Chapter 14
Rudiments of Inflectional Morphology Skills
in Emergent English–Hebrew Biliterates
Esther Geva and Dana Shafman
Abstract The present study investigated the development of inflectional morphological skills in primary school children learning Hebrew as a foreign language.
Participants were grade 1 and 2 children whose home language is English, attending a bilingual English-Hebrew day school in Canada. Side by side with a growing
repertoire of Hebrew vocabulary, grammatical skills and sentence comprehension,
rudiments of various inflectional skills are already part of the linguistic skills of
primary school children who have had one to two years of exposure to Hebrew in
the classroom. Hebrew as L2 children who had better syntactic skills were more
successful on more analytic morphological inflection tasks as well. Familiarity with
specific lexical items was more important for the successful inflections of specific
words than general vocabulary knowledge. On the whole, just like monolingual
children, Hebrew as L2 children who have better developed vocabulary and morphological skills are better able to comprehend sentences, and vice versa.
Morphological Awareness, Vocabulary, and Literacy Skills
Morphology provides one of the organizing principles of the mental lexicon
(Aitchinson, 2003). Processes of morphological analysis underlie lexical expansion
in school children, and a substantial proportion of the words children know are
acquired through morphological form-to-meaning mappings (Anglin, 1993). The use
of word parts, including morphological awareness (MA), to identify and retain
meanings is an area that has been receiving increasing attention among researchers
and educators. Morphological awareness entails the ability to reflect on and manipulate morphemes, the smallest meaningful units in words. It involves the ability to
reflect on complex words in a way that may assist with the derivation of their meaning.
According to Carlisle (2003) “… morphological learning is such that phonologic
E. Geva (*)
University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
e-mail: [email protected]
D. Aram and O. Korat (eds.), Literacy Development and Enhancement Across
Orthographies and Cultures, Literacy Studies 101,
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-0834-6_5, © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010
191
192
E. Geva and D. Shafman
and orthographic representations of morphemes in written language cannot be
understood as a function of phonological awareness alone without regard for
morphology or for morphological awareness alone without regard for phonology”
(p. 307). MA is a complex construct that involves phonological, semantic, syntactic,
and orthographic knowledge (Ravid & Malenky, 2001).
MA and Literacy Skills
The role of lexical and morphological knowledge in enhancing literacy development
has been established in studies involving typically developing and language-impaired
children (Carlisle, 2000), and difficulties in identifying morphological relationships
are related to poor reading comprehension (Mahony, Singson, & Mann, 2000).
Research involving monolingual English as a first language (L1) and Hebrew as L1
children has shown that morphemic awareness and the ability to segment and manipulate morphemes within complex words continue to develop through their school years.
In Hebrew and English alike, this ability makes independent contributions to reading
and spelling over and above phonemic awareness and decoding skills (Aram, 2005;
Fowler & Liberman, 1995; Levin, Ravid, & Rapaport, 1999; Ravid, 2001; Singson,
Mahony, & Mann, 2000). Performance on MA tasks tends to correlate with various
linguistic and reading tasks, including phonemic awareness (Muter, Hulme, Snowling,
& Stevenson, 2004; Singson, Mahony, & Mann, 2000), pseudoword decoding (Deacon
& Kirby, 2004; Nagy, et al., 2006; Singson, et al., 2000), various measures of vocabulary knowledge (Carlisle, 2000; Deacon & Kirby, 2004; Ku & Anderson, 2003; Nagy,
Berninger & Abbot, 2006; Singson et al., 2000), word reading tasks (Deacon & Kirby,
2004; Muter et al., 2004; Singson, et al., 2000), reading of morphologically complex
words (Carlisle, 2000; Saiegh-Haddad & Geva, 2007), and reading comprehension
(Carlisle, 2000; Deacon & Kirby, 2004; Ku & Anderson, 2003; Muter et al., 2004). Ku
and Anderson (2003), who reviewed the literature, conclude that, across several
languages, children develop inflectional morphology skills in their home or first
language (L1) before skills involving derivational and compound morphology, with
the latter two continuing to develop throughout the elementary school years.
