Spelling Morphology: The Psycholinguistics of Hebrew Spelling

Spelling Morphology LITERACY STUDIES VOLUME 3 Series Editor: R. Malatesha Joshi, Texas A&M University, USA Editoria...

Author: Dorit Diskin Ravid

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Spelling Morphology

LITERACY STUDIES

VOLUME 3

Series Editor: R. Malatesha Joshi, Texas A&M University, USA Editorial Board: Linnea Ehri, CUNY Graduate School, USA George Hynd, Purdue University, USA Richard Olson, University of Colorado, USA Pieter Reitsma, Vrije University Amsterdam, the Netherlands Rebecca Treiman, Washington University in St. Louis, USA Usha Goswami, University of Cambridge, UK Jane Oakhill, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK Philip Seymour, University of Dundee, UK Guinevere Eden, Georgetown University Medical Center, USA Catherine McBride Chang, Chinese University of Hong Kong, China

While language defines humanity, literacy defines civilization. Understandably, illiteracy or difficulties in acquiring literacy skills have become a major concern of our technological society. A conservative estimate of the prevalence of literacy problems would put the figure at more than a billion people in the world. Because of the seriousness of the problem, research in literacy acquisition and its breakdown is pursued with enormous vigor and persistence by experts from diverse backgrounds such as cognitive psychology, neuroscience, linguistics and education. This, of course, has resulted in a plethora of data, and consequently it has become difficult to integrate this abundance of information into a coherent body because of the artificial barriers that exist among different professional specialties. The purpose of the proposed series is to bring together the available research studies into a coherent body of knowledge. Publications in this series are intended for use by educators, clinicians and research scientists in the above-mentioned specialties. Some of the titles suitable for the Series are: fMRI, brain imaging techniques and reading skills, orthography and literacy; and research based techniques for improving decoding, vocabulary, spelling, and comprehension skills.

A complete list of titles published in this series can be viewed by going to the following URL: http://www.springer.com/series/7206

Dorit Diskin Ravid

Spelling Morphology The Psycholinguistics of Hebrew Spelling

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Dorit Diskin Ravid Constantiner School of Education Tel Aviv University Tel Aviv, 69978 Israel [email protected]

ISBN 978-1-4419-0587-1 e-ISBN 978-1-4419-0588-8 DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-0588-8 Springer New York Dordrecht Heidelberg London Library of Congress Control Number: 2011935141 # Springer ScienceþBusiness Media, LLC 2012 All rights reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or in part without the written permission of the publisher (Springer ScienceþBusiness Media, LLC, 233 Spring Street, New York, NY 10013, USA), except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis. Use in connection with any form of information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed is forbidden. The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even if they are not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to whether or not they are subject to proprietary rights. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer ScienceþBusiness Media (www.springer.com)

This book is dedicated to the memory of my beloved father, Yehoshua Diskin (1924–2002), who loved his children and loved Language.

v

Preface

This book started out as an exposition of my work from the last decade on the acquisition of Hebrew spelling by gradeschool children. When I first envisioned it, I thought the book would start with a theoretical part on the underpinnings of Hebrew spelling from a psycholinguistic perspective, to be followed by a second section summarizing my empirical work on spelling development and acquisition which would show how the theoretical predictions were borne out by actual experimentation. But rather early on the book itself sort of ‘‘took over’’ and found its own vocation. I realized I had much more to say about Hebrew spelling and its theoretical embedding than could be contained by a few chapters. I found I wished to embed and contextualize Hebrew spelling within an explanatory psycholinguistic framework of written language and current models of language acquisition and processing, writing and reading. The result is this book, which presents a theoretical psycholinguistic account of Hebrew spelling as a linguistic system learned and processed by general cognitive mechanisms, on the one hand, while under the particular impact of Hebrew typology, on the other. The protagonists of this book are thus Hebrew morphology, the Hebrew lexicon, and the phono-morpho-orthographic junction which underlies the construal of spelling Hebrew words. The book is all about theory: My empirical studies, which bear out each of the predictions presented and explained in these chapters, await the next book.

vii

Contents

Introduction: A Linguist’s Journey Towards Written Language. . . . . . Early Language Acquisition: The Oral Tradition. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Acquiring the Language of Literacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Learning to Think for Writing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Learning the Script-as-Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Levels of Representation: Phonology, Morphology and Orthography. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Phonology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Morphology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Orthography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

10 11 13 14 17 17

2

The Psycholinguistics of Spelling: Phonology and Beyond . . . . . . . . . . Spelling in Psychological and Cognitive Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Spelling as Language. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Typological View of Spelling Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Phonology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Orthographic Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

21 22 25 26 28 29 34 35

3

Morphological Scaffolding in Learning to Spell: A Cross-Linguistic Review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

41 52

Spelling, Lexicon and Morphology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Phonology and the Lexicon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Orthography and the Lexicon. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Typological Impact of Morphology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Morphological Richness: Semantics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Morphological Richness: Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Morphological Richness: Morpho-Phonology and Allomorphy . . . .

57 57 58 59 61 63 67

1

4

1 2 3 5 7

ix

x

Contents

Spelling Hebrew Morphology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

69 70 70

5

Historical and Sociolinguistic Perspectives on Hebrew. . . . . . . . . . . . . Roots of Modern Hebrew . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

73 73 78

6

The Hebrew Phonology-Orthography Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Current Orthographic Versions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Vowel Representation: A Historical Review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Orthographic Changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sources of Hebrew Spelling Errors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Letter Frequencies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

81 81 83 86 88 92 94 95 95

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Morpho-Orthographic Infrastructure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Spelling Non-linear Morphology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Spelling Linear Morphology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Complex Morphology in Spelling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Extending Written Word Boundaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Word or Box? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

97 99 105 107 109 113 113 113 114

8

Root and Function Letters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Demarcating Core from Envelope Letters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Homophony and Morphology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Spelling Root Letters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Morpho-Phonological Cues to Root Spelling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Spelling Function (Affix) Letters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mapping Morphological Roles of Function Letters. . . . . . . . . . . . . . Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

115 116 117 118 121 122 125 127 128 128

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The Phono-Morpho-Orthographic AHWY ‫ אהוי‬Juncture . . . . . . . . . . Blurring the Consonant-Vowel Distinction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Phono-Morpho-Orthographic Features of Vowel AHWY . . . . . . . . Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

129 130 134 138 139 139

Contents

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Spelling Cues in Nominals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Data Mining in the Nominal Lexicon. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Spelling Cues in Nominal Morphology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Beyond Transparent Nouns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cues in Compound Structures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cues in Opaque Nominals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

141 142 144 145 146 148 151 151 151

11

Spelling Cues in Nominal Inflection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Gender. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Number . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Incorporation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Spelling Inflectional Morphology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

153 153 156 158 161 163 163

12

Spelling Cues in Verb Formation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Composite Verb Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Temporal Binyan Configurations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Modal Stems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Interim Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Agreement Suffixes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Spelling Verb Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Optional Accusative Inflection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

165 166 167 169 170 171 172 177 177 178 178

13

Conclusion: The Psycholinguistics of Hebrew Spelling . . . . . . . . . . . . Final Word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

179 183 183 183

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

185

Chapter 1

Introduction: A Linguist’s Journey Towards Written Language

As a young linguistics student in the early 1970s, I was raised to believe that written language had nothing interesting to offer regarding the nature of language knowledge or its acquisition. In fact, one of the questions on the first semester examination I took in Introduction to Linguistics was ‘‘what does the linguist think about written language’’? The answer I had to provide (to get my five points’ worth) was something like ‘‘the linguist thinks nothing whatsoever of written language’’. The customary explanation following this statement went more or less as follows: Clearly, spoken language, the early hallmark of humanity, emerging early on in childhood, is the natural, direct, uncontrived and ‘‘real’’ linguistic phenomenon; while written language, a recent Johnny-come-lately in our cognitive neighborhood, is irrelevant to linguistic science, being merely a written shadow of ‘‘real language’’ – in fact, no more than a mirror, the transcription of oral production. While this view was the result of an understandable Saussurian reaction of linguistic science to previous philological preoccupation with written texts of dead languages, it placed the study of written language squarely outside the domain of linguistic analysis seeking to achieve theoretical insight. Spelling, according to this view, is of course totally external to the realm of linguistic inquiry, standing in the way of and obscuring the real linguistic facts, which reside in spoken language only. In Derrida’s words Saussure does not recognize in [writing] more than a narrow and derivative function. Narrow because it is nothing but one modality among others, a modality . . . whose essence, as the facts seem to show, can remain forever contaminated by writing. [. . .] Derivative because representative: signifier of the first signifier, representation . . . of the immediate, natural, and direct signification of the meaning. (1974, p. 30)

From a Chomskyan point of view – the dominant voice in linguistics in the 1970s – oral language (and the language of thought) is the primary and only expression of linguistic competence. Chomsky’s famous quote states that ‘‘Linguistic theory is concerned primarily with an ideal speaker-listener in a completely homogeneous speech community’’ (1965, p. 3, my italics) – where the primacy of spoken language is taken for granted. It naturally follows that knowledge of written language does not constitute a significant and worthwhile

D.D. Ravid, Spelling Morphology, Literacy Studies 3, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-0588-8_1, Ó Springer ScienceþBusiness Media, LLC 2012

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1 Introduction: A Linguist’s Journey Towards Written Language

part of linguistic competence.1 Jean-Pierre Jaffre´, linguist and psycholinguist, aptly says that ‘‘written language, even today, is regarded as a poor relation in linguistics’’ (1997, p. 3). Interestingly, at that very same time, phonological theory of the 1970s was based on Chomsky and Halle’s monumental book The Sound Pattern of English (1968). Echoing Chomsky’s hierarchical and transformational view of syntax, SPE is a complex and comprehensive analysis of Modern English phonology and its historical origins. SPE assumes abstract, underlying phonological representations for English words – representations resembling written words. It posits series of phonological rules with historical motivations such as velar softening, vowel elision and the vowel shift rule to derive the surface forms of these abstract representations. A present-day perspective on SPE suggests, however, that these immensely complex phonological rules were evoked to account for systematic morpho-phonological alternations expressing derivational relations among words such as medicine – medical – medicate (p. 54). It is no accident that Chomsky and Halle refer to the written form of such triads in a work on phonology, since the adjective suffix spelled –ic retains its orthographic unity while surfacing with different phonological forms in distinct morphosyntactic environments. In current outlook, reading SPE in fact underscores the rich and intricate interface of phonology, orthography, and grammar, and the prominence of this relationship in the cognition of English speaker-writers.

Early Language Acquisition: The Oral Tradition As a linguist specializing in language acquisition and development, the discovery of the central role of written language in language knowledge signified for me a break with the oral-focused linguistic tradition and a re-thinking of the nature of language learning. Since Chomsky’s great insight of language learning as a key to our understanding of language and cognition, developmental psycholinguistics has mainly focused on the early phases of language acquisition in infants and toddlers (Brown, 1973; Bybee & Slobin, 1982; Kuczaj, 1977). Infancy and early childhood have been intensely studied in the last 50 years in order to rise to the challenge of ‘the poverty of the stimulus’ and explain how children break into the linguistic system so as to learn about its regularities (Marcus et al., 1992; Maslen, Theakston, Lieven, & Tomasello, 2004; Theakston, Lieven, Pine, & Rowland, 2002; Tomasello, 2003). Large-scale studies mapping out shared universal steps and language-specific effects in acquiring the foundations of a human tongue have also focused on these early years (Slobin, 1985). This crucial period of initial language development in the early preschool years is intensely oral, in fact the only time in the life of a literate person when the structure of written language is largely irrelevant to linguistic learning. For this reason, and also for the aforementioned focus of linguistic science on the primacy of speech, mainstream investigation of first language acquisition

Acquiring the Language of Literacy

3

was restricted for many years to spoken language – even when the examination of language development came to encompass narrative discourse (Berman & Slobin, 1994). Not so long ago, talking to any child language expert about what spelling errors could tell us about language knowledge and development would have resulted in puzzlement and disapproval.

Acquiring the Language of Literacy But in the last decade or so, the study of language development has been extended beyond this restricted scope of investigation. It is clear by now that natural language acquisition is a protracted process that is not complete even by adolescence. While most researchers would agree that children growing up in a monolingual environment have access to the vast majority of morphological and syntactic structures of their language before they reach school age, a fiveyear-old hardly matches an adult or even a 12-year-old in linguistic proficiency (Anglin, 1993; Berman, 1997; Ravid & Zilberbuch, 2003). And evidence is piling up showing that that the linguistic abilities of 12-year-olds – and even those of 17-year-olds – are still a far cry from those of young adults (Berman, 2007; Ravid, 2004; Ravid & Berman, 2010; Ravid & Cahana-Amitay, 2005). The term later language development was coined to label this period of intense linguistic development taking place during the school years – ages 5 to young adulthood (Berman, 2004; Nippold, 2007). Some researchers of early child language might regard later language development as secondary to or less inspiring than early language development in terms of what it can tell us about the acquisition and representation of linguistic knowledge; however recent psycholinguistic research provides new and exciting information not only about major changes in all linguistic domains across childhood and adolescence, but also, and maybe more importantly, about how language knowledge and use consolidate at the heart of cognitive, social and affective maturation. Three major phenomena characterize later language development: New items, categories and constructions surge where none or few were before, including new meanings for already extant words; novel pathways arise for interconnecting and amalgamating formerly unrelated elements and systems, creating rich and complex linguistic schemas, patterns and architectures; and better, faster, more efficient and more explicit modes emerge for representing language, thinking about it and accessing its structures and functions, including higher-order non-literal aspects (Ashkenazi & Ravid, 1998; Karmiloff-Smith, 1986; Nippold & Taylor, 2002; Tolchinsky, 2004). Taken together, a new consortium of mature language capabilities makes it possible to spell out, hone and customize linguistic expression so as to articulate the adolescent and adult mind. These major changes in linguistic abilities witnessed across childhood and adolescence and their consequent mobilization in the service of adult communication could not be envisioned without the platform of literacy and written language (Berman & Ravid, 2008; Kellogg, 2008; Schiff, Ravid, & Levy-Shimon, 2011).

4


Studying language development across the school years yields fascinating insights on the changing interface of speech and writing; consequently, it offers a richer perspective on language and its representation than would the study of oral acquisition alone. One critical aspect of this interface is how written language provides a model for thinking about language. In his hugely – and deservedly – influential book The World on Paper (1994) David Olson makes a critical distinction between the different strengths of speech and writing, which is particularly relevant at this point: the former has expressive powers and illocutionary force, and excels in conveying the sender’s communicative intent to the addressee; the latter fosters explicit thought about language and its units. Olson’s model predicts that thinking about language – both oral and written – is enabled by gaining command of written language, and that once learned, written language in fact takes over as a model for thinking about language. This brilliant insight about the relationship between spoken and written language not only explains why linguists advocate studying spoken language while in fact using written language as their materiel; it also provides a framework for the study of children’s learning to perceive language through its written mode. This is the motif running throughout this book. I have a particular narrative that I would like to unfold in this book about the role morphology plays in learning the orthography of Hebrew. By its very nature, morphology cuts across formal boundaries laid down by linguists (McClelland et al., 2010). On the one hand, it is based on structural, phonological constructs such as phonemes and syllables. For example, how can one characterize the conditions under which roots such as s-d-r ‘order’ and z-k-n ‘grow old’ appear in the Hitpa’el verb pattern (histader ‘arrange oneself’ and hizdaken ‘grow old’ respectively) without referring to the phoneme t, the class of sibilants, and the phonological processes of metathesis and voicing? On the other hand, morphology is not phonology: by its very essence, morphology conveys meaning or function (Bybee, 1985). And thus, the structure of histader and hizdaken cannot be explained without having recourse to morphological notions such as root and binyan pattern – the two non-concatenative or non-linear components that make up the Hebrew verb. This is because metathesis takes place only in Hitpa’el contexts, at the morpheme boundary between the prefixal hit- and the first, sibilant radical of the root. And in addition, as elaborated in Chapter 12, orthographic components reflecting historical phonological distinctions such as the emphatic functions of the letters Ŧ ‫ ט‬and C ‫ צ‬add further, critical complexity and depth to the structure/function interface in metathesis. Without getting into details at this initial point, Hitpa’el metathesis is an illustration of the theme running through this book – the particular ways in which the different domains of phonology, morphology and orthography of Hebrew work together in speaker/writers’ minds to construe its spelling. But before embarking upon the notational system of Hebrew, I am first going to make a (hopefully relevant) detour into another aspect of written language, namely, discourse style, as evidenced in the development of text production.

Learning to Think for Writing

5

This will be a first foray into the notion of ‘thinking for writing’, aiming to demonstrate the essential link between spoken and written language and to show how the spoken and written modalities affect linguistic thinking.

Learning to Think for Writing Like Chomsky, but from a different point of view, Dan Slobin has argued that we are linguistic creatures by essence: . . .‘‘human beings spend a large portion of their time in linguistic behavior of one sort or another – that is, we are creatures that are almost constantly involved in preparing, producing, and interpreting verbal messages’’ (2003, p. 157). Consequently, becoming a competent speaker of a language requires one to ‘‘encounter the contents of the mind in a special way when they are being accessed for use’’ (Slobin, 1987, p. 435). I take the liberty of using Slobin’s apt definition of ‘thinking for speaking’ (intended to argue for a modified version of Whorf’s linguistic relativism) as a metaphor for a special cognitive mode, geared towards thinking about language. Thinking for speaking then entails thinking for writing. Modality has critical effects on processing large pieces of language such as narratives and other discourse types – a topic that has been dealt with masterfully in the writings of Berman (2008), Biber (1998), Chafe (1994), Halliday (1989), Ong (2002), and Olson (1994), among others. Spoken communication is typically produced under the pressure of rapid online processing, whereas displaced time in writing allows for more planning and monitoring in offline production. This processing effect impacts language users steadily and consistently from early on, as shown in Ravid and Berman (2006), a study of information density in 160 spoken versus written narratives produced by four age groups (4th-, 7th-, and 11th-grade students compared with adults) in two languages (English and Hebrew). We found that across the board, with no differences of age or language whatsoever, spoken texts were informationally sparse: Spoken texts contained about the same amount of novel narrative information (events, descriptions, and interpretations) and non-novel, nonreferential, or non-narrative material ancillary information (including discourse markers and disfluencies such as false starts, and repetitions). In contrast, written narratives were informationally dense, containing about 90% novel narrative information. In that respect, processing constraints affected all narrators in the same way irrespective of their age and language – a rare finding in developmental psycholinguistic work. But learning to ‘think for writing’ (Slobin, 1996; Stro¨mqvist, 2006), that is, to view a text as an autonomous whole, to control and shape the flow of information in discourse through linguistic means, is more age- and literacy-related, in fact a long and protracted process (Berman, 2005; Ravid, 2004). In skilled writers, thinking for writing makes it easier to write a well-constructed and coherent text with longer and denser information packages in hierarchically

6


complex syntactic constructions, which can be re-read, reviewed and revised by readers within their context without the pressures of on-line processing. In addition, thinking for writing creates the ‘written language style’ (Berman & Ravid, 2008; Ravid & Berman, 2010; Ravid & Tolchinsky, 2002) by encouraging the retrieval of higher-register, literate lexical items, and marked morphosyntactic structures (Chafe, 1994). However, these very same features impose a greater burden on less experienced writers such as children, who still lack the executive functions for monitoring large pieces of text. It is even harder for children to construct a linguistic space within which both modalities can be simultaneously and appropriately accessed. The conflict lexicon in narrative development. To illustrate the developmental shift from spoken to written language and its consequences, consider the analysis of ‘conflict lexicons’ across adolescence in Hebrew narratives about personal-experience conflicts (Ravid & Cahana-Amitay, 2005). This study analyzed the distribution of predicating constructions in narratives as a function of age and schooling (4th-, 7th-, and 11th-grade students compared with adults) and modality (spoken versus oral texts). One interesting outcome of this analysis was, again, the greater informational value of written texts: while spoken narratives were longer than written narratives, the written texts contained more predicative content across all age groups. But even more interesting is the shift evidenced in the texts from verbs to derived nominals as the major tool of predicative narrative expression, especially in writing. School children (9–10 and 12–13) expressed all predicative (dynamic, eventive, stative, qualitative) content in both spoken and written texts by the prototypical choice of dynamic, concrete, and imageable, often general, verbs (e.g., do, get, talk, see, tease, annoy, bother, laugh). But with age and schooling, a new distribution of lexical classes emerged in narrating the unfolding of events and introspecting about them. Side by side with verbs, highschoolers, and especially adults, employed increasingly more abstract and morphologically complex nouns derived from verbs and adjectives, such as condemnation, friendship, rejection, friendliness, assembling, or intolerance, to express the same notions. This shift was more evident in the written than in the spoken narratives of the two older groups, with adults’ written texts containing an almost equal number of predicative verbs and nominals. The shift in lexical perspective entailed a concurrent increase in the complexity of the noun phrases making up the clauses in the linguistically mature narratives. This is due to the fact that derived nominals are almost always syntactically modified in adult discourse, taking on their prototypical textual role of promoting the flow of information in the text by participating in large and complex NPs expressing entire propositions in syntactically diverse NP architectures (Halliday, 1988; Ravid & Berman, 2010). Consequently, such narratives take a less involved, more distant, abstract and detached discourse stance even when speaking or writing about dynamic and emotion-laden events (Berman, 2005; Berman, Ragnarsdo´ttir, & Stro¨mqvist, 2002). Taken together, this study shows how the extended school-age vocabulary becomes lexically

Learning the Script-as-Model

7

diverse and specific to express abstract categories and concepts, while at the same time gaining morphological complexity and attracting syntactically elaborate constructions in the service of discourse functions (Ravid, 2004; Ravid & Avidor, 1998; Ravid & Levie, 2010). Consider as an example the following excerpt from a story written by a teacher about a boy who used to disrupt his classes on a regular basis. At first I did not let his frequent disturbances bother me, but with time it was simply impossible to instruct and concentrate with Paul’s shouts and comments echoing in the classroom. At first I tried to punish him by sending him out of class but immediately upon his return Paul continued to disturb his classmates. After a couple of weeks (. . .) I brought a green praying mantis to class to demonstrate to the children the devouring of this insect. Of course the kids became enthusiastic and with them Paul who was always keen on fighting.

