morphology of the more commonly studied Indo-European languages. Thus, acquiring verbal morphology poses an interesting challenge for young infants. In line with previous evidence on babies' abilities to discriminate morphology, the present thesis is an online Looking Time Preference experiment, aiming to see whether infants between the ages of 8-24 show a preference for a group of verbs if they share morphological elements, the Hebrew past tense morphology, compared to a group of mixed verbs from all tenses in Hebrew. Thirty-three infants participated in the study. Results suggest that the infants could not discriminate tense in this particular task. The methodological and theoretical reasons for this finding are discussed.
2023
Hebrew Verb Morphology in Early Language Development: Investigating Infants’ Preference to Morphological Forms
Language acquisition
preferential looking
morphology
Hebrew
Verbs
File in questo prodotto:
File Dimensione Formato  
TAL LANDA thesis.pdf

accesso aperto

Dimensione 1.97 MB
Formato Adobe PDF
1.97 MB Adobe PDF Visualizza/Apri

The text of this website © Università degli studi di Padova. Full Text are published under a non-exclusive license. Metadata are under a CC0 License

Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12608/79287