Morphological Processes
Alphabetic orthographies preserve morphological relatedness in the spellings of words
(Verhoven & Perfetti, 2003), but they vary in morphological transparency, or the
degree to which the sound and the meaning of a complex word can be recovered from
its internal morphological structure (Elbro & Arnbak, 1996). Concatenative languages,
like English, utilize linear morphological processes (prefixing or suffixing) to generate
new words from free stems (McCarthy, 1981). In English, complex words typically
retain the unique phonological and orthographic identity of the stem, thus preserving
morphological transparency (e.g., consider care–carelessness). English stems may
undergo phonological and/or orthographic shifts (e.g., complete–completion).
14 Rudiments of Inflectional Morphology Skills
193
Word derivation in non-concatenative languages, like Hebrew, is non-linear and
complex (Ravid & Malenky, 2001). Word formation involves the simultaneous affixation of two linguistic units: a consonantal root (e.g., L-M-D) that signals the core
meaning or the semantic family of the word, and a word-pattern (“mishkal”), which is
a fixed and primarily vocalic template or pattern that instantiates the root as a unique
lexical item. Both the root and the word-pattern are bound morphemes that cannot
stand on their own as independent words. The concurrent affixation of the consonantal
root within fixed slots in the word-pattern often leads to discontinued phonological
and/or orthographic representations of the root. For instance, applying the consonantal
root L-M-D onto the word pattern CiCuC (where C represents the slots intended for
the insertion of the root consonants) results in a disrupted representation of the root
L-M-D in the word limud (studying), and the vocalic pattern CaCCan, yields lamdan
(scholar). This example illustrates the resultant morphological opacity in Hebrew.
The Development of Hebrew Morphological Skills
in Monolingual Hebrew Speakers
Hebrew can be characterized as a synthetic language that is rich in morphological
structures. Ravid (1995) and Shimron (2006) stress the complexity of Modern
Hebrew and emphasize that experience with and exposure to oral Hebrew is essential in order for MA to develop. Recent research evidence suggests that from a
young age children whose home language (L1) is Hebrew are influenced by their
language typology and use its characteristics, including information about the root,
as a core morphological entity when they read and spell in Hebrew (e.g., Ben-Dror,
Bentin, & Frost, 1995; Gillis & Ravid, 2006; Ravid & Bar-On, 2005).
MA is directly related to children’s reading and writing skills in Hebrew (Levin,
et al., 1999; Ravid & Schiff, 2004). Of particular relevance to the current chapter is
Ravid’s (2001) summary suggesting that in the development of morphology,
Hebrew as L1 speaking children first mark inflections (such as gender and number)
around the age of 2 years, and that derivations appear between the ages of 3 and 6
years. Further mastery in Hebrew morphology however begins with formal reading
and writing instruction (Ravid, 1995).
The complex relations between oral language, writing, and morphological skills
were explored by Levin et al. (1999). Their findings suggest a “bootstrapping”
model, according to which writing skills enhance oral morphology skills and vice
versa. They explain that becoming aware of common spelling features of semantically related words contributes to an awareness of the morphemic connection
between these words. Awareness of the orthographic code provides children with
clues to the morphological infrastructure of Hebrew. Given the complexity of
Hebrew morphology it is perhaps not surprising that difficulties with morphological
skills are especially detrimental to Hebrew readers (Ben-Dror et al, 1995). Likewise,
Ravid, Levie, and Ben-Zvi (2003) report that Hebrew-speaking children who are
weak readers have poorer MA skills than their stronger reading peers.
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E. Geva and D. Shafman
MA: L1 and L2 Relations
It is reasonable to assume that conclusions based on research with monolingual
children are also relevant to children who develop their vocabulary skills in a second
language (L2). Recently, researchers have begun to examine MA in bilingual learners, including English–French learners (e.g., Deacon, Wade-Woolley, & Kirby,
2006), Chinese-English (Wang, Chen, & Chen, 2006), English–Arabic (SaieghHaddad & Geva), Russian–Hebrew (Schwartz, Geva, Share, & Leikin, 2007),
Hebrew–English (Kahn-Horwitz, Shimron, & Sparks, 2005; Schiff, & Calif, 2007),
and English–Hebrew (Bindman, 2004). Deacon et al. (2006) conclude that MA can
be applied cross-linguistically. However, the results of Bindman’s (2004) cross-linguistic study suggest that the nature of the L1–L2 relationships may depend on
children’s proficiency in the L2. Saiegh-Haddad and Geva (2007) report that while
there were significant correlations between English and Arabic phonological awareness the relationships between morphological skills in L1 and L2 may not be universal. Relatedly, Schiff and Calif (2007) who studied Hebrew–English bilinguals also
conclude that the extent of L1–L2 morphological relations may depend on the “language proximity” of the particular language features under study. The differences
among studies may be related to methodology, the age of the participants, typological differences, and the extent to which children had an opportunity to develop language proficiency and literacy skills in their respective languages. Unlike phonological
awareness, specific aspects of MA may be more sensitive to language-specific skills.