This lexical, morphological and syntactic nexus illustrates how skillfully mature language users assemble and incorporate different linguistic constructions and items to filter and weave their memories into narratives (Ravid & Berman, 2006, 2010). Some of the predicative content of this narrative excerpt is expressed by inflected verbs (bolded in the text), the obvious choice for encoding such notions; but at the same time, much of the unfolding events are encoded by derived nominals (underlined in the text). In this written adult narrative and others like it, half of the predicative content was expressed by derived, morphologically complex nominals, couched in heavy NPs such as his frequent disturbances, or the devouring of this insect. Even more interestingly, adults were the only ones of our study population to use both verb and morphologically-related derived nominal in the same discourse segment (e.g., ganav ‘stole’ and gneva ‘theft’, gina ‘condemned’ and ginuy ‘condemnation’) – and were thus able to zoom in and out of verbal and nominal viewpoints at will. This shows how command of both written language and spoken language and the ability to move between them easily and flexibly constitute the key to linguistic maturity. The detour into the written language of texts, involving a unit of much larger granularity than the constituents of spelling, illustrated the notion of thinking about written language as discourse style. But most psychologists and linguists working in the field of literacy would agree that a crucial milestone on the road to command of written language is learning about the much smaller units of language as a notational system. The rest of this book thus analyzes writing units using Olson’s script-as-model (1994), which shows how the units of written language serve as the model for thinking about language in general.

Learning the Script-as-Model Olson’s idea, put simply, is that the very study of language is enabled by written language. This is because language is of course much more than the simple pairing of sound with lexical semantics (word meaning) – it is constructed of

8


complex interwoven patterns, systems and architectures of form and function which underlie its representation and deployment. True, the grammatical patterns organizing linguistic production and comprehension and guiding language learning most often find phonological or oral expression. A classical example is the case of plural formation in English, generally expressed by sibilant suffixes (-s in books, -z in birds, etc.), or in Hebrew, through the masculine suffix -im (tapuz/tapuz-im ‘orange-s’) and feminine suffix – ot (mita/mit-ot ‘bed-s’). Phonology – the patterning of linguistic sounds in one’s language – is indeed the central physical feature of written language – its stability – which permits the segmentation of the almost continuous flow of speech so as to capture the boundaries of linguistic units. But oral expression in itself is never fully conducive to analysis and understanding of linguistic principles, even at the level of phonology. As Olson shows so convincingly, the written mode marks linguistic units which otherwise find no expression in the spoken mode, brings them to consciousness, and makes them available for study. Not less important, it also explicitly recovers and reconstructs those segments which have been omitted in casual speech. In written language, so much more is brought to light and is made to stay on papyrus, rock, paper or screen. Olson’s own example is how the notational system of a language, its writing system, and specifically its orthography (in the sense elaborated in Perfetti & Liu, 2005), serves as a model for thinking about language. Take, for example, the case of (letter) case: Capital letters in English are not merely an orthographic feature. One function they serve is to set apart proper nouns (such as Tom or Jamaica) denoting some definite, individual entity, in fact a category consisting of a unique member (Lyons, 1968; Schachter, 2007). Capital letters also organize written language into the basic syntactic units called ‘sentences’ – on whose actual existence in spoken language the jury is still out (Halliday, 1989; Miller, 2006). This means that as they learn to read and write, English-speaking children also learn to think about their language in a different way than in speech – in fact learning some of the grammatical features of English through written segmentation. Olson’s script-as-model might be responsible for the discovery – or invention – of phonemes via alphabetical orthographies.2 Phonemes, those context-free representations of sounds which we linguists were taught were the basic units of spoken language, are most probably artifacts of our linguistic mind, paradoxically derived from graphemes: many researchers claim there are no phonemes out there in the physical world, since what we hear and produce are allophones, context-dependent variants on the same central theme. Moreover, on many occasions, phones are actually dropped in speech, while hearer/readers reconstruct them on the basis of written representations (McClelland et al., 2010). One piece of evidence for the critical role of literacy in creating phonemes is provided by Serniclaes, Ventura, Moraisc, and Kolinsky (2005) in a study of identification and discrimination of a /ba–da/ synthetic place-of articulation continuum. What they found was a less precise categorical boundary for phonemes and a stronger lexical bias on the part of illiterate adults when compared with literate adult participants. As these findings are associated

Learning the Script-as-Model

9

with dyslexia, Serniclaes et al. conclude that they result from deprivation in written language. A study of phoneme isolation in Czech and English-speaking children aged 5–6 (Hulme, Caravolas, Ma´lkova´, & Brigstocke, 2005) indicated that children could in fact isolate and identify phonemes for which they did not know the corresponding letter; however, only three Czech children (out of 44 participants) performed phoneme isolation in the absence of knowledge of any of the letter-sound correspondences in the task. Taking yet a different perspective, there is no doubt that phonemes can be construed as the smallest primary units underlying the representation and organization of language: what signifies a lexical or grammatical difference between two units of a specific language – words or morphemes – is the mental abstraction of a phoneme. For example, the difference between the two Hebrew verbs magbil ‘constrains’ and makbil ‘parallels’ is expressed by the voice value of g versus k. But in actual speech production, allophones vary their shape according to their context, and they naturally flow and blend into each other. Thus the difference between magbil and makbil may be lost in speech due to voicing assimilation, and is retrievable only through contextual disambiguation – or else leads to a communications breakdown. Now, the representation of abstract ‘phonemes’ in an alphabetical writing system by different graphemes (in this case, Hebrew ‫ ג‬for g, ‫ ק‬for k) is a neat and stable way of capturing such critical, meaning-determining distinctions. As Olson predicts in his script-asmodel view of written language, phonology and orthography in such cases loop together in literate Hebrew speakers to stabilize lexical and phonological representation: the distinct spellings of the two verbs magbil ‘constrains’ (MGBYL ‫ )מגביל‬and makbil ‘parallels’ (MQBYL ‫ )מקביל‬highlight the phonological property that distinguishes them, and mark the boundaries between the representations of k and g despite their context-enhanced phonological similarity. One may speculate that such insights may have led to the ability to think about phonemes and their configurations and consequently to the birth of phonological science. On the down side, again as the script-as-model predicts, literate adults often think about phonology in terms of the writing system which represents it. Literate yet linguistically naı¨ ve language users mostly refer to spoken word components as letters rather than sounds, and if there is a mismatch between sounds and letters, the latter more often than not win out, as shown by Derwing (1992): When asked to count the number of sounds in the word pitch, study participants took into account the letter T, although it is not part of the phonology of the word. At the same time, even the linguistically sophisticated cannot help but take orthographic information into account in their phonological analyses – as evidenced by the new Hebrew CHILDES format, developed by Bracha Nir of Haifa University. And as we saw above, the ‘deep’ phonology of SPE interfaces with orthographic segments such as the ‘silent’ E at the end of words like save or divine. The possible impact of the orthographic system on spoken production is now under careful psycholinguistic investigation with mixed results. For example, Che´reau, Gaskel, and Dumay (2007) report that phonological overlap

10


(e.g., scheme-gleam) which facilitated target responses was enhanced by orthographic overlap (e.g., dream-gleam) in a number of different experiments; the authors regard this evidence for mandatory orthographic activation during spoken word recognition. This debate continuously rages on, and current research is very interested in the influence of written language on phonological systems (Alario, Perre, Castel, & Ziegler, 2007). However beyond the work of linguists and psycholinguists, the debate is moot: Lay people simply refer to spoken segments in written terminology. Closer to home, in fact at home in Hebrew, the impact of the orthographic system on phonological thinking is more pronounced, given the greater disparity between the Hebrew orthography and its Latin alphabet transcription. I remember that as a linguistics student, I was told that the terms ‘phonology’ and ‘transcription’ hold different senses for scholars coming from different linguistic traditions. The transcription I learned at the linguistics department reflects phonological distinctions, while the transcription taught and used by Hebraist scholars represents historical phonological distinctions no longer valid for native Hebrew speakers but still present in the Hebrew orthography. For example, in the Hebraist tradition, current v would be transcribed as either w or b following Hebrew graphemes – so that official place names on road signs in Israel can be quite misleading to non-Hebrew readers traveling around Israel. The issue here is of course not about right or wrong in transcription – in fact, as presented in the next section, the discussion of different transcription methods reflecting different linguistic levels is a theme central to this book. What I am trying to show is that thinking even about the most tangible aspects of language is enabled by its written – and therefore abstract – form; specifically, that phonological science in all its forms is both engendered and constrained by (alphabetical) writing systems. My interest in the current context is in the linguistic cognition of language users; in that respect, linguistically naı¨ ve speakers alongside linguists and language scholars can and do serve as psycholinguistic informants on the speech-writing tangle.

Levels of Representation: Phonology, Morphology and Orthography This book is concerned with the interface of phonology, morphology, and orthography in Hebrew. As such, I would like the information it presents to be easily accessible to psychologists, linguists, psycholinguists, speech-language pathologists, and educators – both those possessing some familiarity with Hebrew structure and orthography, as well as those who approach the subject from general linguistic, developmental, cognitive or orthography-oriented viewpoints. Following the speech-writing interface exposed in the current chapter and in preparation for the three-way discussion of phonology, morphology and orthography in following chapters, I have adopted three levels of

Levels of Representation: Phonology, Morphology and Orthography

11

transcription. In increasing degrees of abstractness, they link phonological transcription, morphological structure, and Hebrew characters as transparently and clearly as possible, while at the same time following accepted linguistic and psycholinguistic conventions (Berman & Ben-David, 2007; Bolozky, 1997; Schwarzwald, 2001). These levels of representation and consequent conventions adopted here are described and motivated below.

Phonology The shallowest level of representation in this context, closest to actual spoken Hebrew, is phonological. Phonology is the linguistic domain representing knowledge about the sound system of a language, dealing with language-distinctive sound units (phonemes), unit combinations (e.g., syllables) and patterns of combination which play a role in the lexicon and grammar of a language. Phonological segments are represented in this book in italicized broad phonemic transcription, e.g. mazleg ‘fork’. This level of phonological representation, relevant to the topics discussed in this work, is neither too concrete or narrow, on the one hand, nor too broad or ‘‘deep’’, on the other. The main consideration is that it highlights those phonological features which distinguish spoken Hebrew words. Accordingly, the phonological level of representation is not concerned with non-binary phonetic variants or allophones, as they do not distinguish between meaningful units of spoken language. For example, variations on the pronunciation of r or on (the controversial issue of) vowel length in Hebrew are irrelevant to the transcription used here. At the same time, ‘‘deep’’, ‘‘underlying’’ or historical units which have no current psychological reality are also outside our phonological concern. Therefore, gutturals, pharyngeals, historically emphatic, geminate and spirantizing stops, and vowels with different historical origins are all left unmarked in the phonemic transcription of words, following Bolozky (1997). For example, ‘scanner’ would be transcribed as sorek rather than representing the historical emphatic in soreq; and ‘porter’ would be transcribed as sabal rather than marking the historical geminate in sabbal. The glottal stop (orthographic alef) and the voiceless pharyngeal fricative (orthographic ayin) are not marked phonologically at this level: following Bolozky (1999), I only mark their presence in the transition between two vowels, as in ma’amin ‘believes’ or me’utar ‘decorated’. However, this transcription mode is not concrete enough for me to abandon the full representation of h, although in many cases it is omitted in casual speech. The three letters standing for stop/spirant alternants are each represented at this level by two phonological units, e.g., b for ‫ ּב‬and v for ‫ב‬. Socalled ‘final-form’ letters (see below) do not find expression at this level, and thus both ‫ מ‬and its final allograph ‫ ם‬will be rendered as m. Finally, Hebrew consonants which have no direct counterparts in English – the voiceless palatal fricative and the voiceless coronal affricate – are transcribed at this level as sh and ts respectively for easy access by readers with no Hebrew background.

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Three letters have alternative forms with an apostrophe, marking recent loan palatal consonants, e.g., ‫ ז‬with an apostrophe ‫ זי‬is pronounced zˇ. Word stress in native words is marked only when non-ultimate, and therefore words transcribed with no stress mark are stressed on their final syllable, e.g., xatul ‘cat’ vs. ke´lev ‘dog’. This convention is adopted following Berman (1978) and Bolozky (1997), but also in view of a new study of Hebrew stress and syllabic structure based on the analysis of actual speech by Hebrew-speaking adults, showing that most content words in spoken Hebrew are bi-syllabic, and among them, iambic words constitute the majority (Segall, Nir-Sagiv, Kishon-Rabin, & Ravid, 2008). Finally, this phonemic representation reflects the pronunciation of the author, a native speaker of mainstream or ‘standard’ Israeli Hebrew (Bolozky, 1999; Schwarzwald, 2001). Table 1.1 lists Hebrew graphemes with their corresponding phonological forms as described in this section.

Hebrew grapheme ‫א‬ ‫ב‬ ּ ‫ב‬ ‫ג‬ ‫גי‬ ‫ד‬ ‫ה‬ ‫ו‬ ‫ז‬ ‫זי‬ ‫ח‬ ‫ט‬ ‫י‬ ‫ּכ‬ ‫כ‬ ‫ך‬ ‫ל‬ ‫מ‬ ‫ם‬ ‫נ‬ ‫ן‬ ‫ס‬ ‫ע‬ ‫ּפ‬ ‫פ‬ ‫ף‬ ‫צ‬ ‫צי‬ ‫ץ‬ ‫ק‬ ‫ר‬ ‫ש‬ ‫ת‬

Table 1.1 The phonological level of representation Corresponding unit at the phonological level Ø or 0 intervocalically b v g j d h v z zˇ x t y k x x l m m n n s Ø or 0 intervocalically p f f ts cˇ ts k r sh t


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Morphology Morphology is the linguistic domain concerned with the internal structure of words and the ways in which words are related via their internal components, termed morphemes. Lexical morphology (derivation) organizes the lexicon into lemmas (different lexical words), and enables the creation of new lemmas via combinations of derivational morphemes such as Hebrew roots and patterns, stems and suffixes. Grammatical morphology (inflection) deals with paradigms consisting of wordforms created by inflecting a lemma grammatically (e.g., plural marking on nouns), and with the ways syntactic units affect each other via morphology, e.g., number-gender-person agreement on verbs. This level of representation applies only to native Hebrew words. In contrast to the choice of broad, ‘middle-level’ phonemic representation for the phonological representation of words, the transcription of morpheme-level Hebrew (Ravid, 2006), that is, of Semitic roots and patterns as well as of linear affixes, is taken here to reflect a deeper or more abstract level of representation, which is extremely relevant to morphological analysis and orthographic representation. Thus, to preserve the sequence of root radicals as a single morpheme, the voiceless palatal fricative and the voiceless coronal affricate are transcribed within roots as sˇ and c respectively: for example, the word shatil ‘plant’ is based on root sˇ-t-l. For the same reason, root transcription marks phonological stop/spirant alternants by a single stop, so that mixtav ‘letter’, kto´vet ‘address’, and ktuba ‘marriage contract’ all share the root transcribed as k-t-b. Root transcription also reflects the historical semi-vowel or glide origin of root segments which mostly surface as vowels in Modern Hebrew (Chapter 9) – so that the respective roots for imperative verbs kum ‘get up’ and sim ‘put’ would be q-w-m and sˇ-y-m. These vocalic root radicals are extremely important in accounting for the morpho-phonological behavior of words they underlie and in delineating paths of new-word formation and (Ravid, 1990). Morphological root representation moreover includes those guttural, pharyngeal and emphatic radicals which find no expression in the phonological transcription of standard Israeli Hebrew. For example, the root for sorek ‘scanner’ is represented as s-r-q, reflecting the generalization that native words ending in -k (such as orex ‘editor’ based on root ’-r-k) would result in a final surface x. In contrast to the phonological level, the glottal stop and the voiceless pharyngeal fricative, indistinguishable in my (non-Mideastern) Hebrew pronunciation (Ben Tolila, 1984), are distinctly marked in roots, since they cause markedly different morpho-phonological behavior in words (Ravid, 1995). Compare, for example, koret (root q-r-?) ‘she reads’ and kora’at (root q-r-’ ) ‘she tears’. Finally, consonant gemination – reflecting the historical dagesˇ xazak (strong or lene) – is represented here mainly in patterns. For example, nouns davar ‘thing’ and davar ‘mailman’ belong to two phonologically identical yet morphologically distinct noun patterns – CaCaC and geminate CaCCaC, respectively. Their differential historical origins and consequent

14


morphological representation are reflected in their distinct morphophonological behavior: when pluralized to dvarim, davar ‘thing’ omits its first vowel, whereas davarim ‘mailmen’ retains this vowel due to the historically geminate pattern (Ravid & Shlesinger, 2001). Morphological considerations affect this level of transcription in yet more ways. The fact that seven semi-morphemes designating various function elements are written attached to the next word and interface with it morphophonologically is expressed in the transcription conventions adopted here. In most cases, the English gloss also reflects this linkage. For example, the phrase ‘the-house’ is transcribed as ha-baýit, with the hyphens reflecting the fact that the definite article is a separate entity, yet is closely linked to the word it follows (Ravid, 2005). Moreover, to maximize readability, inflectional morphemes are glossed in user-friendly English rather than following strict linguistic conventions – as much as possible. Thus, for example, tikim will be translated as ‘bags’ rather than ‘bag,Pl’. Formal morphological terminology is used only in cases where English does not have a corresponding form – for example, grammatical gender will be marked on pila ‘elephant,Fm’. In specific cases, to demonstrate the sequence of linear morphemes, they are separated by hyphens, e.g., u-vi-sfateýha ‘and-in-lips-hers ¼ and in her lips’. Table 1.2 lists Hebrew graphemes with their corresponding morphological forms as described in this section.

Orthography The deepest or most abstract level of representation used in this work is orthographic, and it comes in two varieties: Hebrew and Latinate. Hebrew orthography consists of a 22-letter alphabet with an ancillary system of 13 vowel diacritics (nikud), which also mark some consonant distinctions such as stop/spirant alternation. Hebrew is written from right to left, either with or without vowel diacritics, as elaborated below. Thus the sentence kotvim ivrit mi-yamin li-smol ‘(they) write Hebrew from-right to-left’ may be written in the non-vocalized (or non-voweled) version as ‫;כותבים עברית מימין לשמאל‬ or in the vocalized version with full vowel and stop/spirant specification as ‫מין‬ ִ ָּ‫מ י‬ ִ ‫ב ִר ית‬ ְ ‫ת בִים ִע‬ ְ ֹ‫שמֹאל כּו‬ ְ ִ‫ל‬. To make Hebrew writing more accessible to non-Hebrew speaker/readers, I use Latin capitals in left-to-right script to mirror Hebrew characters side by side with Hebrew graphemes. Table 1.3 links the Hebrew alphabet with the corresponding Latin characters used to transcribe it in this book. For example, this is the Latinized orthographic version of the above sentence kotvim ivrit mi-yamin li-smol ‘(they) write Hebrew from-right to-left’: KWTBYM 9BRYT MYMYN LSˇMAL ‫כותבים עברית מימין לשמאל‬. This Latinized script, like the Hebrew alphabet itself, represents all historically and morphologically motivated units by uniquely specifying letters which stand for phonologically homophonous



15

Table 1.2 The morphological level of representation Corresponding unit at the morphological level ? b b g j d h w z zˇ h ṭ y k k k l m m n n s 0

p p p c cˇ c q r sˇ t

segments yet carrying distinct morphological roles and consequently designating different lexemes. Thus for example, the homophonous string xika has two meanings and two different spellings: one is ‘waited’, spelled ‫ חיכה‬ĦYKH, while the other is ‘imitated’, spelled ‫ חיקה‬ĦYQH. In this particular case, K and Q, respectively standing for ‫ כ‬and ‫ק‬, not only designate historically distinct phonemes (velar vs. velar emphatic stops), but also exhibit differential morphophonological behavior: while ‫ כ‬K stands for stop/spirant k/x alternants and can serve as both a root and function letter, ‫ ק‬Q always designates the stop k and serves only as a root letter. Moreover, transcription at this level mirrors the exact orthographic vowel representation in the non-voweled Hebrew word and does not add any vowel letter which is not found in the original Hebrew script. Therefore, word-internal e and a will have no corresponding orthographic units at this level of representation. The only non-mirrowed forms at this level of

16



Table 1.3 The orthographic level of representation Corresponding unit at the orthographic level A B B G J D H W Z Zˇ Ħ Ŧ Y K K K L M M N N S 9 P P P C Cˇ C Q R Sˇ T

representation are the five ‘final’ allographs such as ‫ ם‬at word-final position and ‫ מ‬elsewhere. Both regular and final allographs are represented by the same Latin character. In order to transcribe letters designating phonological properties which do not exist in the Latin alphabet such as the voiceless pharyngeal fricative or the historically emphatic coronal, I selected from the Symbol function of Word characters such as Ħ (for ‫ )ח‬or Ŧ (for ‫)ט‬, closely resembling letters standing for phonologically related, less marked segments (in this case, H ‫ ה‬and T ‫ת‬ respectively). In the same spirit, the digit 9 is used to designate the letter ‫ע‬, since it most closely resembles the phonological symbol ‘, standing for the voiced pharyngeal fricative. To orthographically represent the borrowed palatal consonants such as zˇ, I use the palatal symbol over the corresponding letter, e.g., Zˇ ‫זי‬.