In addition, the extent and nature of the relationships among complex L1 and L2
language skills may be mitigated by L1 and L2 language proficiency to varying
degrees, and below a certain language proficiency threshold it may not be possible
to note cross-linguistic relationships (Saiegh-Haddad & Geva, 2007).
Whether the development of morphological skills in children learning Hebrew as
a foreign language (HFL) follows the same route as native Hebrew speaking children
is an important question both theoretically and practically. It is reasonable to expect
that Hebrew morphological skills would be slower to develop in HFL children, and
that MA development would be dependent on contextual factors such as exposure,
and intra-individual cognitive-linguistic skills. It is also reasonable to expect that the
Hebrew oral and spoken language components are interrelated as they are in children
whose L1 is Hebrew. From a young age native speakers of Hebrew are influenced
by the morphological features of their language and use its characteristics when
acquiring reading and spelling skills. This development depends on other linguistic
achievements, including phonological awareness, vocabulary learning, and learning
to read and spell. In turn, morphological awareness can facilitate higher levels of
reading and writing in Hebrew. What about HFL learners who begin to acquire their
Hebrew language and literacy skills concurrently at school, in the absence of the
same level of exposure that native speakers receive at home and in their community
since infancy? In this chapter we begin to explore early steps in the emergence of
morphological skills in HFL children, and the extent to which these skills are bootstrapped to other linguistic skills. The present study sought to investigate the development of inflectional morphological skills in primary school children learning
14 Rudiments of Inflectional Morphology Skills
195
Hebrew as a foreign language. Two aspects were of interest: (1) whether different
parts of inflectional morphology skills developed sequentially or in parallel, and (2)
the extent to which these skills depended on vocabulary and syntactic skills, or
whether rudiments of inflectional morphological skills could be observed regardless
of Hebrew vocabulary and syntactic knowledge. In particular, we wanted to examine
the role of vocabulary and syntactic skills in understanding individual differences in
inflectional morphological awareness of beginning HFL learners.
Method
Participants
Participants were drawn from a private Hebrew day school in Toronto, Canada.
A total of 50 children in Grades 1 (N = 19) and 2 (N = 31) participated. The Grade 1
children were drawn from two classes (N = 8 and 11, respectively) totaling 9 males
and 10 females, with a mean age of 83.11 months (SD = 2.51). The Grade 2 children
were drawn from three classes (N = 14, 7, and 10, respectively) totaling 15 males
and 16 females with a mean age of 94.23 months (SD = 3.36).
All participants spoke English as their first and home language, and were learning
Hebrew as L2 in a bilingual day-school program, in which the required English
curriculum is taught for half of a day, and the other half is devoted to the Hebrew
language, literacy, and cultural components. Children were exposed to approximately
2½ h of Hebrew per day, 5 days a week (total 12–13 h per week). Most of the exposure
to Hebrew took place within and surrounding working with Hebrew text. None of
the children used Hebrew as a means of communication at home.
Procedure
The data presented here are part of a larger, longitudinal study, currently in progress,
and are part of the Time 1 findings. Measures were administered one-on-one in the
spring. All instructions for the Hebrew measures were given in English to ensure the
child understood what was required. Further, no measure was administered unless it
was clear that the child understood the task at hand. Only those with returned parental
consent were tested (62% of the Grade 1 students and 47% of the Grade 2 students).
Measures
Nonverbal Ability
Nonverbal ability was measured using the Matrix Analogies Test-Expanded Form
(MAT; Naglieri, 1985). This is a standardized measure that requires the child to
point to the missing piece of a design from a group of possible fillers.