References

17

My choice of these symbols does not reflect any claim on my part regarding a ‘correct’ transcription of Hebrew letters or sounds: it derives from my wish to be as practical and as coherent as possible in telling my story, and at the same time to adhere to scientific principles in this endeavor of representing the phonologymorphology-orthography interface to both my non-Hebrew and Hebrew readership. In transcribing spoken English words (or words in other languages), I do not adopt the same system – in line with the typological perspective of this work. Rather, I use the standard English orthography, unless focus is on particular phonological features of the word. When focusing on English orthography, written English words will be spelled in capitals. Thus, spoken (or general) English daughter, and written – DAUGHTER. Having established and motivated the three levels of representation with the conventions for marking them, I now turn to the main business of this book: A psycholinguistic model of how Hebrew spelling knowledge is learned and processed in interaction with morphological and phonological knowledge. Following a cross-linguistic analysis of the phonological, morphological and lexical underpinnings of spelling in general, the bulk of the book chapters are dedicated to the psycholinguistics of Hebrew spelling.

Notes 1. Chafe (1994) notes, however, that current (psycho)linguistic theory is based on what he terms ‘contrived’ or ‘unnatural’ data’ – in fact, made-up sentences typical of written language (if at all) such as The happy boy eats ice cream or He is the man to whom I wonder who knew which book to give (p. 17). In Chafe’s words ‘‘The unnaturalness of the data on which so much of psychology and linguistics relies can be highly disturbing to anyone who is sensitive to what language is really like’’ (p. 16). This discordance between declared focus on speech as the primary form of language while relying on typically written examples characterizes modern linguistic thought, and in my opinion, can be explained by Olson’s (1994) script-as-model view of linguistic cognition (pp. 260–261), as discussed below. 2. See Perfetti and Ying Liu (2005), for a detailed discussion of the difference between writing systems, orthographies, and scripts. Since this book concerns the Hebrew orthography, which is an alphabetic writing system, and does not compare it with writing systems based on other principles, I mainly use the term orthography in presenting and discussing the Hebrew spelling system. This is because in the context of this book, orthography refers to the notational system that encodes a language. Having said that, I do make occasional use of the term script in this book, not always in the sense designated by Perfetti.

References Alario, F.-X., Perre, L., Castel, C., & Ziegler, J. C. (2007). The role of orthography in speech production revisited. Cognition, 102, 464–475. Anglin, J. M. (1993). Vocabulary development: A morphological analysis. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 58, 10.

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Ashkenazi, O., & Ravid, D. (1998). Children’s understanding of linguistic humor: An aspect of metalinguistic awareness. Current Psychology of Cognition, 17, 367–387. Ben Tolila, Y. (1984). The pronunciation of Hebrew: Social phonology. Jerusalem: Hebrew University [in Hebrew]. Berman, R. A., & Ben-David, A. (2007). Chapter 44: Hebrew. In S. McLeod (Ed.), The international perspective on speech acquisition (pp. 437–456). Clifton Park, NY: Thomas Delmar Learning. Berman, R. A. (1978). Modern Hebrew structure. Tel Aviv: University Publishing Projects. Berman, R. A. (1997). Preliterate knowledge of language. In C. Pontecorvo (Ed.), Writing development: An interdisciplinary view (pp. 61–76). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Berman, R. A. (2004). Between emergence and mastery: The long developmental route of language acquisition. In R. Berman (Ed.), Language development across childhood and adolescence (pp. 9–34). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Berman, R. A. (2005). Introduction: Developing discourse stance in different text types and languages. Journal of Pragmatics, 37, 105–124. Berman, R. A. (2007). Developing language knowledge and language use across adolescence. In E. Hoff & M. Shatz (Eds.), Handbook of language development (pp. 346–367). London: Blackwell Publishing. Berman, R. A. (2008). The psycholinguistics of developing text construction. Journal of Child Language, 35, 735–771. Berman, R. A., Ragnarsdo´ttir, H., & Stro¨mqvist, S. (2002). Discourse stance. Written Language and Literacy, 5(2), 255–290. Berman, R. A., & Ravid, D. (2008). Becoming a literate language user: Oral and written text construction across adolescence. In D. R. Olson & N. Torrance (Eds.), Cambridge handbook of literacy (pp. 92–111). New York: Cambridge University Press. Berman, R. A., & Slobin, D. I. (1994). Relating events in narrative: A crosslinguistic developmental study. Hillsdale: Erlbaum. Biber, D. (1998). Variations across speech and writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bolozky, S. (1997). Israeli Hebrew phonology. In A. S. Kaye & P. T. Daniels (Eds.), Phonologies of Asia and Africa (pp. 287–311). Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. Bolozky, S. (1999). Measuring productivity in word formation: The case of Israeli Hebrew. Leiden: Brill. Brown, R. (1973). A first language: The early stages. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bybee, J. L. (1985). Morphology: A study of the relation between meaning and form. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Bybee, J. L., & Slobin, D. I. (1982). Rules and schemas in the development and use of the English past tense. Language, 58, 265–289. Chafe, W. (1994). Discourse, consciousness, and time: The flow and displacement of conscious experience in speaking and writing. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Che´reau, C., Gaskel, M. G., & Dumay, N. (2007). Reading spoken words: Orthographic effects in auditory priming. Cognition, 102, 341–360. Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Chomsky, N., & Halle, M. (1968). The sound pattern of English. New York: Harper & Row. Derrida, J. (1974). Of grammatology (G. C. Spivak, Trans.). Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Derwing, B. L. (1992). Orthographic aspects of linguistic competence. In P. Downing, S. Lima, & M. Noonan (Eds.), The linguistics of literacy (pp. 193–210). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Halliday, M. A. K. (1988). On the language of physical science. In M. Ghadessy (Ed.), Registers of written English: Situational factors and linguistic features (pp. 162–178). London: Pinter.

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Halliday, M. A. K. (1989). Spoken and written language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hulme, C., Caravolas, M., Ma´lkova´, G., & Brigstocke, S. (2005). Phoneme isolation ability is not simply a consequence of letter-sound knowledge. Cognition, 97, B1–B11. Jaffre´, J.-P. (1997). From writing to orthography: The functions and limits of the notion of system. In C. A. Perfetti, L. Rieben, & M. Fayol (Eds.), Learning to spell: Research, theory and practice across languages (pp. 3–20). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Karmiloff-Smith, A. (1986). From meta-processes to conscious access: Evidence from children’s metalinguistic and repair data. Cognition, 23, 95–147. Kellogg, R. T. (2008). Training writing skills: A cognitive developmental perspective. Journal of Writing Research, 1, 1–26. Kuczaj, S. A. (1977). The acquisition of regular and irregular past tense forms. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behaviour, 16, 589–600. Lyons, J. (1968). Introduction to theoretical linguistics. New York: Cambridge University Press. Marcus, G. F., Pinker, S., Ullman, M., Hollander, M., Rosen, T. J., & Xu, F. (1992). Overregularization in language acquisition. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 57 (4, Serial No. 228). Maslen, R. J. C., Theakston, A. L., Lieven, E. V. M., & Tomasello, M. (2004). A dense corpus study of past tense and plural overregularization in English. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 47, 1–15. McClelland, J. L., Botvinick, M. M., Noelle, D. C., Plaut, D. C., Rogers, T. T., Seidenberg, M. S., et al. (2010). Letting structure emerge: Connectionist and dynamical systems approaches to cognition. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 14, 348–356. Miller, J. (2006). Spoken and written English. In B. Aarts & A. Mccahon (Eds.), Handbook of English linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell. Nippold, M. A. (2007). Later language development: School-age children, adolescents, and young adults. Austin, TX: Pro-Ed. Nippold, M. A., & Taylor, C. L. (2002). Judgments of idiom familiarity and transparency: A comparison of children and adolescents. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 45, 384–391. Olson, D. (1994). The world on paper. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ong, W. J. (2002). Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge. Perfetti, C. A., & Liu, Y. (2005). Orthography to phonology and meaning: Comparisons across and within writing systems? Reading and Writing, 18, 193–210. Ravid, D. (1990). Internal structure constraints on new-word formation devices in Modern Hebrew. Folia Linguistica, 24, 289–346. Ravid, D. (1995). Language change in child and adult Hebrew: A psycholinguistic perspective. New York: Oxford University Press. Ravid, D. (2004). Later lexical development in Hebrew: Derivational morphology revisited. In R. A. Berman (Ed.), Language development across childhood and adolescence: Psycholinguistic and crosslinguistic perspectives (pp. 53–82). Amsterdam: Benjamins. Ravid, D. (2005). Hebrew orthography and literacy. In R. M. Joshi & P. G. Aaron (Eds.), Handbook of orthography and literacy (pp. 339–363). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Ravid, D. (2006). Word-level morphology: A psycholinguistic perspective on linear formation in Hebrew nominals. Morphology, 16, 127–148. Ravid, D., & Avidor, A. (1998). Acquisition of derived nominals in Hebrew: Developmental and linguistic principles. Journal of Child Language, 25, 229–266. Ravid, D., & Berman, R. (2010). Developing noun phrase complexity at school-age: A textembedded cross-linguistic analysis. First Language, 30, 3–26. Ravid, D., & Berman, R. A. (2006). Information density in the development of spoken and written narratives in English and Hebrew. Discourse Processes, 41, 117–149.

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Ravid, D., & Cahana-Amitay, D. (2005). Verbal and nominal expression in narrating conflict situations in Hebrew. Journal of Pragmatics, 37, 157–183. Ravid, D., & Levie, R. (2010). Adjectives in the development of text production: Lexical, morphological and syntactic analyses. First Language, 30, 27–55. Ravid, D., & Shlesinger, Y. (2001). Vowel reduction in modern Hebrew: Traces of the past and current variation. Folia Linguistica, 35, 371–397. Ravid, D., & Tolchinsky, L. (2002). Developing linguistic literacy: a comprehensive model. Journal of Child Language, 29, 419–448. Ravid, D., & Zilberbuch, S. (2003). Morpho-syntactic constructs in the development of spoken and written Hebrew text production. Journal of Child Language, 30, 1–24. Schachter, P. (2007). Parts-of-speech systems. In T. Shopen (Ed.), Language typology and syntactic description, Vol. I, Clause structure (2nd ed., pp. 1–60). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schiff, R., Ravid, D., & Levy-Shimon, S. (2011). Children’s command of plural and possessive marking on Hebrew nouns: A comparison of obligatory vs. optional inflections. Journal of Child Language, 38, 433–454. Schwarzwald, O. R. (2001). Modern Hebrew. Mu¨nchen: Lincom Europa. Segall, O., Nir-Sagiv, B., Kishon-Rabin, L., & Ravid, D. (2008). Prosodic patterns in Hebrew child directed speech. Journal of Child Language, 35, 1–28. Serniclaes, W., Ventura, P., Moraisc, J., & Kolinsky, R. (2005). Categorical perception of speech sounds in illiterate adults. Cognition, 98, B35–B44. Slobin, D. I. (1987). Thinking for speaking (pp. 435–444). Proceedings of the thirteenth annual meeting of the Berkeley linguistics society, Berkeley, CA. Slobin, D. I. (1996). From ‘thought and language’ to ‘thinking for speaking’. In J. J. Gumperz & S. C. Levinson (Eds.), Rethinking linguistic relativity (pp. 70–96). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Slobin, D. I. (2003). Language and thought online: Cognitive consequences of linguistic relativity. In D. Gentner & S. Goldin-Meadow (Eds.), Language in mind: Advances in the investigation of language and thought (pp. 157–191). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Slobin, D. I. (Ed.). (1985). The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Stro¨mqvist, S. (2006). Three metaphors of text-production. Paper presented at SIG Writing 10th International Conference, 20 September, University of Antwerp, Edegem. Theakston, A., Lieven, E., Pine, J., & Rowland, C. (2002). Going, going, gone: The acquisition of the verb ‘‘go’’. Journal of Child Language, 29, 783–811. Tolchinsky, L. (2004). The nature and scope of later language development. In R. A. Berman (Ed.), Language development across childhood and adolescence (pp. 233–247). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Tomasello, M. (2003). Constructing a language: A usage-based approach. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University.

Chapter 2

The Psycholinguistics of Spelling: Phonology and Beyond

When I was seven, my father, Yehoshua Diskin, taught me the Latin orthography, and with it – though I did not realize it at the time – inceptive awareness of the complex relationship between spoken and written language. His instruction consisted of phonemic isolation and explicitly relating English graphemes to phonemes, on the one hand, and Hebrew graphemes, on the other: ‘‘B is bet, it sounds b; E says e, like serey [a diacritic marking the vowel e]’’. He described his invented script as kotvim ma she-shom’im ‘(you) write what you hear’ – what we would now call a transparent or shallow orthography. When he went on reserve service away from home for a long time, I wrote him letters where my Hebrew was transcribed into the Latin script he had taught me. When we started learning English in 6th grade, I was already proficient in my father’s Latin-transcribed Hebrew – and soon discovered how vastly it differed from actual English spelling. My solution was to learn the spelling of English words via phonemic translation of the English graphemes into ‘transparent’ spoken strings such as te’akher as a mnemonic for English TEACHER (over-pronunciation: Drake & Ehri, 1984). This worked well for me, especially for the complex and, at that level of knowledge, often idiosyncratic spelling of high-frequency, everyday words such as daughter and because. But with time, and having gained a larger English vocabulary, I came to rely more and more on ‘‘visualizing’’ complex words, and on orthographic patterns such as QU or EI, on explicitly linking specific patterns with lexical items or constructions (such as THERE vs. THEIR, or IT’S vs. ITS). And eventually I discovered some stable patterns relating English phonology to morphology and orthography, such as KEEP, SLEEP, SWEEP/KEPT, SLEPT, SWEPT; DEPENDENT, RESIDENT, SILENT/DEPENDENCE, RESIDENCE, SILENCE. Current studies of how English spelling is learned indicate that these are some of the strategies native speakers employ in learning to spell English words (Holmes & Malone, 2004). I count myself among the growing number of psychologists and linguists who have now established the study of spelling and its acquisition as a mainstream domain of inquiry. The questions posed within this framework are psycholinguistic in nature, probing into the essence of spelling as linguistic learning, representation and processing, always at the interface of spoken and D.D. Ravid, Spelling Morphology, Literacy Studies 3, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-0588-8_2, Ó Springer ScienceþBusiness Media, LLC 2012

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2 The Psycholinguistics of Spelling: Phonology and Beyond

written language. We ask similar questions to the ones posed in the field of (oral) language acquisition: What is the relation between comprehension (reading) and production (spelling)? How do forms (phonology and spelling) relate to meaning and grammatical role (lexical and morpho-syntactic function)? Is spelling learned via a single associative-memory mechanism constructing linguistic knowledge (Booth & Waxman, 2008; McClelland et al., 2010), or is it based on a parallel mechanism of rules and ‘‘words’’ a` la Pinker (1999)? What is the role of linguistic knowledge in learning to spell? What is the impact of target language and target orthography on spelling acquisition? How universal are spelling strategies? While the main focus of this book is on the role of morphology in learning to spell Hebrew, the purpose of this chapter is to embed this specific inquiry in current cross-linguistic research and a general psycholinguistic model of spelling acquisition and knowledge.

Spelling in Psychological and Cognitive Science Until very recently, it was not only the linguists who excluded written language, including orthographic knowledge, from their designated arena, but also psychologists. Perfetti (2007) demonstrates how little attention – in fact, no attention at all – was paid to spelling as a psycholinguistic domain less than 15 years ago in the 34 chapters of the Handbook of Psycholinguistics (Gernsbacher, 1994). Below, I venture some thoughts on why spelling had been ignored as a cognitive domain up to the last decade. The notion of ‘‘spelling’’ in fact relates to two levels or dimensions that need to be accessed in the written mode of Language. The initial level has to do with cracking the grapho-phonemic code in alphabetical orthographies – and learning, for example, that B (Hebrew ‫ )ב‬designates b. The pathways that are created along the phonology-orthography axis at this phase delineate coarse-grained networks between phonological segments and graphemes that are adequate for reading: For example, three Hebrew letters – A ‫א‬, H ‫ה‬, and 9 ‫ע‬, either independently or in combination with one of three different diacritic marks (qamats ָ pattah ַ and hataf-pattah ֲ), all designate the vowel a. At this level we might say that the system has achieved interpretability for the child or that she has learned to read – the type of psycholinguistic knowledge we term comprehension.1 However, in very few, if any, orthographies, is this initial knowledge adequate for ‘spelling’ at the secondary and more pertinent level necessary for the production of communicative writing. This secondary level requires finergrained mappings and hence precision in selecting one grapheme over another (Holmes & Babauta, 2005) – say, A ‫ א‬over H ‫ ה‬in designating a. This is what is usually referred to as ‘correct’ or ‘canonical’ spelling. A leading view of spelling at this level perceives it as mainly representing phonology by orthographic units (Goswami, 2002). From this perspective,

Spelling in Psychological and Cognitive Science

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alphabetical spelling systems represent two kinds of relationships with phonology: One type is the regular and transparent phoneme-grapheme relationship expressed in words such as English STEP, the spelling of which can be easily inferred from the application of a rule. Another is the irregular, less consistent and transparent, sometimes idiosyncratic relationship requiring some rote learning, as in the case of English THEIR or Hebrew hu ‘he’ spelled HWA ‫הוא‬. A major source of irregular spelling comes from homophony – where phonological segments (from phoneme to [sub]syllables to words) can be written by two (or more) different graphemes. An example of word homophony would be English THEIR/THERE. As examples of homophonous segments see the Hebrew consonant t which can be spelled either by T ‫ ת‬or Ŧ ‫ ;ט‬or the Dutch diphthong ey which is spelled either as EI or IJ (Gillis & Ravid, 2006). Viewed in this light, spelling is either a question of rule application in transcribing the spoken word or rote learning it as an idiosyncratic amalgam. I must admit this binary view of phonology-orthography relationships does not make spelling a very appealing domain for cognitive research, since it would lack explanatory adequacy for Hebrew. Much research has shown that spelling knowledge is more complex than the regular/irregular split. The secondary level of ‘correct spelling’ – revealingly, what is nowadays aptly termed ‘orthographic’ or ‘morphological’ spelling – designates a complex architecture relating phonology, morpho-syntax and lexicon with orthography. It represents a knowledge system which relies on mining patterns and generalizations from a vast amount of seemingly unrelated spoken and written language data (Landauer & Dumais, 1997; Smith & Yu, 2008; Yu & Smith, 2007). This book is about showing what guides mining spelling patterns in Hebrew, and how precision in spelling is enabled by achieving coherent and stable representations of orthographic and linguistic segments and establishing clear and consistent pathways linking them. The following example of a plausible grammatical agreement error by an adult Hebrew learner (a new immigrant to Israel) illustrates this configuration, demonstrating the role of smaller and larger networks relating orthographic patterns to morpho-phonological knowledge in gaining command of spelling. We need to note beforehand that Hebrew adjectives (which follow the head noun in the noun phrase) agree with nouns in number and gender. When trying to express the phrase ‘important information’ (Hebrew word order would render this information important) this learner said meida xashuva (note the final a) instead of correct meida xashuv. That is, he treated masculine noun meida as feminine and subsequently marked feminine agreement on the adjective. This is because meida ends with a stressed a, and thus resembles feminine nouns such as mida ‘measure’. What the learner did not possess was the knowledge network that would let him know that despite superficial phonological similarity, the final segment in masculine meida ‘information’ is inherently different from the final a in feminine mida ‘measure’. The difference is made explicit in the written form of mida (spelled MYDH ‫ – )מידה‬ending with

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feminine H ‫ ה‬on – which contrasts with the spelling of meida (MYD9 ‫)מידע‬, which does not end with H ‫ ה‬because it is not a feminine noun. Both specific and general morphological knowledge would inform a literate Hebrew speaker/writer in making a decision on gender agreement in this context. Specific knowledge would relate noun meida to root y-d-’ ‘know’, spelled YD9 ‫ידע‬, and hence to the fact that the last segment of meida is part of this root. This knowledge is extracted from a lexical inventory of the morphological family based on root ‫ידע‬, such as yada ‘know’ (spelled YD9 ‫)ידע‬2 hodı´’a ‘inform’ (HWDY9 ‫)הודיע‬, ye´da ‘knowledge’ (YD9 ‫)ידע‬, moda ‘acquaintance’ (MWD9 ‫)מודע‬, mada ‘science’ (MD9 ‫)מדע‬, moda’a ‘notice’ (MWD9H ‫)מודעה‬, yadu’a ‘known’ (YDW9 ‫)ידוע‬, or meyuda ‘informed’ (MYWD9 ‫)מיודע‬. General morpho-phonological knowledge would inform of the fact that words spelled with 9 ‫ ע‬typically attract the low vowel a at word final position. This knowledge is extracted from similarly structured masculine items containing 9 ‫ע‬-final roots, such as verbs hirgı´’a ‘calm’ (based on root r-g-’), spelled HRGY9 ‫הרגיע‬, nouns masa ‘journey’ (n-s-’), spelled MS9 ‫ מסע‬and ne´ta ‘plant’ (n-t¸-’), spelled NŦ9 ‫ ;נטע‬and adjective mutsa ‘proposed’ (y-c-’), spelled MWC9 ‫מוצע‬. All these ‫–ע‬final words end with (stressed and unstressed) a, which does not designate feminine gender. Taken together, these two converging networks – the morphological family, relating meida to other words based on the same root, and morpho-phonological generalizations based on phonologically similar items with similar roots – provide information specifying a small but consistent morpho-phonological class of ‫ע‬-final masculine items which superficially resemble the vastly larger H ‫ה‬-final feminine class.3 In experienced and literate speaker/writers of Hebrew, this knowledge motivates and relates the choice of 9 ‫ ע‬over H ‫ ה‬in spelling meida and concomitantly – in rejecting the option of the false feminine adjective agreement. When deprived of this elaborate linguistic infrastructure relating items across different classes and categories, all that remains of ‘correct’ spelling is the need to pay attention to spelling meida with ‫ ע‬9 rather than ‫ ה‬H – to what is perceived by those who ignore the spelling-morphology axis as petty and trivial nitpicking.4 In the same vein, what does it matter whether we spell hoped with one P and hopped with two P’s? Unless re-syllabification and vowel quality are taken into account, the number of P’s indeed seems like nitpicking. Or why shouldn’t we spell the Hebrew tense/person future prefix t- by either T ‫ ת‬or Ŧ ‫– ט‬ as they both stand for homophonous t? In fact, unless we understand the fundamentally different morphological roles of these two letters – why shouldn’t we do away with all homophonous Hebrew graphemes and abolish the whole cumbersome and boring issue? Viewed in this light, it is no wonder the domain of spelling used to be a ‘‘poor relation’’ not only in linguistics, but also in psychological science, which seeks to uncover the architecture of cognition. Spelling, up to recent times, was a topic best relegated to school curricula and spelling bees, to educators who had the time and energy to devote to crossing T’s and dotting I’s, a matter of educational relevance that does not have much to teach us about the mind.