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E. Geva and D. Shafman
Inflectional Morphology
Real-word inflections. This task was based on Shatil (1997), and included 14 real,
high-frequency Hebrew word pairs. For example, the child would hear: etz, etzim
(tree, trees), and would be asked in English “which word says there are many? etz
or etzim?”
Nonword inflections. This task was adapted from Shatil (1997). It included 14
nonword Hebrew pairs that follow Hebrew inflectional conventions. For example,
the child would hear: kaxesh, kaxsha – and then asked “Which word is for a girl?
kaxesh or kaxsha” (correct answer: kaxsha).
Analogies. An experimental, 18-item, expressive word analogy task, developed by
the authors, measured the child’s ability to produce the inflected version of a word, in
a manner analogous to a pair presented first. Puppets were used to clarify the task
and make it more interesting. For example: (1) adom – adomim; [red(singular) – red
(plural)]; yarok -??? [green (singular)]; expected response – yerukim [green (plural)]. (2)
rakdanit-rakdan [dancer, (feminine, singular) – dancer (masculine, singular)] paxdanit
-??? [someone who is scared (feminine, singular)] – expected response: paxdan
[someone who is scared (masculine, singular)]. Analogy items assessed a range of
inflectional aspects such as singular–plural nouns, masculine–feminine adjectival
inflections, and simple tenses.
Hebrew Language Proficiency
Receptive language. A Hebrew adaptation of the standardized Test for Reception of
Grammar (TROG) developed by Geva, Wade-Woolley, and Shany (1997) measured
comprehension of grammatical contrasts. In this 20-item task, the child hears a
sentence, for example, hatzvi ratz (the deer is running) and is asked to point to one
of four pictures that best corresponds to the sentence heard.
Oral comprehension. A Hebrew oral cloze task developed by Geva and Siegel
(2000) measured sentence comprehension, by filling in the missing word in each
sentence, e.g., be’xanukah madleekim…? (On xanukah we light…?), with the
appropriate answer being either nerot (candles) or xanukiah (menorah). There were
a total of 20 items and all were administered.
Receptive vocabulary. A standardized Hebrew adaptation of the Peabody Picture
Vocabulary Test – Third Edition (Solberg & Nevo, 1979) was used. The child hears
a word and then chooses one of four pictures that best corresponds to the word. As
the test was designed for native speakers of Hebrew, only the first 39 items were
administered to all children.
Morphological vocabulary was a receptive vocabulary choice task that measured
children’s familiarity with the 14 Hebrew base words in the Real-word inflections
task described above. For example, “Does etz mean tree or flower?” Five of the
same vocabulary items appeared in the analogies task as well.
14 Rudiments of Inflectional Morphology Skills
197
Results
The Development of Morphological Skills
Descriptive statistics of the language and morphological tasks are presented separately for Grades 1 and 2, in Table 14.1. The means are slightly higher in Grade 2
showing that there were some gains between Grade 1 and Grade 2 on all aspects of
Hebrew as L2 development. A multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was run
to determine an overall grade effect. The Wilk’s  of .69 only approached significance, F(9, 40) = 2.03, p = .06. Univariate analysis revealed that there was a significant grade effect on the Analogies task, F(1, 48) = 9.573, p < .01. A MANCOVA
covarying age in months was not significant either (Wilk’s  of .74; F(9, 39) = 1.56,
p = .16). Relatedly, the significant univariate grade effect held up for the Analogies
task, F(2, 47) = 4.69, p < .01. Regardless of age and grade, there were no significant differences on the other measures, even though consistently, Grade 2 means
were somewhat higher than the respective Grade 1 means.
Correlates of Morphological Skills
Merging data Correlations among variables, controlling for age, were calculated
within each grade. Identical patterns of significant relationships among the variables were displayed, and all variables were significantly intercorrelated (p < .05).
The only exception, in both grade levels, was the non-significant correlation
Table 14.1 Descriptive statistics for all measures in Grades 1 (N = 19) and 2 (N = 31)
Measure
Items
Grade
Mean
SD
t
Receptive language
20
1
14.21
3.14
.06
2
14.16
2.63
Oral comprehension
20
1
3.68
3.61
.97
2
4.71
3.66
Receptive vocabulary
39
1
19.26
6.49
1.16
2
21.39
6.14
Morphological
14
1
12.84
2.29
1.79
vocabulary
2
13.81
1.52
Real-word inflections
14
1
10.79
1.72
1.09
2
11.39
1.98
Nonword inflections
14
1
10.95
1.31
.23
2
11.06
1.97
1
6.84
3.52
Analogies
18
3.09**
2
9.45
2.45
**p < .01
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E. Geva and D. Shafman
between Real-Word Inflections and Receptive Language. Given this pattern and
since the groups did not differ on non-verbal intelligence, and there were no significant differences between grades on most measures, the data of the two grades were
amalgamated into one group (N = 50, mean age = 90 months, SD = 6.24 months).