Spelling as Language

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At the same time that spelling constituted a non-issue in cognitive science, it was also rather distasteful to another school of thought in educational psychology – perhaps related to what is termed the ‘‘Whole Language’’ approach, which does not favor linguistic analysis in general.5 Devoid of its systematic psycholinguistic underpinnings, correct spelling was designated an arbitrary convention dictated by social custom. From this perspective, one spelling pattern is not erroneous and another correct, since there is no underlying motivation for spelling words this way or other; the ‘correct’ form is simply dictated by some powers-that-be or derives from arbitrary historical factors upheld by same powers. Such a framework holds that any possible phonetically interpretable string which yields the same reading is ‘legal’, and that children’s phonetic spellings are in a sense ‘better’ than conventional spelling because they are more regular – as it is just a matter of ‘who’s in charge’ to tell us what’s correct. This perspective in a sense refuses to face up to the linguistic aspects of spelling and to the impact on language typology on spelling. This kind of thinking leaves no room for systematic generalizations underlying spelling patterns, such as the fact that the Hebrew letter Tet spelled Ŧ (Hebrew ‫ )ט‬only stands for root radicals, while Taf (T, ‫ )ת‬can designate both root and affix morphemes – most notably the latter. Ignoring such generalizations not only undermines the linguistic platform that organizes Hebrew spelling and motivates its acquisition: it also disregards similar organization of spelling patterns in other languages, as well as methods for teaching spelling explicitly while relying on such morphological organization in English, for example (Nunes & Bryant, 2006). The purpose of this book is to analyze the systematic nature of the relationship between linguistic knowledge and spelling in Hebrew, and to provide an explanatory account of how spelling knowledge is learned. Two major premises underlie this account: one, the linguistic nature of spelling and its acquisition; and two, how typology impacts on the way spelling is learned in different languages.

Spelling as Language This book is theoretically grounded in both linguistic and psychological science: In linguistics, I am committed to the schools of cognitive and functional linguistics (Langacker, 1990; Slobin, 2001), regarding linguistic form and function as related and anchored in the encyclopedic architecture of cognition. From a psycholinguistic perspective, my theoretical stance belongs with statistical-learning (Soderstrom, Conwell, Feldman, & Morgan, 2009) connectionist and emergentist approaches to language (and other domains of) acquisition and processing (Elman, 2011; McClelland et al., 2010), which view categories of knowledge as emerging from the interface of constantly changing general learning mechanisms with incoming input (Mariscal, 2009). According to this view, linguistic knowledge is acquired, organized and represented in

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speaker/writers in constant stochastic interaction with input (Bybee, 2006; Karmiloff-Smith, 1992; Tomasello, 2003), and is used in various contextappropriate communicative settings (Clark, 1996), including the newlyinvestigated instant messaging (Varnhagen et al., 2010). Linguistic units and patterns are detected in the input, and organize into hierarchical categorial systems under constant environmental pressure as a function of the differential character of the input data at any given point in time (McClelland & Patterson, 2002; Pelucchi, Hay, & Saffran, 2009; Saffran, 2003). The quality of the representational system emerging from this process and its learning efficiency derive from the interface of a number of psycholinguistic factors such as item, category and system frequency (Baayen, 2003), the transparency of the link between form and meaning or function, the regularity and consistency of the link, and degree of resemblance among items and categories (Plunkett & Bandelow, 2006). Learning is non-linear, sometimes gradual, sometimes occurring in fits and spurts, but always guided by development (Elman, 2003, 2005). These models have been successfully applied to explaining the acquisition of spoken language in infants, on the one hand (Elman, 2005; Smith & Yu, 2008), and to the acquisition and processing of reading, on the other (Hutzler, Ziegler, Perry, Wimmer, & Zorzi, 2004; Landauer & Dumais, 1997). Recently, Aaron and Joshi (2006) constructed a systematic argument for the claim that written language shares many features with ‘natural’ spoken language, including adaptive value and evolution over time. From a different perspective, new studies of neuroimaging clearly show the durable changes made in the developing brain by the acquisition of literacy, indicating that reading ability is a lasting new specialization of the brain – a specialization for orthographic print (Maurer, Brem, Bucher, & Brandeis, 2005). This evidence-based conceptual framework of the linguistic nature of written language is extended here to include spelling knowledge and the stochastic principles of language acquisition to apply to spelling development (Pollo, Kessler, & Treiman, 2009; Treiman & Kessler, 2006). For example, in a paper combining empirical experimentation and corpus analysis Sandra (2010) shows that spelling completely regular homophonous verbs in Dutch is strongly affected by frequency factors, concluding that this phenomenon ‘‘can be captured by any model that automatically detects correspondences between phonological and orthographic representations of full forms, irrespective of the size and the linguistic status of the units involved in these correspondences. Such a model could be of the connectionist type or belong to the family of analogical processing models’’ (p. 442).

A Typological View of Spelling Development A prominent feature of language that is known to impact on its acquisition and processing is language typology (Croft, 1990; Cysouw, 2005). Crosslinguistic research has demonstrated the powerful impact of target-language typology on

A Typological View of Spelling Development

27

the process of acquisition from early preschool age in a range of domains, revealing that from very early on children are sensitive to the ‘typological imperatives’ of their language. That is, even very young children recognize ‘where the action is at’, so to speak, in the input language (Berman, 1986). Recently Slobin has developed the idea of typological bootstrapping in language acquisition (2001, pp. 441–442), showing how competing forces in the history of each language bring about its particular typological character. Children exposed to input from a specific language develop in the natural course of language acquisition what Slobin calls ‘explanatory systems’ of their language, which direct them inexorably towards typologically plausible patterns of conceptual categorization and organization, lexicalization and grammaticization. Viewed within the current conceptual framework, I see typological impact as the reflection of a robust architecture of systematic relations in the linguistic input, which affects the choice of pathways taken by learners. In other words, children’s linguistic learning is shaped by statistical co-occurrence formfunction patterns detected in their language. The current analysis extends the investigation of the typological imperative to the domain of written language as a notational system (Ravid & Tolchinsky, 2002). Under this view, children learning to read and spell carry over the job of data mining from spoken into written language. This in fact involves two concurrent tasks: identifying units and systematic patterns in the orthography, and mapping them onto relevant units and patterns in spoken language. In doing that, children are guided by the same time of environmental pressure – or statistical systematicities – as in learning spoken language. The typological impact is compounded and enhanced in the new, synergistic knowledge system that emerges from mapping spoken onto written language. In such contexts, the data-mining mechanisms described by Smith and Yu (2008, p. 1565) would make use of the complexity in natural learning environments to keep track of multiple co-occurrences of different units, to ‘‘evaluate the regularities in the data set . . . and determine the underlying mappings. Such mechanisms could even benefit from increased complexity in the data set’’. I think it’s a fair description of how complex spelling systems, such as that of Hebrew, are learned. Against this background, the typological view of spelling development designates three knowledge domains necessary to spelling acquisition in a particular language with an alphabetical orthography: how phonological segments map onto graphemes; the specific properties of the orthographic system; and the nature of the grammatical – i.e., morphological and syntactic – segments represented by it. In order to acquire mature knowledge of an orthography, a learner has to be proficient in each of these different domains, to construct their cognitive representations and be able to retrieve them at will, and to map this knowledge onto the specific orthography being learned. The typological traits of the language and the orthographic system being learnt determine the differential prominence of each of the three domains.

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Phonology Phonology underlies learning to read and write in widely divergent writing systems (Wang, Perfetti, & Liu, 2005), and is critical in alphabetic orthographies, which require their learners to plot out and map grapheme-phoneme pairs (Friend & Olson, 2008; Goswami, 1999). According to Bekebrede, van der Leij, and Share (2009), ‘‘phonological processing is a universal subskill of reading an alphabetic language, independent of orthographic complexity’’. Mastering this principle is termed by Olson (1994, p. 263) ‘an intellectual achievement’ whereby the child construes the graphic model as a model of speech, a view now accepted in American educational circles (Ritchey, 2008). According to this view, phonological representations do not exist explicitly in the child’s mind before the onset of literacy: It is the interaction with an alphabetical notational system that creates such cognitive representations. Interestingly, once children have broken the grapho-phonemic cipher, their phonological representations may be more accurate than those of adults: they are less misled by orthographic features than adults (Treiman & Cassar, 1997), as predicted by Olson’s script-as-model. Acquiring explicit phonological representations is a protracted process which involves the gradual extraction of abstract and discrete phonological segments from online continuous and co-articulated speech (Cheung, Chen, Lai, Wong, & Hills, 2001; Durgunoglu & Oney, 2000). But as early as ages 4 and 5, children’s phonological categorization abilities are causally related to their progress in literacy development – reading and spelling, in a wide array of typologically diverse languages with alphabetical orthographies such as Arabic (Azzam, 1993; Mohamed, Elbert, & Landerl, 2010; Saiegh-Haddad, 2004, 2007), English (Bradley & Bryant, 1983; Snowling, 2001; Wagner, Torgeson, & Rashotte, 1994), Dutch (Notenboom & Reitsma, 2007), Finnish (Lehtonen & Bryant, 2004), French (Casalis & Louis-Alexandre, 2000; Sprenger-Charolles, Siegel, & Bećhennec, 1998), Hebrew (Berent, Shimron, & Vaknin, 2001; Cohen-Mimran, 2009; Levin & Korat, 1993; Share, 1999), Persian (Rahbari, Senechal, & Arab-Moghaddam, 2007), Portuguese (Sucena, Castro, & Seymour, 2009), Swedish (Lundberg, Olofsson, & Wall, 1980), or Turkish (Babayig˘it & Stainthorp, 2010). Phonological awareness has been shown to impact on spelling knowledge even in non-alphabetic writing systems, such as the Japanese Kana (Goetry, Urbain, Morais, & Kolinsky, 2005) and the alphasyllabary orthography of Korean (Kim, 2010; Kim & Petscher, 2011). A study of Portuguese illiterate adults showed they had a less precise categorical boundary and a stronger lexical bias than literate adults, which the authors regard as a consequence of written language deprivation (Serniclaes, Ventura, Moraisc, & Kolinsky, 2005). As in oral language acquisition, general or universal principles underlie initial attempts at mapping phonology to orthography. For example, beginner spellers of the typologically divergent English and Kiswahili find consonant

Orthographic Properties

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clusters with nasals hard to represent (Alcock & Ngorosho, 2007; Treiman & Bourassa, 2000). And as in oral language learning, the type of system being learned crucially impacts on its development from early on.

Orthographic Properties The principle that organizes all alphabetical writing systems is the graphophonemic relationship, whereby phonological units are represented by graphic symbols. Beyond that, different alphabetic orthographies are governed by an array of internal principles and consistencies that have to be figured out by learners (Byrne, 1996; Treiman, 2005; Treiman & Cassar, 1997). ArabMoghaddam and Seńećhal (2001) examined the role of phonological and orthographic skills in reading and spelling among bilingual Persian-English children (Grade 2 and 3). They showed that orthographic skills were a better predictor of reading than were phonological skills, and that orthographic skills rather than phonological skills accounted for unique variance in Persian spelling (Rahbari, Senechal, & Arab-Moghaddam, 2007). A study of children’s ability to spell lower- and upper-case English letters (Treiman & Kessler, 2004) likewise shows that spelling depends on more than phonology: even kindergartners’ spelling indicates non-random knowledge of case stemming from spelling their own names; and while young spellers do not yet make grammatical generalizations about proper nouns and sentence-initial position, they can make some generalizations from upper- to lower-case letters, especially if these are included in their own names, and if the upper- to lower-case letters share form (e.g., p and P). Directionality. In most alphabetic orthographies, writing flows from the top to the bottom of the page, but orthographies may differ in writing direction. The Greek alphabet and its successors (the Roman and Cyrillic alphabets, for example) are written from left to right, while Semitic orthographies, such as Arabic and Hebrew, are written from right-to-left (Coulmas, 1989). Writing phonology. The fact that alphabetical orthographies adhere to the grapho-phonemic principle does not mean that in psycholinguistic terms they all rely on phonemes – consonants and vowels – as the minimal units of representation. Different orthographies highlight different grains of phonological and/or orthographic units, and the kind of segments prominently represented in the orthography relates to language typology. Thus, for example, Liow and Lee (2004) show that for children learning to spell the predictable and transparent orthography of Malay, the syllable is a more prominent phonological segment than the phoneme. For English, the grain size and the function of the typical segment is again a function of the phonology-orthography interface: English highlights a sharp distinction between consonants and vowels, focusing grain size on distinct graphemes, but at the same time, system opacity leads to heavy reliance on orthographic sequences such as CEI, LL or QU (Kessler &

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Treiman, 2003), which combine phonological and orthographic properties. And in French, Kandel, He´rault, Grosjacques, Lambert, and Fayol (2009) show that the syllable is perceived as an orthographic unit. Hebrew provides yet another example of how the typological features of the target language affect the spelling-phonology interface. Like English, Hebrew has an alphabetical orthography, but the distinction between consonants and vowels is less sharp: One of the most important characteristics of the Semitic orthographies of Arabic and Hebrew is that they over-represent consonants – probably because of the centrality of the Semitic consonantal root – and underrepresent vowels (Coulmas, 1989; Shapira, 2001). Another contributing characteristic of Hebrew is structural constraints on its syllable structure, favoring simplex syllables and disfavoring consonant clusters, with the additional impact of typical pattern structures such as CVCVC (e.g., the Qal pattern CaCaC) or CVCCVC (e.g., the instrument pattern maCCeC) (Ravid, 1990). Consequently, the minimal written unit in Hebrew lies between the two poles of English written segments – it is neither a consonant or a vowel, nor an orthographic sequence, but rather the (sub)syllable CV, as in G ‫ ג‬standing for either ga or ge. Given pattern structure, the CVC segment is preferred mostly in word final position (Bar-On & Ravid, 2011). Word demarcation. From a different perspective, a neat reminder of the privileged status of lexical units in cognition is the way alphabetical orthographies demarcate written words. Thus, alphabetical orthographies differ in what they perceive as the minimal orthographic unit representing a ‘word’, and in how they mark word boundaries. Regarding the minimal written word, English, Greek, Portuguese, and Swedish – to name a few languages – allow single letters to represent function words, e.g., the English article a or the first person pronoun I. Hebrew, in contrast, does not allow single letters to stand for words, hence the phenomenon traditionally labeled by the mnemonic MSˇH WKLB ‫מש"ה וכל"ב‬, whereby seven function words represented by single letters are attached to the written word. Thus, in the example of ha-baýit ‘the house’, the definite article precedes the noun and is spelled as part of the string HBYT ‫הבית‬. Relatedly, French articles are usually written separated from the noun they modify (e.g., LA FILLE), but when the vowel is omitted, they are written attached to it (e.g., L’EAU). In the theoretical framework of linguistic representation encompassing both spoken and written modalities, with spelling a linguistic system, and taking into account Olson’s view of script as a model for meta-linguistic thinking, such orthographic preferences are certain to shape literate speakers’ perception of their language. Orthographies also differ in the ways they mark word boundaries, directing speaker/writers about how and where to segment content and function words. For example, the Semitic orthographies of Hebrew and Arabic employ allographs based on word site – Arabic extensively, with every grapheme having at least three different variants for word beginning, middle, and end; while Hebrew restricts allographs to non-final and final (usually longer or more elaborate) variants of just five letters (e.g., P/F represented by word-medial ‫פ‬


31

and word-final ‫)ף‬. An interesting neurolinguistic facet of allograph variation, as debated recently in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences, is the way the brain successfully ignores visual variation such as case and font in almostinstantaneous word recognition, while carefully attending to lexically meaningful distinctions between letters such as E and C (Dehaene, Cohen, Sigman, & Vinckier, 2006; Goswami & Ziegler, 2006). Note, however, that letter case is not the same as font, since the former, but not the latter, carries grammatical information. For example, both English and Dutch use capital letters to indicate proper nouns and sentence boundaries. These are important grammatical distinctions: proper nouns, prototypically designating people’s and place names, differ from all other nouns by virtue of having a single member in their category; while sentences are critical abstract syntactic units demarcated only in literate writing. Treiman and Kessler (2004) describe the developmental patterns in how young schoolchildren learn to correctly represent such grammatical information: Even younger children (guided by their own names) often produce initial capital letters, indicating that they are sensitive to statistical patterns of occurrence. This, then, constitutes the stochastic platform that will later on point children to the grammatical significance of capitalization. German makes an even more interesting case for thinking about language via its notational system, as it capitalizes every noun (Hieble, 1961). This means that reading and writing German fosters thinking about the syntactic category of Noun, including action nominals and abstract nouns, which share many features with verbs and adjectives. A study of the missing-letter effect applied to German (Mu¨sseler, Nißlein, & Koriat, 2005) shows that German readers make use of noun capitalization in as indicator of syntactic class and as a cue in parsing sentences. German noun capitalization would be extremely interesting to investigate from a developmental perspective, since proper spelling would mean the coherent consolidation of the noun category in German children’s cognition, especially when applied to abstract nouns. Transparency. A critical characteristic of alphabetical writing systems is their degree of transparency, i.e., the extent to which the system represents phonological information fully and consistently (Frost, 1992). Orthographic transparency is a function of events in the history of orthographic systems, the linguistic typology of the language involved, and the relationship holding between spoken and written usage in cultural and pragmatic contexts, such as multiple dialects and diglossia (Coulmas, 1989; Saiegh-Haddad, 2003; Terry, 2006). The combination of these factors is often responsible for the different degrees of transparency in orthographic systems. Thus, English and French follow etymological principles in spelling, while Italian spelling is strongly phonemic. And while transparency is often thought of in terms of grapho-phonemic correspondence, it might also refer to coarser granularity, as in the consistent relationship between the digraph PH and the phoneme f in English. The perfectly transparent orthography would be a standard system of symbols which linguists call a broad phonemic transcription such as the IPA, where

32


each grapheme would uniquely express a phoneme (ignoring allophonic variations in pronunciation). But transcription systems are devised by scientists to express the phonological properties of languages, whereas orthographic systems reflect and highlight cognitively-based components of language systems, such as lexicon and grammar, often at the expense of sheer phonological transparency. Moreover, orthographic systems, unlike transcriptions, are used for lay human communication, like oral language systems. Writing transparency undergoes erosion subject to the same forces that shape and change linguistic systems, such as Slobin’s (1977) Maxims specifying cognitive dispositions underlying Language, (e.g., Be Clear or Be Quick and Easy in Real Time), or usage-based frequency effects on co-occurring items, as discussed in Bybee (2006). Thus it does not make psycholinguistic sense to regard complete transparency as a required – or maybe even a desired – feature of orthographies, in much the same way it does not make sense to expect total regularity and consistency in linguistic systems with some time depth. We have to look deeper to investigate the trade-off between phonological transparency and the consistent expression of other linguistic information in writing to see gains and losses, especially across development. The orthographic transparency/opacity continuum has different facets, depending on whether phonological information is expressed inconsistently or partially. To illustrate an inconsistent link, English RED is transparent in a way past-tense READ is not, since the one-to-one link between e and E is violated in the latter. To illustrate a partial link, vocalized Hebrew ‫מְסָּפר‬ ִ (for mispar ‘number’) is transparent in a way non-vocalized MSPR ‫ מספר‬is not, since the former conveys both consonantal and vocalic values, while the latter is restricted to consonants alone. Orthographic opacity is often expressed in the phenomenon of homophony (introduced above), a case of inconsistent phonology-orthography relationship, where alternative spellings exist for the same phonological unit. For example, English expresses s by several letters and letter combinations, such as S, C (followed by non-low vowels), SS, or T(ION). But other inconsistent relations may hold in written language, such as in homography6 where two or more phonological units are expressed by the same letter (or word – see Bar-On & Ravid, 2011). For example, English CH may express either k, as in CHARACTER, or cˇ, as in CHAIR. In the same way, Hebrew non-vocalized P ‫ פ‬can be read as either p (as in pizer ‘scattered’, spelled ‫ פיזר‬PYZR) or f (mefazer ‘scattering’, spelled ‫ מפזר‬MPZR). Taken together, homophony and homography create opaque, less consistent networks relating phonemes to graphemes, which make it harder for learners to extract generalizations regarding spelling. Opacity in the phonology-orthography link is a hindrance to correct spelling. In general, the rate of spelling acquisition in gradeschool is faster in transparent orthographies, such as Czech (Caravolas, 2004; Caravolas, Hulme, & Snowling, 2001), German (Wimmer & Landerl, 1997), Greek (Nikolopoulos, Goulandis, Hulme, & Snowling, 2006), Indonesian (Winskel & Widjaja, 2007), or Spanish (Defior & Serrano, 2005). Sandra (2007) reviews spelling development in several


33

languages with transparent orthographies, to show the robust link between phonological awareness and spelling skills in early gradeschool. But even in relatively more transparent orthographies, such as that of Italian, accurately spelling more complex strings such as geminates or diagraphs is more problematic for first and second graders than reading them (Cossu, Gugliotta, & Marshall, 1995). The rate of spelling acquisition is slower in less transparent orthographies such as English (Treiman & Kessler, 2005), Finnish (Ja¨rvikivi, Bertram, & Niemi, 2006), French (Bosse, Valdois, & Tainturier, 2003) or (non-voweled) Arabic (Abu-Rabia & Taha, 2006). In English, homophony is a frequent orthographic phenomenon which takes most of the early school years to overcome (Cassar & Treiman, 2004; Holmes & Malone, 2004). As orthographic systems represent more than phonology, learning about spelling categories in less transparent orthographies is obviously guided by more than graphophonemic consistencies. Thus, in a language with a deep orthography such as English, learning spellers soon abandon strategies such as strict phonemegrapheme mapping to rely on larger orthographic units as described above. Some of these segments, in the form of letter sequences such as English TION or CEIVE have a privileged role in learning due to participating in morphological structure. There is evidence that children learning deep orthographies such as those of English and French make implicit use of such orthographic regularities (Kemp & Bryant, 2003; Pacton, Perruchet, Fayol, & Cleeremans, 2001). Mayer, Crowley, and Kaminskal (2007) show that English-speaking children are less reliant on phonological processes than Welsh-speaking children, and make more use of orthographic strategies. Holmes and Malone (2004) have found that good English spellers rely on letter sequences in spelling acquisition; adults use both strategies (Perry, Ziegler, & Coltheart, 2002). But even the famous inconsistencies of English spelling provide robust evidence of linguistic learning. Kessler and Treiman (2003) analyze first-grade vocabulary to provide evidence of underlying statistical consistencies – demonstrating that English spelling is neither chaotic nor unprincipled. Kessler and Treiman show that taking account of grapheme position in the word (in the onset, rime or coda) and of strong tendencies of spelling patterns in wordspecific sites can help even beginning spellers predict spelling patterns with some accuracy. Thus, for example, S and L are allowed to double in the coda (but not in the onset) (e.g., KISS, DOLL), and the diphthong ay is always spelled as I_E following D (e.g., DIVE7). This sheds more light on the fact that learning to spell English necessitates mapping increasingly larger and more complex units than the single grapheme onto specific phonemes in context (e.g., L at wordfinal position). Moreover, spellers are also required to represent noncontinuous and less phonologically specified consistencies such as CACE or CICE (where C refers to a consonantal grapheme) in learning to spell complex phonological units such as diphthongs. And in the new context of instant messaging, English spelling is getting even further away from standard formats

34


by including frequent typos such as KNWO for KNOW and various kinds of shortcuts to represent speech (Varnhagen et al., 2010). Relatedly and relevantly, new models of spelling representation (Dehaene, Cohen, Sigman, & Vinckier, 2006) suggest that our brain is sensitive not only to adjacent but also to discontinuous letter combinations. It learns to neglect large differences in visual form (i.e., font and size), while attending to small yet critical distinctions such as the difference between ‫( ח‬Ħ) and ‫( ה‬H). According to Dehaene et al., cell assemblies create compact neural codes specific to words, which permit certain inaccuracies in grapheme positioning and allow discontinuous strings. Orthographic transparency – the consistency of phoneme-grapheme conversion – determines the size of the encoded unit: transparent orthographies such as Japanese Kana or the Italian orthography will rely on single graphemes and bigrams, while more opaque orthographies, such as the one employed by English and the Japanese Kanji system, will rely on larger and more complex units. The Dehaene et al. model not only explains the different paths to spelling in orthographies of differing depths, but can also make interesting predictions about the acquisition of non-voweled Hebrew, as discussed below. Phonology and orthography are two major components which underlie spelling. Both of them serve the lexicon, the repository of the tens – often hundreds – of thousands of words adults know in their native tongue. Spelling designates discrete words in various wayu. For example, by placing spaces on both sides of a written string, orthographies make it easier for us to think about language in terms of words rather than sound or letter sequences. Logically, our next step will be to review spelling acquisition in different languages to see how and to what extent the internal morphological construction of words is revealed and learned in alphabetical orthographies; or, in different words, how larger orthographic units express morphological constructs affects spelling acquisition.

Notes 1. Comprehension here is used in its conventional psycholinguistic sense (as opposed to production) – not to be confused with reading comprehension. 2. When not specified otherwise, the past tense form of a verb is used here to represent the verb lemma, in the Hebraist tradition. 3. Thanks are due to my student Rinat Binyamin for asking the questions and initiating the discussion which led to this section. 4. Punctuation is now going down the same unfortunate path for similar reasons. 5. I am happy to report that the climate has changed dramatically among leaders of language education, who now recommend that teachers gain an extensive linguistic education (Moats, 2009). 6. The terminology is not entirely consistent. I have seen homophony called homography, and homography called heterography. 7. I suppose this generalization is valid for the first-grade texts only, as DYKE, for example, violates this pattern.

References

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Chapter 3

Morphological Scaffolding in Learning to Spell: A Cross-Linguistic Review

Morphology is a linguistic domain that participates prominently – though not to the same extent in every language – in learning to spell. With regards to Hebrew, morphology would interact with the acquisition and processing of spelling in two ways. First, early and extensive exposure to a morphology-rich language such as Hebrew would create morphology-based representations in a child’s cognition: systematic categories of stems and affixes, cell assemblies and architectures responsible for representing shortcuts to morphological patterns, clusters, and systems. This is because children growing up in morphology-rich languages figure out early on that this is ‘‘where the action is’’ – where meanings and forms densely coalesce in language-specific ways (Berman, 1986). In learning to spell, these children would be looking for the very same categories and relationships in written language that they have mapped out for spoken language. This attention to internal word structure would be enhanced and compounded by the second interface of morphology with spelling: as we saw above, written language represents morphological constructs distinctly from spoken language, often overriding or ignoring phonological constructs. It stands to reason that languages with richer morphologies would also use richer morphological representations in their orthographies, so that morphology would be crucial in learning orthographic spelling. The task of the learning speller would then be to discover and identify morphological categories in the orthography and link them up to spoken categories. This would result in the emergence of a new synergistic representation of Language – spoken and written, systematically related through spelling constructs with phonological, grammatical, and semantic/pragmatic values. Spelling is thus one component of language acquisition, part of later language development during the school years (Berman, 2004; Nippold, 2007), and a necessary step in becoming a literate speaker/writer (Tolchinsky, 2004) with more explicit access to language knowledge (Ravid & Hora, 2009). This chapter presents an analysis of the phonology-morphologyorthography juncture linking spoken and written language, followed by a review of the current psychological, psycholinguistic and educational literature. Across a range of languages with alphabetical orthographies, children, once past the establishment of the grapho-phonemic code, are shown to perceive this D.D. Ravid, Spelling Morphology, Literacy Studies 3, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-0588-8_3, Ó Springer ScienceþBusiness Media, LLC 2012

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3 Morphological Scaffolding in Learning to Spell: A Cross-Linguistic Review

triple relationship, and eventually come to rely on morphological cues to some extent – depending on the language – as props in learning to spell. Spelling, as a linguistic system, serves to express two essential components of human language: sound and meaning. In alphabetical systems, the graphophonemic code expresses the crucial relationship between orthography and phonology. But many of those alphabetical systems also systematically express meanings or functions via written morphological units. In fact, orthography may ignore some of the finer morpho-phonological differences of allomorphy to express the coarser-grained generalizations of the morphological system. For example, English past tense is expressed via the three phonetically conditioned allomorphs –t, –d, and –ίd as in stopped, explained, ended respectively – all uniformly spelled as the –ED suffix. The consistent expression of past tense by a single orthographic entity enables spellers to perceive the past tense function, while awareness of the grammatical category of past tense supports its consistent spelling (Nunes, Bryant, & Bindman, 1997a, 2006). To continue the bootstrapping argument, learning to spell the English past tense shows how phonological, morphological and orthographic knowledge coalesce. What may superficially appear to be a list of irregular past tense forms turns out to pattern in the same way as regular past tense: Phonologically, irregular past tense is consistently and frequently expressed by the coronal stop (voiced d or voiceless t) mapped onto the letters T and D – as in did, had, made, read, heard, held, sold, bid, bred, led, burst, got, shot, went, bent, spent, beat, built, cut, put, cost, hurt, brought, bought, taught, sat, kept or wrote. D and T thus orthographically organize what initially looks like a list of unrelated irregularities and exceptions into a repeated pattern representing the past tense category, enhancing the so-called regular –ED which ends with the same d/t. Such (apparently weak) links across speech and writing lend the system powerful learnability (Landauer & Dumais, 1997). The umlaut (vowel-changing) past tense forms are also systematically expressed by orthographic patterns which enable spellers to extract minor regularities – e.g., associating a change to æ with past tense (e.g., run/ran, sing/sang, swim/swam). Such regularities can also consist of larger CVCV patterns relating CICE to COCE as in DRIVE/DROVE or C(C)OW to C(C) EW as in BLOW/BLEW – and note that the large CVCV unit is familiar to English spellers from non-past tense forms such as SAFE, TONE, or BITE. The idea is that spellers are able to data-mine such morpho-orthographic generalizations about the formation and spelling of English past tense from a variety of seemingly non-related forms, which converge to run as in one river trunk and a small number of related allomorphic tributaries. This is the stochastic approach to spelling learning and knowledge taken up in Rebecca Treiman’s work (Hayes, Treiman, & Kessler, 2006; Treiman & Kessler, 2006) – showing how even second graders make use of vowel patterns within the word to determine onset k and cˇ spelling by K or C, and coda spellings of f by F, FF or LF. Pollo, Treiman, and Kessler (2008) and Deacon, Conrad, and Pacton (2008) provide excellent commentaries on statistical learning of seemingly chaotic spelling


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patterns. Recently, Pollo, Kessler, and Treiman (2009) analyzed the spelling of preschool Brazilian and American children and found that, contrary to the idea that early pre-phonological spellings are random and unpatterned, the patterns found in children’s spellings could be explained by subtle recurring statistical patterns of letter–sound correspondence. Similar morpho-orthographic patterning overriding morpho-phonological allomorphy are found in the English derivational system. For example, the English adjective suffix -ic (mentioned briefly in Chapter 1) has three different phonetic values in electric, electricity, and electrician – k in the adjective, s in the nominal derived from the adjective preceding the abstract suffix –ity, and sh in the agent noun derived from the adjective preceding the agent suffix –ian. All three phonological variations are spelled uniformly by the letter sequence IC, signifying the adjective suffix. This is not an isolated occurrence: -ic adjectives such as pacific, tactic, basic; derived- icity nominals such as complicity, felicity, authenticity, and derived- ician agent nouns such as phonetician, politician, technician – all reinforce the consistent relationship between these three constructions, the spelling and pronunciation of the –ic suffix in the three grammatical and phonetic environments. Statistical learning will lean heavily not only on the relationship between the three words related through the electric stem, but also on the morphological families formed by and through the suffixes. Learning the spelling of such morphological families will take account and benefit from all three facets of morphology – meaning, systems, and allomorphy, as well as from the links between them (Sandra, 2007; Templeton & Morris, 2000). Such morphological knowledge plays a key role in adults’ spelling abilities. Perry, Ziegler, and Coltheart (2002) showed that English-speaking adults take into account morphological chunks in assessing ‘wordlikeness’ in spelling judgments: they pointed at morphologically complex nonwords as being most wordlike, and did not merely adhere to smaller units guided by phonological considerations. By now, knowledge of derivational morphology is already recognized as critical in the development of reading skills in English- and in Spanish-speaking children (Jarmulowicz, Hay, Taran, & Ethington, 2007; Kieffer & Lesaux, 2008). Morphologically motivated orthographic representations can be assumed to exist in the linguistic cognition of mature spellers, and they can serve to facilitate spelling in cases of disrupted phoneme-to-grapheme mapping. It seems that the role of morphological knowledge in spelling is related to the degree of morphological wealth and diversity in the language system, and to its prominence in the orthography (Bybee, 1995). For example, the novice English speller is not required to pay much attention to morphological information, since the core everyday English lexicon which children acquire early on is largely monomorphemic, with sparse inflectional morphology and little derivational morphology. Thus, complex patterns of letter co-occurrence guide early spelling in English (Kemp & Bryant, 2003). In early grade school, young English learners acquire the spelling of past-tense -ED in well-documented stages which take its

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grammatical function into account only towards the end of the process (Nunes, Bryant, & Bindman, 1997b). In contrast, Russian first graders, learning a morphologically complex language, already spell homophonous segments indicating 1st declination nouns and nominatives flawlessly; while adults even deny the possibility of making spelling errors in such segments (Rusakova & Ceytlin, 1999). Against this background, this chapter reviews the relatively young domain of spelling morphology in several non-Semitic languages, in interaction with phonology, orthography, and lexical knowledge. In these studies, the role of morphology in learning to spell is investigated in two ways – by directly testing the spelling of morphological constructs, such as inflectional and derivational endings, and by comparing and correlating spelling skills with tasks requiring morphological knowledge and awareness. Much of the new research on spelling morphology concerns English, a language with a relatively sparse morphology where phonological awareness has been the focus of attention in the last two decades. These studies indicate to what extent grammatical knowledge plays a role in learning to spell a phonologically deep system. As a result of the course of its history, the English vocabulary consists of two levels of lexical items (Berman, 1999; Shay, 2008): A core lexicon of mainly Old English words of Germanic descent, denoting concrete objects and kinship terms, basic verbs and adjectives such as pig, sky, see, good – short, mostly mono-syllabic and mono-morphemic; and a more peripheral Middle- and Modern-English lexicon of longer, morphologically complex of mostly Romance/Latinate descent denoting higher-register and lexically specific words such as administration, idealize, domestic or mandatory. According to Treiman and Kessler (2005), the core/periphery split bears clear cues for English spellers, such that f is spelled F in OE words and PH in Romance words; while derivational couplets of stem adjective (or verb)/derived abstract nominal such as DIVINE/DIVINITY OR SERENE/SERENITY retain the same vowel letter, despite the phonological difference between a diphthong and a short vowel. To date, much of the developmental investigations of the use of morphology in learning to spell English have concentrated on the spelling of inflection in grade school. For example, Turnbull, Deacon, and Kay-Raining Bird (2011) show in a longitudinal study that learning the spelling of English inflectional suffixes bears a compelling connection to their order of acquisition in spoken English. As most of the vocabulary in early grade school texts belongs to the mono-morphemic core Germanic lexicon, most morphological alternations encountered by young school children would be grammatical. Inflectional suffixes are not numerous in English, but they have high token frequency, and are thus the most frequent morphological units in texts targeting Englishspeaking children. Paradoxically, this early-acquired part of English morphology is not easy to spell. Correct spelling of these inflectional morphemes crucially hinges on the child realizing that the ending of the word is a separate linguistic entity that carries consistent grammatical information. However the


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past-tense –ED and the multifunctional –ING and –S are not phonologically salient, and are sometimes homophonous with segments of mono-morphemic words (e.g., passed vs. past). Moreover, inflectional suffixes closely interact with the phonological and orthographic structure of the stem (Kiparsky, 1982). As a result, young grade school children are challenged early on by spelling patterns relating phonology, morphology and orthography, such as knowing the conditions under which I changes to Y before ING (e.g., LIE – LYING). Of particular interest and difficulty are English orthographic geminates (STOP – STOPPED), which require paying attention to the phonological structure of the stem under inflection – i.e., whether the relevant syllable is stressed, and whether it consists of a short vowel rather than a diphthong. This information is reflected in stem orthography (HOP vs. HOPE) and in its inflectional spelling (HOPPING vs. HOPING). A series of studies investigated the stages English-speaking children go through in learning to identify, isolate and correctly spell verbs with inflectional suffixes. Studies indicate that this ability is not part of children’s strategies in the earliest stages of learning to read and write, but rather increased with age and schooling. Nunes, Bryant, and Bindman (1997b) found that first grade children initially did not discern the bi-morphemic nature of –ED, spelling KISSED as KIST. Then, the -ED spelling was extended across the board to other lexical classes (e.g., SOFED for SOFT). This description of the route of spelling acquisition in English takes us back to the theme running through this book – that spelling is a form of language. Like the well known sequence of oral language acquisition, the evidence shows that morphological spelling patterns undergo a U-shaped developmental route. They may first be adopted as a lexical variant by young schoolchildren, and are later on overgeneralized to other lexical classes – nouns, adjectives and adverbs in the case of past tense –ED, plural nouns in the case of the apostrophe (Bryant, Devine, Ledward, & Nunes, 1997), before correct usage emerged. A similar U-shaped route was found in a longitudinal study of Greek first graders (Chliounaki & Bryant, 2002) who were learning to spell the alternative orthographic forms of the vowels o and e. The study showed that as children began to use the new spellings they had learned, they overgeneralized them to inappropriate environments, first in inflections and then in stems. Finally, correct spellings were restricted to appropriate contexts. These studies testify to children’s emerging construal of morphemes in writing and the gradual establishment of morpho-graphic patterns. The effect of morphology was indirectly reflected in the fact that young grade school children tended to simplify consonant clusters more in monomorphemic than bi-morphemic words – e.g., they omitted the N in BRAND more often than in RAINED (Treiman & Cassar, 1996). Likewise, in a recent longitudinal study of children from three age-schooling levels, Nunes, Bryant, and Bindman (2006) report that correct spelling of -ED predicted performance on different tasks of morphological awareness even when controlling for age and IQ. The authors conclude that children’s ability to spell morphemes cannot

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be explained by phonological knowledge alone, and that their morphological representations are enhanced as a result of learning to spell those morphemes. Similarly, Walker and Hauerwas (2006) tested young grade school children on spelling –ED and –ING inflected verbs as related to phonological, morphological, and orthographic awareness. The developmental route for learning to spell both inflected forms was similar, first including the suffix in the word spelling, then including it with the morphologically preserved form, and finally spelling it correctly. Awareness of phonology, morphology and orthography developed in tandem with spelling skills. As typical of English, phonological and orthographic awareness had an earlier role in morphological awareness and a later role in including and preserving the inflected verb suffix in spelling. Recent developmental spelling research on English has been extended to derivational morphology. Burt (2006) demonstrates that high-quality spelling performance in adults is related to strong phonological and morphological skills and to a large orthographic lexicon amassed in frequent reading. He tested adult students on spelling, phonology and reading skills, as related to knowledge of (mainly) derivational morphology, using Latinate pseudowords such as dispulate–dispularity. The study showed that linguistic measures explained over two-thirds of the students’ spelling performance, indicating the importance of morpho-syntax in adult written English. Studies of English-speaking children all show that eventually they learn to use derivational morphology for spelling, but researchers disagree on how early on this knowledge is recruited (see review in Deacon, 2008). Treiman’s studies point to slow and gradual learning across the school years. Thus Treiman, Cassar, and Zukowski (1994) and Treiman and Cassar (1997) showed that young spellers were able to take into consideration the relationship between transparently derived words such as dirt/dirty, so as to overcome the phonetic flap in the adjective dirty. However, grade school children found it more difficult to relate derived words with greater morpho-phonological distance due to stem changes such as deep/depth (Carlisle, 1988). It takes children several years to learn to discern this relationship in longer, derived (and abstract) words, as evidenced by first graders writing COLLEKSHUN for COLLECTION (Treiman, 1993). Deacon, in contrast, claims that English-speaking children appreciate the impact of morphemes on spelling already by age 7. Evidence for earlier and more robust knowledge of derivational morphology was found in Deacon and Bryant (2005), who tested grade school children aged 7–9 on spelling derived nouns with changing (e.g., collect/collection) and non-changing (e.g., ill/illness) stems. Across age groups, children found stem spelling helpful in spelling the more transparently derived forms, although opaque stem relationships were harder. The authors conclude that children are aware of the morphoorthographic connection between free and derived forms from early on, and that their awareness of morphemes in oral language may underlie the use of morphology in spelling.