This increased the statistical power. Descriptive statistics for the new amalgamated
group are presented in Table 14.2, and the correlations appear in Table 14.3.
Overall, one should note that all the morphological awareness tasks are highly correlated with each other and with measures of oral language. Again, the only exception is the lack of a significant correlation between the Real-Word Inflections task
and the Receptive Language task.
Paired samples t-tests examined whether there was a significant difference
between performance on the productive, expressive Oral Comprehension measure,
and the Receptive Language, both of which had 20 items. Children performed significantly better on the Receptive Language task than on the Oral Comprehension
production task, t(49) = 21.96, p < .001.
As for the tasks focusing on inflectional morphology, an examination of the
percentages in Table 14.2 indicates that the mean scores on the more demanding
Analogies task are much lower than the tasks that are more receptive in nature.
Paired t-tests revealed the differences between Real-Word Inflections and the
Analogies task, and between Nonword Inflections and the Analogies task were
significant, t(49) = 12.14, p < .001 and t(49) = 13.57, p < .001, respectively.
Table 14.2 Descriptive statistics for all measures (N = 50)
Measure
Mean
SD
Receptive language
14.18
2.80
Oral comprehension
4.32
3.63
Receptive vocabulary
20.58
6.29
Morphological vocabulary
13.44
1.88
Real-word inflections
11.16
1.88
Nonword inflections
11.02
1.73
Analogies
8.46
3.13
Table 14.3 Pearson inter-correlations across all measures (N = 50)
Measure
1
2
3
4
1. Receptive language
1
2. Oral comprehension
.54**
1
3. Receptive vocabulary
.58**
.60**
1
4. Morphological vocabulary .53**
.29*
.46**
1
5. Real-word inflections
.16
.49**
.32*
.38**
6. Nonword inflections
.34*
.54**
.55**
.34*
7. Analogies
.49**
.64**
.62**
.48**
*p < .05
**p < .01
Percentage correct
71
22
53
96
79
78
47
5
6
7
1
.50**
.29*
1
.45**
1
14 Rudiments of Inflectional Morphology Skills
199
Predictors of Inflectional Morphology
In order to find out whether performance on inflectional morphological tasks can
be understood by considering vocabulary and grammatical skills, hierarchical
linear regression analyses (Stepwise) were run. For each of the three inflectional
morphology tasks, three oral language proficiency tasks (Oral Comprehension,
Receptive Vocabulary, and Morphological Vocabulary) were rotated on individual
steps as independent variables.1 Regression analyses are presented in
Table 14.4.
Predictors of Real-Word Inflections. When Morphological Vocabulary was
entered first, the Receptive Vocabulary task did not account for unique variance
above that provided by the Morphological Vocabulary measure (3%, ns). However,
the Morphological Vocabulary measure did account for unique variance above that
provided by the Receptive Vocabulary task (6%, p < .05). Oral Comprehension
accounted for unique significant variance regardless of the step it was entered on
(Step 1 = 24%, p < .001; Step 3 = 14%, p < .05), with only the Morphological
Vocabulary measure explaining significant unique variance over and above that
explained by Oral Comprehension (6%, p < .05). In other words, Real-Word
Inflection was explained uniquely by Oral Comprehension and by Morphological
Vocabulary.
Predictors of Nonword Inflections. Within these models, the Oral Comprehension
task and Receptive Vocabulary measure accounted for significant unique variance,
regardless of the step on which they were entered (variance accounted for ranged
from 6–29%, p < .05–.01, and 6–31%, p < .05–.01, respectively). The Morphological
Vocabulary measure only accounted for significant variance on step 1 in these particular
regression models presented, and lost its unique contribution when entered after
Receptive Vocabulary (1%, ns) and after Oral Comprehension (3%, ns). Given that
the words in this measure are unrelated to the nonwords tested in the measure, this
is not surprising.
Predictors of the Analogies task. Similar to the Real-Word Inflections task, both
the Oral Comprehension and Morphological Vocabulary measures accounted for
significant unique variance, regardless of what step they were entered on (variance
accounted for ranged from 12 to 41%, p < .01, and 5 to 23%, p < .05–.01, respectively). While the Receptive Vocabulary measure contributed unique significant
variance when entered on Step 2 (8–19%, p < .01 respectively), when entered last,
it did not account for significant variance above and beyond both Oral Comprehension
and Morphological Vocabulary. Given that five of the vocabulary items in this measure appeared in the Morphological Vocabulary measure, this finding highlights the
importance of knowing the word being inflected.
Receptive language is not presented within these regression models as it was not significant
beyond step 1 and did not change the overall model.
1
*p < .05
**p < .0
3
2
3
1
2
3
1
2
.46
.18
.46
.32
.29
.09
.34
.25
.14
.03
.14
.10
.07
.01
.14
.06
.24
.001
.06
8.91**
1.45
8.91**
5.29*
3.80
.30
7.86**
3.92*
15.03**
.05
4.12*
.32
.51
.32
.55
.10
.32
.34
.19
.54
.36
.10
.06
.20
.06
.31
.01
.06
.11
.03
.29
.08
.01
4.75*
13.86**
4.75*
21.17**
.56
4.17*
6.05*
2.37
19.40**
6.24**
.52
.43
.49
.43
.61
.26
.24
.48
.32
.64
.35
.25
.49
.03
.28
1
2
3
Oral comprehension
Receptive vocabulary
Morphological
vocabulary
Morphological
vocabulary
Receptive vocabulary
Morphological
vocabulary
Receptive vocabulary
Oral comprehension
Receptive vocabulary
Morphological
vocabulary
Oral comprehension
b
Table 14.4 Predictors of inflectional morphology tasks – multiple regression summary (stepwise) table (N = 50)
Real-word inflections
Nonword inflections
Step
Predictor
b
b
R2 change
F change
R2 change
F change
.12
.19
.12
.37
.05
.03
.23
.09
.41
.08
.05
11.46**
15.32**
11.46**
28.07**
4.25*
3.12
14.55**
8.98**
33.48**
7.11**
4.81*
Analogies
R2 change
F change
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E. Geva and D. Shafman
14 Rudiments of Inflectional Morphology Skills
201
Discussion
Studying morphological skills in beginning L2 learners opens an interesting window into how linguistic skills develop, the relations among them, and the emergence of metalinguistic skills. In this chapter, we began to explore the relations
between oral language and aspects of morphological skills in HFL. Clearly, morphological skills, like other language skills, develop as a function of exposure to
language and literacy. It is noteworthy that the HFL children who were in Grade 2
had somewhat better vocabulary, morphological and syntactic skills than their
counterparts in Grade 1. However, these skills take time to develop, and thus the
differences between Grade 1 and Grade 2 did not reach statistical significance on
any of the measures except for one of the inflectional morphology tasks.
The picture that emerges from the analysis we have carried out so far is that side by
side with a growing repertoire of Hebrew vocabulary, grammatical skills and sentence
comprehension, rudiments of various inflectional skills are already part of the linguistic
skills of primary school children who have had 1–2 years of exposure to Hebrew
within a formal classroom context. We also found, as might be expected, that children
were more successful on receptive morphology tasks that required children to attend
to the inflectional elements and respond to guided questions targeting the functions of
those inflections. They had more difficulty however on an expressive task that required
them to utilize their morphological awareness and generate a new answer.
Children’s performance demonstrated an increasing awareness of some morphological rules, and a growing ability to recognize and isolate morphemes that mark
Hebrew inflections.2 Independent of familiarity with the meaning of the stem, children
demonstrated an increasing ability to utilize analogies involving cardinal rules for
inflections of nouns and verbs, based on gender and number, and apply that knowledge
to generate morphologically correct inflections.
The errors that children make are highly informative of what they have already
learned. For example, children heard the noun-pair beitzim-beitza [eggs, (feminine,
plural), egg (feminine, singular)], followed by zeitim- [olives (masculine, plural)].
In this case children were supposed to produce the singular version zayit (olive).