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Likewise, Kemp (2006) tested children’s ability to spell mono- and bimorphemic real and pseudowords with medial z such as busy, noise, noisy and crazy, as related to the ability to extract the stem out of an oral derived word such as run from runner. Her results suggest that even young spellers in early grade school make some use of morphological relations in their spelling, while adults are able to categorize English content words based on their orthographic inflections (Kemp, Nilsson, & Arciuli, 2009). Recently, Deacon (2008) found that even 7–9 year olds were more likely to spell the first section of a word correctly when it was a root morpheme than when it was not (e.g. FREE in FREELY compared to FREEZE). And a new study (Deacon & Dhooge, 2010) showed that root consistency in English spelling achieved maximum impact by grade 4, that is by age 9–10. For the purposes of this book, I find it interesting to see that Englishcentered studies, which constitute much of the publications in international journals publishing scientific work about spelling, have now shifted towards morphology as an important factor in spelling acquisition. As Deacon (2008, and see also Pacton & Deacon, 2008) suggests, the differences among researchers regarding the timing of morphological recruitment in English may be due to testing and coding procedures. But in my perspective, the gist is that morphology plays a role early on even in a language where it does not play a prominent role. Thus, English-speaking children show glimmerings of knowledge early on, although the consolidation of the derivational morphology-orthography link evolves several school years. Interestingly, evidence-based teaching of morphology in the service of spelling instruction is now spreading in schools in the UK and the States (Nunes & Bryant, 2006; Shortis & Blake, 2008), with increasing scholarly research concerning the effect of teaching morphological analysis on learning new vocabulary (Bowers & Kirby, 2010). The morphology-orthography link is supported by research relating diminished morphological abilities to the spelling of derived words in individuals with dyslexia. In a study of English-speaking adult dyslexic students, Deacon, Parrila, and Kirby (2006), participants were tested on a lexical decision task on derived words with orthographically changing and non-changing stems (e.g., CHOP – CHOPPY, PAINT – PAINTER), compared with pseudoderived words (such as PAN – PANIC, LET – LETTER). The effects of the change in orthographic structure were most robust for the derived items, suggesting that in reading, the slowing effects of orthographic changes are specific to derivational access processes. Non-dyslexic participants were faster on words exhibiting less complex morphological relationships due to nonchanging stems, but the dyslexics did not benefit from transparent stems. Tsesmeli and Seymour (2006) tested younger dyslexic adolescents (aged 13–15) on spelling pairs of derived words (WIDE – WIDTH, HISTORY – HISTORICALLY). Compared to age-matched and to even younger nondyslexic peers, the dyslexic participants did very poorly on the spelling tasks, especially on the derived words; and they also transferred erroneous stem spellings from the non-derived to the derived form to the same extent as the

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younger controls. The dyslexic participants also performed like younger controls on oral morphological awareness tasks where they had to produce the derived from the base form and vice versa, e.g., LOGIC – LOGICAL. The authors conclude that dyslexics have not achieved what the authors term ‘‘a morphologically organized spelling system’’ (p. 27). In much the same way, Bourassa and Treiman (2008) found that older children with dyslexia performed similarly on morphological analysis of complex stems in spelling as younger, typically developing children. Research on children with poor reading performance also shows similar developmental patterns as in their typically developing peers, but less efficient use of morphological cues. A review of studies on spelling development in children with dyslexia (Cassar & Treiman, 2004) indicates that the spelling errors they make, though more numerous, do not deviate from normal spelling patterns, but they demonstrate less efficient morphological processing. Bourassa, Treiman, and Kessler (2006) tested dyslexic children aged 9–11 and younger controls on spelling morphologically simplex and complex words with consonant clusters (e.g., BLIND, LEANED). Older children with dyslexia scored similarly to younger controls of the same spelling level. They also had similar difficulty in using morphological information for spelling when compared to older typically developing children, for example by relating WAITING to WAIT in order to retrieve the flapped T. Furthermore, Carlisle (1996) found that young grade school children with reading and writing disabilities produced fewer and less accurate morphologically complex words in their spontaneous writing. Hauerwas and Walker (2003) tested older 6th–8th graders identified with reading and spelling deficits on spelling of inflected verbs (see above), phonological, morphological and orthographic awareness, compared with age-matched and younger (3rd grade) controls. The children with spelling difficulties were more likely to omit the inflection, were less able to spell the base verb correctly and consistently. Results of this study also indicate that reduced morphological awareness may underlie these spelling deficiencies. Egan and Pring (2004) compared two groups of 11-year-old poor readers and dyslexic children with two groups of normally developing age-matched and younger controls on spelling regular and irregular past-tense English verbs and oral inflectional tasks. The dyslexic children were slower on all tasks and were less sensitive to the internal phonological and morphological structure of words in writing but not in oral presentation. This is further evidence that the relationship between morphology and orthography, which is firmly established in literate reader/writers, might be impaired in dyslexics. Finally, a recent study by Terry (2006) investigated the spelling of –ED verbs by 6–8 year old African-American children. Results showed that it was dialectal differences that detracted from African American children’s reading and writing skills: They had more problems spelling inflections, which are dialect-sensitive, than consonant and vowel patterns, which are dialect-neutral. Their errors were thus consistent with linguistic mismatches between Black English and standard written forms. In other words, young


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speakers of African-American English could not make use of the morphological cues to spelling because these cues did not invoke distinctions in their language. The contribution of morphology to spelling abilities has been investigated in other languages, though not to the same extent as in English. The orthography of Danish – another Germanic language – displays similar problems to those well known from English, with grammar and morphology having a significant role in spelling. Thus, for example, the spelling of the past participle BIDT contains a ‘silent’ D which can be inferred when referring to the verbal stem BID. Two studies by the Danish researcher Holger Juul investigated morphology-related spelling errors in Danish pseudo-words and real words in a population of children and adolescents aged 10–17. In one study (Juul & Elbro, 2004), tasks required participants to inflect nouns and verbs with confusable endings in writing, and to capitalize proper nouns. Results indicated that grammar-related spelling skills increase exponentially with age and schooling in Danish, albeit following a very long developmental route: the youngest group, aged 10, performed at floor, and mastery of the morpho-syntactic knowledge necessary for correct spelling was achieved only by age 15, in the highest grades of high school. In a second study (Juul, 2005) sixth graders were tested on two inflectional suffixes confusable with other morphological word endings, such as present participle –ENDE, which is phonologically similar to the definite plural –ENE. These again were found to be problematic for the 12-year-olds. It seems that in Danish, the network linking morpho-syntactic knowledge to the orthographic lexicon takes a particularly long time to consolidate and stabilize, with ‘indistinct’ phonology probably contributing to these difficulties (Bleses & Thomsen, 2004). A recent study by Rispens, McBride-Chang, and Reitsma (2008) illustrates the impact of language typology on the role of morphology in spelling Dutch, yet another Germanic language. Dutch has sparse morphology, like English, but fewer spelling complexities. The authors administered first and 6th graders tasks of inflectional morphology (plural and diminutive nouns, verb tense and aspect) and lexical compounding (e.g., creating mountain giant). Six graders were given an additional task of derivational morphology (e.g., changing adventure to adventurous). Findings indicated that while morphology contributed uniquely to reading in both age-schooling groups, inflectional and derivational morphology impacted on spelling only in 6th grade. In a different study (Notenboom & Reitsma, 2007), Dutch-speaking children were able to grasp the morphological underpinnings of a gemination rule and thus to extend it across other classes only by age 13. Recently, Sandra and van Abbenyen (2009) have shown that sensitivity to morphological boundaries in inflected Dutch verbs, which could help overcome homophony at the sublexical level, is not always found among 12 year old spellers. These findings of late morphological awareness in spelling Dutch are independently corroborated by the results of Gillis and Ravid (2006) on dictation tasks comparing the effect of morphological cues in Dutch and Hebrew. These results indicate that Dutch-speaking children apply morphological strategies later on than

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English-speaking children who are challenged by an array of spelling problems based in inflectional morphology, and certainly much later than Hebrewspeaking children, for whom morphology is crucial from the very beginning of learning to spell. Weiss, Grabner, Kargl, Purgstaller, and Fink (2010) discuss the age-related effects of an intervention program focusing computer-aided morphological training on morphological awareness in German-speaking children. They show that morphological training was accompanied by significant changes in brain activation from pre- to post-test. However, in younger children, morphological strategies have no implications for reading and spelling, while spelling in older, high school students, benefits from morphological intervention. Moving away from the Germanic languages, French has been the focus of much spelling research. As a language with largely ‘silent’ plural morphology, sparsely represented in speech while richly represented in the orthography, children encounter much of French morphology only when they learn to read and write. For example, number distinction in French third person pronouns is expressed in writing alone (IL vs. ILS), but liaison with the opening vocal of the next word provides a clue to the existence of an underlying distinction (il a vs. ils ont). In a series of studies, Fayol and his associates have shown how Frenchspeaking children who are not attuned to morphological distinctions when they start learning to spell learn the spelling patterns for plural marking (Pacton & Fayol, 2003, 2004; Totereau, The´venin, & Fayol, 1997). These studies show how grammatical and semantic factors interact with orthographic learning: While plural nouns and adjectives are marked by final- S, plural third-person verbs carry a different orthographic marker (-NT) for the same notion. This results in grade school children learning to mark ‘silent’ plurals on nouns, followed by adjectives, and finally on verbs (The´venin, Totereau, Fayol, & Jarousse, 1999). The timing of French children’s productive learning of plural spelling is under debate. An earlier work by Totereau et al. (1997) claims that children understand the rule for spelling the plural inflection very early on, however a decade later Largy, Cousin, Bryant, and Fayol (2007) show that children’s spelling performance relates to their familiarity with the inflected form of the word: singular words are spelled better if the word is familiar to children in singular form, while plural spelling is better on words familiar to them in plural form. This means that first and second graders store singular and plural wordforms as whole words in their orthographic lexicon, with the generalization of plural spelling extracted from these forms later on. Spanish, another Romance language, is known for its relatively transparent orthography, nevertheless young Spanish speaker/writers find support in morphological cues. Schoolchildren from 1st, 2nd and 3rd grade were given a dictation task targeting the plural morpheme -s, which is omitted in speech in the investigated dialect. They showed increasing awareness of morphology by learning to spell the hidden –s, more so in verbs than nouns (Defior, Alegrıa, Titos, & Martos, 2008). And for Portuguese, Rosa and Nunes (2008) have demonstrated in a study of morphological priming that only school children


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make use of morphologically related primes to facilitate the spelling of schwa vowels in words. Further away from the Indo-European languages, the development of reading and spelling in Finnish, a Uralic language, highlights a mirror-image relationship between morphology and spelling against that of English. Where English has a sparse morphology and an opaque orthography, Finnish has a rich, complex and opaque inflectional and derivational morphology, and an extremely transparent, almost completely phonetic, orthography, with little or no representation of morphology (Aro, 2005). These features of Finnish morphology and orthography have interesting implications for the acquisition of spelling. A study by Lehtonen and Bryant (2005) investigated the relationship between morphological structure and children’s spelling performance in first and second grade in the same ways described above – by noting whether morphological role facilitated spelling, and by examining the correlation between morphological awareness and spelling. One important finding was that Finnish children were better at spelling clusters when these appeared in case inflections than in stems. Another was that these results were not specifically related to morphological awareness. The authors express some surprise at the fact that children did not use explicit morphological knowledge in their spelling, however spelling was better when relying on morphological cues. This does not seem surprising at all given the theoretical framework of this book, since a language with a rich and complex morphology such as Finnish (or Hebrew) would exert its typological impact on both spoken and written abilities in subtle and implicit, yet powerful ways. Korean, an Altaic language, uses the Hangul alphabetical system (organized into syllabic blocks) for writing. This morphophonemic writing system represents its inflectional and derivational structures as well as productive compounding. Consequently, morphological awareness was found to make an important contribution to early spelling accuracy in Korean (Kim, 2010). And in a study of early reading in 4- and 5-year-olds, only morphological awareness consistently explained irregular word recognition in the Korean orthography (Cho, McBride-Chang, & Park, 2008). It is fascinating that morphological awareness is necessary even for learning to spell in the Chinese logographic orthographic system, which represents a group of tonal languages with an extremely analytical structure. Recently, Tong, McBride-Chang, Shu, and Wong (2009) showed that morphological awareness was associated with Chinese spelling skills, and was longitudinally predictive of Chinese character recognition and reading comprehension. Tong et al. explain this important role of morphology in spelling as deriving from the salient semantic transparency of the compounding morphological structure in many Chinese words, and point to children’s growing awareness of the internal structure of Chinese characters as representing lexical meaning. Against this background of widely diverse languages and orthographies making use of morphology in learning to spell, the next chapters take up the issue of spelling morphology in Hebrew.

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References Aro, M. (2005). Learning to read: The effect of orthography. In R. M. Joshi & P. G. Aaron (Eds.), Handbook of orthography and literacy (pp. 531–550). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Berman, R. A. (1986). The acquisition of morphology/syntax: A crosslinguistic perspective. In P. Fletcher & M. Garman (Eds.), Language acquisition (2nd ed., pp. 429–477). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Berman, R. A. (1999). Relevant features of spoken and written English. In R. Aisenman (Ed.), Working papers in ‘‘developing literacy across genres, modalities, and languages’’ (pp. 4–19). Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University. Berman, R. A. (Ed.). (2004). Language development across childhood and adolescence: Psycholinguistic and crosslinguistic perspectives. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Bleses, D., & Thomsen, P. (2004). The acquisition of spoken forms and written words: An empirical study of opacity in the speech/reading/writing interface in Danish. In R. Schreuder & L. Verhoeven (Eds.), Process and acquisition of written language (pp. 79–99). Amsterdam: Benjamins. Bourassa, D. C., & Treiman, R. (2008). Morphological constancy in spelling: A comparison of children with dyslexia and typically developing children. Dyslexia, 14, 155–169. Bourassa, D. C., Treiman, R., & Kessler, B. (2006). Use of morphology in spelling by children with dyslexia and typically developing children. Memory and Cognition, 34, 703–714. Bowers, P. N., & Kirby, J. R. (2010). Effects of morphological instruction on vocabulary acquisition. Reading and Writing, 23, 515–537. Bryant, P., Devine, M., Ledward, A., & Nunes, T. (1997). Spelling with apostrophes and understanding possession. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 67, 93–112. Burt, J. S. (2006). Spelling in adults: The combined influences of language skills and reading experience. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 35, 447–470. Bybee, J. L. (1995). Diachronic and typological properties of morphology and their implications for representation. In L. Feldman (Ed.), Morphological aspects of language processing (pp. 225–246). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Carlisle, J. F. (1988). Knowledge of derivational morphology and spelling ability in fourth, sixth and eighth grades. Applied Psycholinguistics, 9, 247–266. Carlisle, J. F. (1996). An exploratory study of morphological errors in children’s written stories. Reading and Writing, 8, 61–72. Cassar, M., & Treiman, R. (2004). Developmental variations in spelling: Comparing typical and poor spellers. In C. A. Stone, E. R. Silliman, B. Ehren, & K. Apel (Eds.), Handbook of language and literacy: Development and disorders (pp. 627–643). New York: Guilford. Chliounaki, K., & P. Bryant. (2002). Construction and learning to spell. Cognitive Development, 17, 1489–1499. Cho, J.-R., McBride-Chang, C., & Park, S.-G. (2008). Phonological awareness and morphological awareness: Differential associations to regular and irregular word recognition in early Korean Hangul readers. Reading and Writing, 21, 255–274. Deacon, H. S., & Bryant, P. (2005). The strength of children’s knowledge of the role of root morphemes in the spelling of derived words. Journal of Child Language, 32, 375–389. Deacon, H. S., & Dhooge, S. (2010). Developmental stability and changes in the impact of root consistency on children’s spelling. Reading and Writing, 23, 1055–1069. Deacon, S. H. (2008). The metric matters: Determining the extent of children’s knowledge of morphological spelling regularities. Developmental Science, 11, 396–406. Deacon, S. H., Conrad, N., & Pacton, S. (2008). A statistical learning perspective on children’s learning about graphotactic and morphological regularities in spelling. Canadian Psychology, 49, 118–124. Deacon, S. H., Parrila, R., & Kirby, J. (2006). Processing of derived forms in high-functioning dyslexics. Annals of Dyslexia, 56, 103–128.

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Defior, D., Alegrıa, J., Titos, R., & Martos, F. (2008). Using morphology when spelling in a shallow orthographic system: The case of Spanish. Cognitive Development, 23, 204–215. Egan, J., & Pring, L. (2004). The processing of inflectional morphology: A comparison of children with and without dyslexia. Reading and Writing, 17, 567–591. Gillis, S., & Ravid, D. (2006). Typological effects on spelling development: A crosslinguistic study of Hebrew and Dutch. Journal of Child Language, 33, 621–659. Hauerwas, L. B., & Walker, J. (2003). Spelling of inflected very morphology in children with spelling deficits. Learning Disabilities Research and Practice, 18, 25–35. Hayes, H., Treiman, R., & Kessler, B. (2006). Children use vowels to help them spell consonants. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 94, 27–42. Jarmulowicz, L., Hay, S. E., Taran, V. L., & Ethington, C. A. (2007). Fitting derivational morphophonology into a developmental model of reading. Reading and Writing, 21, 275–297. Juul, H. (2005). Grammatical awareness and the spelling of inflectional morphemes in Danish. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 15, 87–112. Juul, H., & Elbro, C. (2004). The links between grammar and spelling: A cognitive hurdle in deep orthographies? Reading and Writing, 17, 915–942. Kemp, N. (2006). Children’s spelling of base, inflected, and derived words: Links with morphological awareness. Reading and Writing, 19, 737–765. Kemp, N., & Bryant, P. (2003). Do beez buzz? Rule-based and frequency-based knowledge in learning to spell plural –s. Child Development, 74, 63–74. Kemp, N., Nilsson, J., & Arciuli, J. (2009). Noun or verb? Adult readers’ sensitivity to spelling cues to grammatical category in word endings. Reading and Writing, 22, 661–685. Kieffer, M. J., & Lesaux, N. K. (2008). The role of derivational morphology in the reading comprehension of Spanish-speaking English language learners. Reading and Writing, 21, 783–804. Kim, Y.-S. (2010). Componential skills in early spelling development in Korean. Scientific Studies of Reading, 14, 137–158. Kiparsky, P. (1982). Explanation in phonology. Dordrecht: Foris. Landauer, T. K., & Dumais, S. T. (1997). A solution to Plato’s problem: The latent semantic analysis theory of acquisition, induction and representation of knowledge. Psychological Review, 104, 211–240. Largy, P., Cousin, M.-P., Bryant, P., & Fayol, M. (2007). When memorized instances compete with rules: The case of number–noun agreement in written French. Journal of Child Language, 34, 425–437. Lehtonen, A., & Bryant, P. (2005). Active players or just passive bystanders? The role of morphemes in spelling development in a transparent orthography. Applied Psycholinguistics, 26, 137–155. Nippold, M. A. (2007). Later language development: School-age children, adolescents, and young adults. Austin, TX: Pro-Ed. Notenboom, A., & Reitsma, P. (2007). Spelling Dutch doublets: Children’s learning of a phonological and morphological spelling rule. Scientific Studies of Reading, 11, 133–150. Nunes, T., & Bryant, P. (2006). Improving literacy by teaching morphemes. New York: Routledge. Nunes, T., Bryant, P., & Bindman, M. (1997a). Learning to spell regular and irregular verbs. Reading and Writing, 9, 427–449. Nunes, T., Bryant, P., & Bindman, M. (1997b). Morphological spelling strategies: Developmental stages and processes. Developmental Psychology, 33, 637–649. Nunes, T., Bryant, P., & Bindman, M. (2006). The effects of learning to spell on children’s awareness of morphology. Reading and Writing, 19, 767–787. Pacton, S., & Deacon, S. H. (2008). The timing and mechanisms of children’s use of morphological information in spelling: A review of evidence from English and French. Cognitive Development, 23, 339–359.

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Pacton, S., & Fayol, M. (2003). How do French children use morphosyntactic information when they spell adverbs and present participles? Scientific Studies of Reading, 23, 273–287. Pacton, S., & Fayol, M. (2004). Learning to spell in a deep orthography: The case of French. In R. Berman (Ed.), Language development across childhood and adolescence: Psycholinguistic and crosslinguistic perspectives (pp. 164–176). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Perry, C., Ziegler, J. C., & Coltheart, M. (2002). A dissociation between orthographic awareness and spelling production. Applied Psycholinguistics, 23, 43–73. Pollo, T. C., Treiman, R., & Kessler, B. (2008). Three perspectives on spelling development. In E. L. Grigorenko & A. J. Naples (Eds.), Single-word reading: Behavioral and biological perspectives (pp. 175–189). New York: Erlbaum. Pollo, T. C., Kessler, B., & Treiman, R. (2009). Statistical patterns in children’s early writing. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 104, 410–426. Ravid, D., & Hora, A. (2009). From implicit to explicit language knowledge in intervention: Introduction to the special issue on Intervention and Meta-language. First Language, 29, 5–14. Rispens, J. E., McBride-Chang, C., & Reitsma, P. (2008). Morphological awareness and early and advanced word recognition and spelling in Dutch. Reading and Writing, 21, 587–607. Rosa, J. M., & Nunes, T. (2008). Morphological priming effects on children’s spelling. Reading and Writing, 21, 763–781. Rusakova, M., & Ceytlin, S. (1999). On strategies of Russian spelling processing and acquisition. Paper presented at the 11th European conference on reading, Stavanger, Norway. Sandra, D. (2007). Skills and representations in learning to spell and in experienced spellers. In G. Jarema (ed.) The mental lexicon: Core perspectives (pp. 207–227). Amsterdam: Elsevier. Sandra, D., & van Abbenyen, L. (2009). Frequency and analogical effects in the spelling of full-form and sublexical homophonous patterns by 12 year-old children. The Mental Lexicon, 4, 239–274. Shay, S. (2008). The history of English: A linguistic introduction. Washington, DC: Wardja Press. Shortis, T., & Blake, J. (2008). Improving literacy by teaching morphemes. English in Education, 42, 202–206. Templeton, S., & Morris, D. (2000). Spelling. In M. L. Kamil, P. B. Mosenthal, P. D. Pearson, & R. Barr (Eds.), Handbook of reading research: Volume III (pp. 525–543). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Terry, N. T. (2006). Relations between dialect variation, grammar, and early spelling skills. Reading and Writing, 19, 907–931. The´venin, M. G, Totereau, C., Fayol, M., & Jarousse, J. P. (1999). L’apprentissage/enseignement de la morphologie ećrite du nombre en français. Revue Française de Pe´dagogie, 126, 39–52. Tolchinsky, L. (2004). The nature and scope of later language development. In R. A. Berman (Ed.), Language development across childhood and adolescence (pp. 233–247). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Tong, X., McBride-Chang, C., Shu, H., & Wong, A. M-Y. (2009). Morphological awareness, orthographic knowledge, and spelling errors: Keys to understanding early Chinese literacy acquisition. Scientific Studies of Reading, 13, 426–452. Totereau, C., The´venin, M. G., & Fayol, M. (1997). Acquisition de la morphologie du nombre a‘ l’ećrit en français. In L. Rieben, M. Fayol, & C. Perfetti (Eds.), Des orthographes et leur acquisition (pp. 147–165). Lausanne: Delachaux & Niestle´. Treiman, R. (1993). Beginning to spell. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Treiman, R., & Cassar, M. (1996). Effects of morphology on children’s spelling of final consonant clusters. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 63, 141–170. Treiman, R., & Cassar, M. (1997). Can children and adults focus on sound as opposed to spelling in a phoneme counting task? Developmental Psychology, 33, 771–780.

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Treiman, R., Cassar, M., & Zukowski, A. (1994). What types of linguistic information do children use in spelling? The case of flaps. Child Development, 65, 1310–1329. Treiman, R., & Kessler, B. (2005). Writing systems and spelling development. In M. Snowling & C. Hulme (Eds.), The Science of reading: A handbook (pp. 120–134). Oxford: Blackwell. Treiman, R., & Kessler, B. (2006). Spelling as statistical learning: Using consonantal context to spell vowels. Journal of Educational Psychology, 98, 642–652. Tsesmeli, S. N., & Seymour, P. H. K. (2006). Derivational morphology and spelling in dyslexia. Reading and Writing, 19, 587–625. Turnbull, K., Deacon, S. H., & Kay-Raining Bird, E. (2011). Mastering inflectional suffixes: A longitudinal study of beginning writers’ spellings. Journal of Child Language, 38, 533–553. Walker, J., & Boynton Hauerwas, L. (2006). Development of phonological, morphological, and orthographic knowledge in young spellers: The case of inflected verbs. Reading and Writing, 19, 819–843. Weiss, S., Grabner, R. H., Kargl, R., Purgstaller, C., & Fink, A. (2010). Behavioral and neurophysiological effects of morphological awareness training on spelling and reading. Reading and Writing, 23, 645–671.

Chapter 4

Spelling, Lexicon and Morphology

Spelling Margaret Atwood How do you learn to spell? Blood, sky & the sun, Your own name first, your first naming, Your first name, your first word. The long and fierce controversy about reading is winding down to the realization that, even at its very foundations, reading is about making sense of discourse, and that at the same time, a critical component in reading comprehension is word recognition (Bar-On & Ravid, 2011; Perfetti, 2007). In other words, understanding a text starts with correctly retrieving individual words. Spelling, in contrast, is still mired at the level of graphemes and grapheme combination. Let us rethink spelling in view of the claim that it is linguistic in nature, and therefore serves the acquisition and processing of the lexicon. In order to do that, we have to go back to phonology and spoken language.

Phonology and the Lexicon As linguists (of any flavor), we are used to thinking about phonology as a separate, context-free domain or sub-module in language, governed by its goals, own rules and principles (as formalized, for example, in Optimality Theory [Kager, 1999]). But recent empiricist approaches (clearly formulated, for example, in Oller, 2000) regard the lexicon as the core of grammatical generalizations, including phonology. Viewed in this way, the lexicon gains prominence as the major vehicle of human language, which gives rise to other properties, such as grammar (Bybee, 2006; Deacon, 1997). In this context, phonology is perceived as subservient to and emerging from the organization of the lexicon, and the developing lexicon is targeted for data mining in order to gain knowledge about possible phonological forms of lexical items. Phonological D.D. Ravid, Spelling Morphology, Literacy Studies 3, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-0588-8_4, Ó Springer ScienceþBusiness Media, LLC 2012

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4 Spelling, Lexicon and Morphology

representations would then be viewed as ‘‘emergent properties of the relative frequencies of different patterns in the actual word shapes that the language user encounters and stores in memory’’ (Beckman & Edwards, 2000, p. 241). Pertinent to our analysis, Hay, Pierrehumbert, and Beckman (2003) show that rating of nonce words as possible English words and spelling them are mediated by the frequency of medial clusters (such as MP) and by their perception as spanning morpheme boundaries. Phonology, morphology and syntax participate in processes that construct words and in processes which words participate in, such as grammar and discourse.

Orthography and the Lexicon This construal of phonology would then be carried over to the written modality. In the same way that phonology serves and derives from the lexicon, spelling is regarded as a lexical operation that fosters the production and comprehension of words – and thus nested within a complex network of phonological, morphological, and orthographic categories and patterns. As in spoken language, learners need to extract distributional frequencies about mapping these three domains in words. I would thus expect that any systematicities that we will find in spelling would be lexical in nature, that is, deriving from word-related properties such as lexical categories and morphological structure. Spelling phenomena such as frequent letter sequences, phoneme-grapheme correspondences, classification of letters by morphological role (such as root or function letters) are all entailed by the fact that correct or conventional spelling supports the production and recognition of words. Orthographic units are thus construed as an important structural facet guiding spelling side by side with phonology. For example, Kandel, He´rault, Grosjacques, Lambert, and Fayol (2009) show that French-speaking 4th and 5th graders used orthographic syllables rather than phonological syllables as processing units while writing. And in Thai, a tone language with an orthography that shares alphabetic and syllabary properties, effective spelling relies on the retrieval of stored orthographic representations by 2nd grade (Winskel & Lemwanthong, 2010). The two figures below illustrate this claim. Figure 4.1 is a visual illustration of the interface of orthography, phonology and morphology in the expression of lexical units. Figure 4.2 demonstrates how, specifically, the consistent spelling of C in the English adjective suffix –ic (discussed above) interacts with different pronunciations in three words related by morphology. At this point, I would like to recruit the notion ‘lexical quality’ introduced by C. Perfetti to the study of reading comprehension. According to Perfetti, a robust and coherent lexical representation includes all of the information about it – grammatical properties (morphological and syntactic), phonology and morpho-phonology, lexical semantics, and pragmatic associations (Frishkoff, Perfetti, & Collins-Thompson, 2010; Perfetti, 2007; Perfetti & Hart, 2002). The more a person knows about a word, the more ‘qualitative’ its representation

The Typological Impact of Morphology

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Fig. 4.1 Orthography, phonology, and morphology in words

Orthographic units and patterns

Phonological units and patterns

Morphosyntactic units and patterns

Lexical units 29

Fig. 4.2 Orthography, phonology, and morphology in words: illustration

__c__

K Š S

-ic Adj -ic-ian N -ic-ity N

Attributive Adjective Agent Noun Abstract Noun

and retrieval in various contexts. The correct spelling of a word is certainly part of its ‘lexical quality’, so that a stable orthographic representation is an important signal of its identity. In even more general terms, I view spelling as essentially having a communicative role, as it is part of constructing written discourse. Discourse has a role in disambiguating homophones and homographs, but it also requires precision in spelling in order to designate the specific word selected in the appropriate context. Therefore, the goal of learning to spell is the correct designation of a word in the mental lexicon as part of discourse construction.

The Typological Impact of Morphology This brings us to yet another facet of the linguistic nature of writing as a notational system – the impact of target-language typology on spelling. Chapters 2 and 3 reviewed cross-linguistic research about the role of linguistic

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knowledge in general and of morphology in particular in learning to spell. These studies indicate that in many languages with alphabetical orthographies, morphology constitutes the architecture of hidden units organizing the complex and often opaque relationships between phonology and spelling of words. The theme underscoring this book is thus spelling morphology – that is investigating how morphology mediates the grapho-phonemic interface in the lexicon. The review showed that such mediation is particularly true of languages with rich morphologies, such as Hebrew, where children early on seek the underlying categories that would guide them in writing their language. The reasoning regarding the centrality of morphology in spelling Hebrew derives, on the one hand, from the view of spelling systems as linguistic in nature – in particular, supporting lexical learning and knowledge – and the concurrent role of input in language learning; and on the other hand, from the increasing importance assigned to linguistic typology in current languagelearning models. Chapter 2 delineated the idea of the typological imperative in languages – the set of frequent and salient properties characterizing the language and drawing the attention of learners from early on. The typological imperative in Hebrew is its rich morphological structure, and what motivates this book is Hebrew-speaking children’s typological insight on the central role of morphology in organizing spoken and written words in their language. Since morphology has semantic and structural facets, they all have to participate in defining its ‘richness’. In fact, evaluating morphological richness in a language should take three facets into consideration: First, the semantic aspect – the number and diversity of grammatical and lexical notions which are encoded synthetically, that is, in word structure. Morphology is central in languages which prefer to express semantic notions by morphological units within the word, rather than by syntagmatic constructions (i.e., by combining words in syntactic units) or by lexical semantics (Bybee, 1985). Children growing up in morphology-oriented languages learn to seek meaning within the word. A second aspect of morphological richness is systemic – to what extent are morphological systems prevalent in the language? How many structural options do these systems encompass? How many language systems and classes rely on word-internal structure? How diverse is each system and to what extent do separate systems interact with each other to form complex architectures? A language with a dense morphology makes use of morphological structure in most lexical classes, with diverse systems to express different classes of inflection and derivation. Children learn to think about morphology in terms of a systematic, complex apparatus and to use morphological structures as pointers to word category and possible meaning. Third, morphological richness involves a morpho-phonological aspect – to what extent is allomorphy rich and varied? Children growing up in a language where morphemes appear to keep changing form yet systematically retain the same meaning learn to look for patterns of complex meaning/structure relationships. As I elaborate below and in the next chapters, Hebrew fulfills all three requirements for a rich and dense

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morphology wielding the typological imperative over its young learners. Hebrew morphology is rich in all three senses which converge together to create its typological imperative. It naturally follows that morphological structures and semantics will impact not only on oral acquisition, but also on learning written Hebrew.

Morphological Richness: Semantics Inflection. Many grammatical and lexical notions are encoded in Hebrew wordstructure. Inflectional morphology marks four major grammatical notions wordinternally: Number, Gender, Person, and Tense. Nominal categories are inflected for number and gender: Nouns (animate and inanimate, concrete and abstract) take number and gender inflection, and adjectives obligatorily agree with head nouns. Nominal inflection is thus overtly marked by number-gender suffixes, e.g., ha-maxbe´ret ha-aduma ‘the-notebook,Fm the-red,Fm ¼ the red notebook’, or ha-maxbarot ha-adumot ‘the-notebooks,Fm the-red,Fm,Pl ¼ the red notebooks’. Verbs express tense inflection mainly through specific patterns – e.g., past-tense diber ‘talked’ vs. present-tense medaber ‘is talking’ in the Pi’el binyan conjugation. In addition, past and future tense verbs are obligatorily inflected for gender, number and person agreement with the subject noun – e.g., ha-maxbe´ret ne’elma ‘the notebook,Fm,3rdSg ‘disappeared, Fm,3rdSg’. In present tense (termed beynoni ‘middle, interim’ in the traditional literature), verbs are obligatorily inflected for number and gender in agreement with the subject noun, like adjectives, e.g., ha-maxbarot kol ha-zman ne’elamot ‘thenotebooks,Fm all the time disappear,Fm,Pl ¼ the notebooks keep disappearing’. Tense inflection is marked by changes in the vocalic template of the verb; gender, number and person agreement is marked by prefixes and suffixes. In addition to the three content-word classes taking inflection, prepositions, a closed-class category, incorporate pronominal information in their obligatory inflection for gender, number, and person, e.g., lax ‘to-you,Fm’, itam ‘withthem’. The same triad of number, gender and person semantics is expressed in a language-particular Hebrew morphological device of grammatical incorporation termed optional inflectional morphology, which operates side by side with more analytic – that is, syntactic – expression of the same notions (Schiff, Ravid, & Levy-Shimon, 2011). The morphological option is denser and more structurally opaque, while the analytic option is perceptually salient and transparent. The three major categories taking optional inflectional incorporation are possessive nouns, accusative verbs, and double compounds. Possessive nouns optionally incorporate the number, gender and person of the possessor, e.g. beyt-ex ‘house-your,Fm ¼ your house’; the corresponding syntactic expression of the same notion is ha-baýit shelax ‘the-house of-you,Fm’. In much the same way, verbs with accusative complementation optionally incorporate the

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pronominal direct object information into morphological structure. Thus, the single, morphologically bound word le-hazmineńi ‘to-invite-me’ alternates with the more analytic expression le-hazmin oti ‘to-invite Acc-me’ (Berman, 1978; Levin, Ravid, & Rappaport, 2001; Ravid, 1995; Schwarzwald, 2002). A third category expressing number, gender and person by optional morphology is the so-called ‘double’ compound device, where possessive meaning is expressed twice – on the first noun and by the lexical particle shel, as in simxata shel Dana ‘the-joy-of-her of Dana ¼ Dana’s joy’). The parallel, more analytic construction alternating with double compounds is the free or analytic compound, e.g., ha-simxa shel Dana ‘the-joy of Dana’, which is not inflectionally marked on the head noun. In addition, a variety of other function elements and adverbials may include optional number, gender and person inflectional marking, among them infinitival verbs (e.g. be-lexta ‘in-leaving-hers ¼ upon her leaving‘), manner adverbials such as odeńu ‘he-still-is’ and hineńi ‘here-I-am’), and negative eyneńu ‘heis-not’. All optionally marked structures share the feature of being of higher register than their syntactic alternants, and consequently written Hebrew, which is richer in optional morphology, is even more morphologically dense than spoken Hebrew, thus extremely pertinent to spelling. The following chapters elaborate on the specific morpho-phonological forms that express inflectional morphology in Hebrew, their type and token distributions, and the implications for spelling acquisition. Derivation. Like inflectional morphology, lexical morphology is richly textured in Hebrew, encoding a variety of semantic notions in the three main content-word classes: verbs, nouns, and adjectives. Verbs mark transitivity relations by verb patterns (binyanim, literally ‘buildings’), a productive system relating and creating different, morphologically related, verb lexemes. For example, basic verb gadal ‘grow’ (root g-d-l) takes on different shades of meaning through different binyan patterns to create causative higdil ‘enlarge’ and gidel ‘raise’, passive hugdal ‘be enlarged’ and gudal ‘be raised’, and reflexive (archaic) hitgadel ‘augment oneself’; and root q-d-m ‘forward’ relates verbs such as causative hikdim ‘precede, made early’ and kidem ‘promote’, passive hukdam ‘made earlier’ and kudam ‘be promoted’, and inchoative hitkadem ‘make progress, advance’. Finally, root q-l-t ‘take in’ relates basic verb kalat ‘absorb’ to passive niklat ‘be absorbed’, causative hiklit ‘record’ and passive huklat ‘be recorded’. These are derivational relationships, and therefore they are not completely and consistently regular and productive – however a child learning Hebrew is compellingly faced with frequently recurring patterns systematically encoding transitivity values by the same sets of patterns, resulting with early acquisition of the binyan system (Berman, 1985). Like verbs, nominal derivational affixes systematically encode a set of semantic notions which in less morphologically expressive languages might be attributed to lexical semantics. Nominal derivation by mishkal (literally, ‘weight’) patterns expresses agentive, attributive, diminutive, instrument, location, collective and abstract dimensions, as shown in the examples derived from root

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g-d-l ‘grow’: megadel ‘grower’, gadol ‘big’, megudal ‘large’, magde´let ‘magnifying (glass)’, migdal ‘tower’, gidul ‘growth’, go´del ‘size’, hagdala ‘enlargement’, gdula ‘greatness’, and gadlut ‘magnanimity’. Nouns and adjectives derived from root q-d-m ‘go forward’ illustrate these same nominal notions in kadum ‘ancient’, mukdam ‘early’, kodem ‘previous’, kodman ‘antecedent’, ke´dem ‘antiquity, east’, ko´dem ‘before’, hakdama ‘introduction’, kidum ‘promotion’, hitkadmut ‘progress’, kidma ‘front, novelty’, kadim ‘hot wind from the east’. The morphological family based on q-l-t ̣ ‘take in’ complements the picture: koltan ‘receptor’, kale´tet ‘cassette’, taklit ‘ record’, taklitan ‘d.j.’, muklat ‘recorded’, ke´let ‘recruitment’, haklata ‘recording’, klita ‘absorption’, miklat ‘shelter’, maklet ‘receiver’, kalit ‘easy to absorb’. The mishkal patterns that these words share are neither random nor completely arbitrary – rather, they indicate ontological membership and systematic semantic contents. For example, hagdala, hakdama and haklata share pattern haCCaCa carrying the meaning of action nominal to causative verb, while migdal and miklat share pattern miCCaC indicating place nominals. Again, while nominal derivation is not completely productive and regular, noun form is clearly indicative of its semantics – agent, instrument, action nominal and the like. The main message here is that children growing up in Hebrew learn to look for a great many inflectional and derivational notions within rather than between words, and this is one important facet of morphological richness. A second perspective on Hebrew morphological richness is structural, including, at a general level, the broad systems that make up word structure, and at a local level, morpho-phonological structure.