Note that the correct response is different from the noun pattern beitza provided in
the analogy. A common error was for children to rely on the beitza analogy and
produce zayta. In other words, they noted the noun pattern of the example which is
typical of feminine nouns in Hebrew that often end in /ah/ and applied it to zeitim.
As another illustration, children heard the high frequency verb-pair rotzeh-rotzah
[want (masculine, present tense, singular) – want (feminine, present tense, singular)],
followed by oxel [eat (masculine, present tense, singular)]. In this case the correct
response is oxelet [eat (feminine, present tense, singular)]. Again one of the frequently noted errors was for children to mimic the pattern presented in the first pair,
thus offering oxlah.
It should be noted that item analysis based on various morpheme types is currently under way.
2
202
E. Geva and D. Shafman
Typically, in Hebrew, the inflection of masculine nouns from singular to plural
involves the addition of /im/, for example, yeled – yeladim (child–children).
However, a special pattern applies to nouns that often come in pairs. In this case, /
ayim/ is added to the stem, for example, ayin (eye)-eynayim (eyes). When children
were given the noun pair ayin-eynayim, followed by /yad/ (hand) many responded
with yadim instead of yadayim (hands). It appears that many of these beginning
HFL children have already acquired the basic default concatenating rule of adding
/im/ to the noun, but they over-generalized this rule to the special case of the
“zugiyim” (i.e., the plural noun pairs). As children are working their way towards
correctly inflecting words, they tend to apply high frequency, salient, simple inflectional patterns such as those involving male–female nouns, as well as the cardinal
manner of marking plurality.
As for predictors of emerging inflectional morphology skills, this exploratory
study showed that sentence comprehension accounts for unique significant variance
in children’s ability to correctly apply rudiments of inflectional morphology.3 This
observation is valid whether the task requires children to focus on inflections of real
words or nonwords. They are increasingly aware of inflection patterns related to
aspects such as male/female nouns, singular/plural nouns (male/female), plural noun
pairs, possessive (mine, him, us), and verb inflections (male/female, singular/plural).
Children who are better able to comprehend sentences and respond correctly when
asked to provide a missing word in sentences, are also more successful on the more
analytic morphological inflection tasks targeted in this chapter.
Vocabulary knowledge also aids children. Clearly, general vocabulary knowledge is
related to various aspects of inflectional morphology. At the same time, as the analysis
involving the Real-Word Inflections task indicated, being familiar with the lexical
items being tested proved to be more important for the successful inflections of
specific words than general vocabulary knowledge.
The Nonword Inflections task can be thought of as a metalinguistic application
of inflectional rules to unfamiliar words. Findings indicate that general Receptive
Vocabulary skills contribute significantly to children’s ability to apply simple inflectional rules, even when the students are not familiar with the meaning of the specific
words. General vocabulary skills and general emerging syntactic skills play a pivotal
role in the emergence of basic morphological principles in HFL children, though
familiarity with specific vocabulary items appears to provide an additional important
scaffold for novice Hebrew L2 learners. Jointly these two sets of language skills
(syntactic skills and vocabulary) explain between 30 and 40% of the variance on
morphological receptive skills, and over 50% of the variance on the expressive
morphological Analogies task.
It is important to caution, however, that no causal claims can be made, and indeed
it is reasonable to hypothesize that over time one would find mutually enhancing
relationship between morphological skills, syntactic skills, and vocabulary, such that
We plan to analyze items by category types (e.g., plural, plural pairs, past tense) once data
collection is complete.
3
14 Rudiments of Inflectional Morphology Skills
203
those children who have better developed vocabulary and morphological skills are
likely better able to comprehend sentences, and vice versa. The current study shows
that this observation is applicable to young HFLs just the way it is to young monolingual learners. While it remains to be seen how individual differences on these
linguistic measures is related, and perhaps bootstrapped, to the emergence of reading
and spelling skills, it is nevertheless noteworthy that elements of inflectional skills
are already part of the linguistic repertoire of primary school children who have had
1–2 years of exposure to Hebrew within a formal classroom context.
Acknowledgments We wish to thank the staff and children at Associated Hebrew Day School
(Neptune Branch) in Toronto for their support and patience. We are also grateful to the University
of Toronto for enabling access to undergraduate interns.
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