Morphological Richness: Systems The array of semantic notions described above is mainly encoded in the two morphological systems of non-linear and linear affixation. Root-and-pattern or non-linear formation is the principal device for constructing words in Hebrew, designated in Ravid (2006) as ‘morpheme-level morphology’ since it combines two sub-lexical components – roots and patterns – to form a word, as illustrated by the verbal and nominal morphological families based on roots g-d-l, q-d-m and q-l-t ̣ above. The Semitic root is a non-continuous set of consonantal radicals which constitutes the formal and semantic core of the Hebrew ‘morphological family’. Roots convey core lexical reference (e.g. root g-d-l ‘grow’). The binyan and mishkal patterns provide a (mostly) vocalic/prosodic template into which roots are inserted to become a word. For example, root g-d-l combines non-linearly with verb pattern hiCCiC to yield higdil ‘enlarge’. Patterns are classifiers: they signal the word’s syntactic class and designate further categorial distinctions such as causative verb or instrument noun, as shown above. Non-linear affixation. Root-and-pattern combination constitutes the major organizational factor underlying the Hebrew lexicon in two ways: First, roots

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connect clusters of words sharing the same basic lexical reference. Second, patterns systematically group together words with the same categorial class and with the same derivational history. Thus, passive resultative adjectives based on pattern CaCuC (such as sagur ‘closed’, gamur ‘finished’, baduk ‘checked’, saduk ‘cracked’, banuy ‘built’) are systematically related to verbs in the first verbal pattern (traditionally termed Qal ‘light’), as in badak ‘check’ – baduk ‘checked’, bana ‘build’ – banuy ‘built’. The interface between semantic marking and systemic derivational morphology is one more facet of rich morphology. Morphological patterns are derivational and thus semi-productive, creating overlapping form-semantics complexes, so that the same pattern may signify several ontological classes, while different patterns may indicate the same meaning. For example, pattern miCCaC signifies places (e.g., mifrats ‘bay’) and abstract entities (e.g. mimsar ‘transmission’), while instrument nouns can be expressed by maCCeC (mavreg ‘screwdriver’), maCCeCa (mavxena ‘test tube’), miCCeĆet (mikte´ret ‘pipe’), CaCeĆet (kale´tet ‘cassette’), as well as by beynoni present-tense participles (e.g., mekarer ‘refrigerator’, sho’ev-avak ‘Hoover’). In the same way, binyan verb patterns Hif ‘il and Pi’el often convey causative meanings, each contributing to expressing subtle differences such as higdil ‘enlarge’ vs. gidel ‘grow, raise’, or hixnis ‘cause to enter’ vs. kines ‘cause to gather’. To complete the picture, patterns are sometimes devoid of consistent semantics, so that not every noun in a certain pattern conforms to its typical ontological class (e.g., iparon ‘pencil’ and ko´tel ‘wall’ are not abstract nominals, while hikri ‘read aloud’ and himtin ‘wait’ are not causative verbs). Finally, not all patterns have typical meanings: The nominal mishkal patterns CeĆeC and taCCiC and the basic verbal pattern Qal have no canonical meanings. To get an idea about the meaning of ‘morphological richness’ in this specifically systemic respect, consider the following comparison between Hebrew nominal patterns and English derivational suffixes. Patterns have often been described as affixal in nature in the sense that they determine the lexical/ syntactic category of the word as English –ify, -ful or –ity do. In the nominal domain, beyond syntactic classification, patterns mark nouns as belonging to the same ontological category. English, for example, marks two major ontological classes by derivational suffixes – agent nouns by –er/or, -an, and –ist (commuter, historian, and artist respectively); and abstract nominals by suffixes such as –ment, -ness, -ity, -dom, -ation (as in embarrassment, kindness, hostility, boredom, and condemnation). As a morphologically rich language, Hebrew pattern ontology is richer than English derivational suffixes in several respects. First, the range of Hebrew nominal categories is much larger, running from mishkal patterns indicating agent nouns and adjectives (e.g. CaCCan, as in safran ‘librarian’ or shakran ‘liar’), to strictly instrument patterns (maCCeC, mavreg ‘screwdriver’), place patterns (miCCaC, mifrats ‘bay’), patterns designating collective nominals (CCuCa, pluga ‘military unit’), and a variety of patterns marking abstract nominals (CiCaCon, higayon ‘logic’). Moreover, each ontological category is expressed by diverse patterns with several

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allomorphs. For example, there are at least 10 different patterns for agent nouns, and about 20 for abstract nominals. Finally, English agent nouns may have zero morphological marking (e.g., guide, thief, coach), whereas native Hebrew nominals of a certain ontological category can usually be identified by their typical pattern form. The analogy between English linear affixes and Hebrew patterns is thus limited, since it does not express to what extent Semitic patterns in fact determine the entire form of the Hebrew word. While English derivational suffixes are linear and attach to the end of the word, the Semitic pattern is, in some sense, the word. This is because it supplies the prosodic template of the category the word is a member of – its stress pattern and the internal vowels, with root radicals often preceded and/or followed by pattern consonants. Root and pattern are interwoven and fused into a single word – and thus syllable structure is a function of the pattern template with the specific root consonants inserted into it. As patterns provide potential prosodic structures, roots realize them, and together they specify the actual morpho-phonological form of the word. For example, miCCaCa specifies pattern prefix mi, followed by two consecutive slots for root radicals creating a consonant cluster, the vowel a, followed by a slot for the third root radical, followed by the final vowel a. This yields a specific tri-syllabic template with final stress which yields words such as miflaga ‘political party’, midraxa ‘pavement’, and mishpaxa ‘family’. Likewise, the trisyllabic pattern CaCeĆet specifies three root slots separated by vowels and ending with –et, with penultimate stress. This template would yield nouns such as kale´tet ‘cassette’, naye´det ‘police van’, or taye´let ‘boardwalk’. Roots and patterns are not ancient, frozen remnants of past structures. Rather, they are constantly evolving constructs, testifying to their robust morphological status in the Hebrew lexicon. New roots continually branch off old roots in various ways. For example, the new verb mixshev ‘computerize’ is based on the quadrilateral root m-x-sˇ-v, derived from noun maxshev ‘computer’ (instrument pattern maCCeC), which in its turn originates in root h-sˇ-b ‘think, calculate’, with the prefix m- re-analyzed as a root radical. Likewise, new, regular triliteral roots replace old, defective roots (mainly those containing n, y or w) in the service of lexical expansion (Ravid, 1990). For example, makom ‘place’ is constructed of defective root k-w-m ‘rise’ and locative pattern miCCaC. A re-analysis of the pattern prefix m- as a root radical yields the regular new root m-k-m, and based on it, verb hitmakem ‘settle oneself, find one’s own place’. New patterns are much less likely to emerge, since their meaning or function is categorical rather than referential and they number by the dozens rather than by the thousands. However, family size of patterns rises and ebbs so that some patterns act as ‘basins of attraction’ for new word formation in Hebrew. For example, the abstract noun pattern tCuCa, an allomorphic variation of taCCeCa in combination with w-medial roots, currently participates in constructing many words, both modern and old, e.g., tvuna ‘wisdom’, tshuka ‘desire’, txuna ‘trait’, tmuta ‘death rate’, tluna ‘complaint’, txula ‘volume’, tshuva

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‘response’, and many others. Even more interesting is the actual emergence of an abstract pattern designating computer-ware, CoCCa. Based on a variant of an ancient pattern, with few instances of non-obsolete nouns (Avineri, 1976), it has recently taken on new life to derive computer-related words such as xomra ‘hardware’, toxna ‘software’, or lomda ‘learning software’, shotfa ‘shareware’, and even gonva ‘stolen software’. The bulk of non-inflected content words in Hebrew – all verbs, and most nouns and adjectives – are essentially bi-morphemic, constructed of root and pattern. Even those words which have no internal structure and are perceived as single morphemes or amalgams by Hebrew speakers such as shafan ‘rabbit’, subsidiya ‘subsidy’ or English cancel spontaneously yield consonantal skeletons which combine with patterns to yield new words – hishtafen ‘chicken out’, mesubsad ‘subsidized’, and kinsel ‘cancel’. Non-linear affixation is thus a frequent and consistent presence in the Hebrew lexicon, an enormously flexible and productive system providing the constant background relationships from which new Hebrew words spring. Linear affixation. A second type of morphological structure in Hebrew is linear, a concatenation of a word and a suffix, e.g., saga´r-ti ‘(I)-closed’. Obligatory and optional grammatical markings of number, gender and person on nouns, adjectives, verbs and prepositions are generally expressed as linear suffixes,1 e.g., kadur-im ‘ball-s’, ama´r-nu ‘we said’. Linear inflection is extremely frequent and productive given that most of it involves agreement phenomena. In derivation, linear morphology is more restricted in two senses. First, it feeds upon non-linear affixation which provides the stem to which a derivational suffix can be added. For example, maxshevon ‘calculator’ is based on stem maxshev ‘computer’, in itself a non-linear formation, with the instrument suffix on attached at its end. Moreover, linear derivation is strictly nominal: All ontological meanings and classes conveyed by nominal non-linear patterns also find expression in discrete linear suffixes, e.g., agentive iton-ay ‘journalist’, abstract iton-ut ‘the press’ (Berman, 1987; Schwarzwald, 2002). The linear system carves out nominal space in an even more fine-grained way than nonlinear affixation. In addition to the agentive/instrumental suffixes, -an (as in matslixan ‘winner’) and –ay (iton-ay ‘journalist’), it highlights the collective/ place meaning (pa’ot-on ‘nursery school’, tsimx-iya ‘flora’), the diminutive function (pax-it ‘can’, pax-on ‘hut’) (Hora, Avivi-Ben Zvi, Levie, & Ravid, 2006), denominal adjectives (prat-i ‘personal’) and manner adverbs (derived from denominal adjectives by suffix –t, as in ish-i-t ‘personally’). These have few or no parallels in the basic root-and-pattern system (Ravid, 2006). Taken together, linear inflection and derivation is a second robust, frequent and productive system forming morphological paradigms and families on top of stems which are often constructed from the more basic root and pattern. While these are by no means the only large-scale morphological systems in Hebrew, non-linear and linear formation serve to demonstrate systemic morphological richness. They span across inflection and derivation in all content and some function word categories, constructing Hebrew words linearly or

Morphological Richness: Morpho-Phonology and Allomorphy

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non-linearly, each splitting into several subsystems which interact with each other in specified ways. These local constructions are captured by the notion of morpho-phonological structure.

Morphological Richness: Morpho-Phonology and Allomorphy A third and final perspective on the centrality of morphology in Hebrew is morpho-phonological. The term ‘‘morpho-phonology’’ relates to phonological processes operating within morphological categories, e.g., the voice(less) features of the plural marker -s in English (compare the pronunciation of books vs. hugs). Morpho-phonology relates to the structures that characterize local, specific sub-systems and classes. Much of morpho-phonology is systemic – that is, deriving from the inherent structural characteristics of the general morphological systems, for example, the way roots intertwine with patterns. At the same time, each local system has its particular morpho-phonological features. For example, vowel alternation indicating temporal changes in Qal involves a-a vs. o-e (e.g., ganav ‘stole’/gonev ‘is stealing’), whereas in Pi’el the change is from i-e to a-e, with the addition of a prefixed me- (limed ‘taught’/melamed ‘is teaching’). Information about the structured behavior of smaller systems not only feeds larger systems, but also serves to draw general conclusions and highlight frequent tendencies, e.g., signifying present-tense by m-. The complex morpho-phonology of such local Hebrew constructions requires constant attention to their internal structures in order to keep track of meaning and function. Morpho-phonology encompasses processes as well as structures, with phonological changes operating under morphologically-defined conditions. One well-known example is stem change subject to linear operations, which takes place under different conditions in nominal and verbal constructions. Thus, vowel deletion takes place in nominals two syllables before the main stress shift, and is restricted to a, e.g., shavur/shvurim ‘broken/Pl’; whereas in verbs three different vowels (a, e, and o) delete in the syllable preceding the main stress, e.g., yaxol/yaxo´lnu ‘he could/we could’, or tishan/tishni ‘you will sleep/you,Fm will sleep’. Another example for a morpho-phonological process is the aforementioned metathesis in Hitpa’el constructions, where the first root sibilant interchanges places with the prefixal –t, as in histader ‘arrange oneself’ (root s-d-r; compare non-metathesized structure as in hitkadem ‘get ahead’, root q-d-m). Faced with frequent morpho-phonological processes, Hebrew speakers need to pay attention to forms, trace the changes that they systematically and semi-systematically undergo, make sure to classify these contexts correctly, and expect specific changes in appropriate contexts. Such operations create morpho-phonologically conditioned allomorphs, that is, phonological variations of the same basic morpheme. An example in English would be plural -s in books, –z in hugs, and -ıˇz in watches, conditioned

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by the phonological features of the last segment of the singular noun. One possible way of looking at morpho-phonological allomorphy is as detracting from the salience of a segment, since it requires more than a one-to-one mapping of meaning onto structure (Goldschneider & DeKeyser, 2001). Thus the invariable form of Finnish morphemes is a crucial factor in their successful L1 processing beyond the effects of frequency and productivity; while plural allomorphy in English is one of the factors leading to less clear mapping in 2nd language learning (Ellis, 2006; Ja¨rvikivi, Bertram, & Niemi, 2006). However, typological considerations may overturn the salience argument: together with the other manifestations of morphological richness, allomorphy can actually be an asset in directing the child’s attention to the prominence of word structures and meanings and thus promoting morphological knowledge and awareness. The rich, varied and complex Hebrew allomorphy presents children with a kaleidoscopic array of morphemes, each expressed in several variant forms. For example, the free singular stem bat ‘girl, daughter’ changes to bit- when bound (e.g., biti ‘my daughter’), to ban- in plural form banot, and to bn- as a bound plural stem bnot- (e.g., bnotay ‘my girls’, bnot^ha-kita ‘the class girls’). These allomorphic variations create clusters of structurally related forms expressing the same abstract morpheme. A child being reared in Hebrew will not only notice that many meanings are encoded systematically within words, but also that she has to link together several allomorphic variations into a single network that will represent a coherent morphemic entity. This of course will enhance her morphological sensitivity. To demonstrate the power of allomorphy, consider the allomorphic representation of masculine gender in inflected prepositions by three different suffixal forms: -o, as in ito ‘with-him’, -u, as in mimeńu ‘from-him’, and -av, as in alav ‘on-him’.2 Children soon infer that these three forms express the same function, but it takes them time to learn to assign each masculine allomorph to its proper subset of prepositions, to identify principles of classification, and to learn frequencies of distribution. Given frequent exposure to inflected preposition tokens, masculine gender marking on prepositions evolves into a stable bundle of related subsystems. These eventually link up to masculine gender marking in related subsystems such as optional possessives (e.g., masculine shmo ‘his name’ and yeladav ‘his children’), and more distant systems such as past and future tense verbs (yelxu ‘they will walk’). The twin processes which organize gender marking – classification into separate categories and identifying similarities across them – would be extracted from careful attention to allomorphic word structure. Allomorphy pervades Hebrew morphology, as in every language with a rich morphology. Interestingly, each system and category in Hebrew is characterized by different, yet systematic allomorphic variation. For example, stop/spirant alternation of b k p/v x f is a pervasive phenomenon in Hebrew in general and in Hebrew roots in particular. Thus inflectionally or derivationally related forms demonstrate at least two (and often more) manifestations of the same root. For example, p-z-r/f-z-r in pizer ‘scattered’/ mefazer ‘scatters’; sˇ-b-r/sˇ-v-r in shavur

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‘broken’/nishbar ‘broke’; or k-b-d/x-b-d/k-v-d/x-v-d in kibed ‘respected’/mexabed ‘respects’. Learning to assemble the ‘abstract’ or general form of the root from its various allomorphs into a coherent and stable entity involves overcoming this phonological inconsistency and learning the possible permutations of a root. Children encounter alternating roots early on in acquisition and often fail to use the correct alternant, testifying to a process of learning the root as a whole unit (Ravid, 1995). But paying attention to stop/spirant alternation can teach you a lot about Hebrew phonology and morphology – not only which segments alternate as stop and spirant, but also at what root position they are allowed to alternate (often not at the end), combined with which morphological patterns, inflections, and derivations. A second example of pervasive allomorphy relates to nominal stems. The number of monosyllabic open-class words in conversational Hebrew is extremely low – 5% of types and 10% of tokens (Segall, Nir-Sagiv, Kishon-Rabin, & Ravid, 2008). This is not a coincidence, since most content-words in Hebrew are bi-morphemic, consisting in most cases of a root and a pattern. Monosyllabic words contain no discernible roots, and as such might be perceived as outside the realm of word-structure, however they tend to undergo at least one of two kinds of changes under morphological operations, revealing underlying consistencies: Many monosyllabic nouns undergo vowel change when inflected or derived – often accompanied by stop/spirant alternation, e.g., ken/kinim ‘nest/s’, bat/bito ‘daughter/his daughter’, dov/dubon ‘bear/teddybear’. In others, the underlying ‘double’ roots in the free stems emerge when bound, e.g., xag/xagigi ‘festival/festive’, tsad/tsdadim ‘side/s’, or lev/levavi ‘heart/cordial’. In some cases, both changes characterize the same role, e.g., lev/levavot/libo ‘heart/ hearts/his heart’. Allomorphy might thus temporarily detract from the transparency and processibility of spoken Hebrew morphology, but at the same time it creates small subsystems, each consisting of clusters of similar though not identical constructs, standing for a single morpheme. Repeated exposure to allomorphy will teach children to pay attention to the internal structure of the world and to relate different structures to the same meaning or function. It will also enhance overall systematicity by bringing similar phenomena to the attention of the young learner. Repeatedly relating these subsystems via weak links which capture similarities across categories and classes is another way of learning to represent Hebrew morphology as a stable system in the child’s cognition.

Spelling Hebrew Morphology The wealth of morphological structures and meanings in Hebrew is not restricted to its oral mode: they are reflected in the orthographic organization of the Hebrew word and in the way morphological units are sequenced in writing. Far from being a hindrance to young spellers, the complexity of the

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Hebrew morphological system constitutes the layer of ‘hidden units’ or the underlying grid resolving the mismatch between an ancient writing system, on the one hand, and a contemporary phonological system, on the other. The next chapters will demonstrate that knowledge of Hebrew morphology provides explanatory power regarding how Hebrew-speaking children decipher the multiple networks of homophony and homography in spelling Hebrew, and succeed early on in spelling correctly a major part of the system. Moreover, we will see how morphological perception and strategies which characterize Hebrew speakers from early on are dramatically enhanced with the acquisition of literacy; and how they loop back to foster thinking of spoken Hebrew in terms of written morphology – as predicted by Olson’s script-as-model theory of meta-linguistic awareness (Olson, 1994). The next three chapters will walk the reader through the phonological and orthographic expressions of the core morphological structures of Hebrew. The purpose of these analyses is trace the complex relationships between these three essential components of spelling knowledge – phonological constructs such as consonants and vowels, morphological roles and categories, and orthographic patterns – in order to account for Hebrew spellers’ intuitions about the structure of the written Hebrew word.

Notes 1. The future-tense prefixal AYTN ‫ איתן‬inflections will be discussed separately under verbal inflection. 2. Each form is motivated by specific morpho-phonological considerations, such as –av being typical of plural forms.

References Avineri, S. (1976). The palace of patterns. Tel Aviv: Dvir. Bar-On, A., & Ravid, D. (2011). Morphological decoding in Hebrew pseudowords: A developmental study. Applied Psycholinguistics, 32, 553–581. Beckman, M. E., & Edwards, J. (2000). The ontogeny of phonological categories and the primacy of lexical learning in linguistic development. Child Development, 71, 240–249. Berman, R. A. (1978). Modern Hebrew structure. Tel Aviv: University Publishing Projects. Berman, R. A. (1985). Acquisition of Hebrew. Hillsdale, NJ: Earlbaum. Berman, R. A. (1987). Productivity in the lexicon: New-word formation in Modern Hebrew. Folia Linguistica, 21, 425–461. Bybee, J. L. (1985). Morphology: A study of the relation between meaning and form. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Bybee, J. L. (2006). From usage to grammar: The mind’s response to repetition. Language, 82, 711–733. Deacon, T. (1997). The symbolic species. London: Penguin Books.

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Ellis, N. C. (2006). Selective attention and transfer phenomena in L2 acquisition: Contingency, cue competition, salience, interference, overshadowing, blocking, and perceptual learning. Applied Linguistics, 27, 164–194. Frishkoff, G. A., Perfetti, C. A., & Collins-Thompson, K. (2010). Lexical quality in the brain: ERP evidence for robust word learning from context. Developmental Neuropsychology, 35, 1–28. Goldschneider, J. M., & DeKeyser, R. (2001). Explaining the ‘‘natural order of L2 morpheme acquisition’’ in English: A meta-analysis of multiple determinants. Language Learning, 51, 1–50. Hay, J., Pierrehumbert, J., & Beckman, M. (2003). Speech perception, well-formedness, and the statistics of the lexicon. Papers in laboratory phonology VI (pp. 58–74). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Hora, A., Avivi-Ben Zvi, G., Levie, R., & Ravid, D. (2006). Acquiring diminutive structures and meanings in Hebrew: An experimental study. In I. Savickiene & W. U. Dressler (Eds.), The acquisition of diminutives (pp. 295–317). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Ja¨rvikivi, J., Bertram, R., & Niemi, J. (2006). Affixal salience and the processing of derivational morphology: The role of suffix allomorphy. Language and Cognitive Processes, 21, 394–431. Kager, R. (1999). Optimality theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kandel, S., He´rault, L., Grosjacques, G., Lambert, E., & Fayol, M. (2009). Orthographic vs. phonologic syllables in handwriting production. Cognition, 110, 440–444. Levin, I., Ravid, D., & Rappaport, S. (2001). Morphology and spelling among Hebrewspeaking children: From kindergarten to first grade. Journal of Child Language, 28, 741–769. Oller, D. K. (2000). The emergence of the speech capacity. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Olson, D. (1994). The world on paper. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Perfetti, C. A. (2007). Reading ability: Lexical quality to comprehension. Scientific Studies of Reading, 11, 1–27. Perfetti, C. A., & Hart, L. (2002). The lexical quality hypothesis. In L. Vehoeven, C. Elbro, & P. Reitsma (Eds.), Precursors of functional literacy (pp. 189–213). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Ravid, D. (1990). Internal structure constraints on new-word formation devices in Modern Hebrew. Folia Linguistica, 24, 289–346. Ravid, D. (1995). Language change in child and adult Hebrew: A psycholinguistic perspective. New York: Oxford University Press. Ravid, D. (2006). Word-level morphology: A psycholinguistic perspective on linear formation in Hebrew nominals. Morphology, 16, 127–148. Schiff, R., Ravid, D., & Levy-Shimon, S. (2011). Children’s command of plural and possessive marking on Hebrew nouns: A comparison of obligatory vs. optional inflections. Journal of Child Language, 38, 433–454. Schwarzwald, O. R. (2002). Modern Hebrew morphology. Tel Aviv: The Open University. Segall, O., Nir-Sagiv, B., Kishon-Rabin, L., & Ravid, D. (2008). Prosodic patterns in Hebrew child directed speech. Journal of Child Language, 35, 1–28. Winskel, K., & Lemwanthong, H. (2010). Reading and spelling acquisition in Thai children. Reading and Writing, 23, 1021–1053.

Chapter 5

Historical and Sociolinguistic Perspectives on Hebrew

At the end of the first decade of the new millennium, Modern Hebrew is a century-old language that still carries with it the traces of its 4,000-year-old past in its lexicon, morpho-syntax and orthographic system. Now the native language of 3rd and 4th generation native speakers (as well as incoming new 1st generations), Hebrew has one of the longest written records compiled in the last two millennia, and deriving from ancient historical periods during which Classical Hebrew was a spoken, living language. As I show throughout this book, Hebrew-speaking children have to contend with a morpho-phonological system which, though originating millennia ago, still impacts on current processes of language acquisition and on the development of linguistic literacy. The current chapter introduces the historical origins of Hebrew orthography and of the major categories of the Hebrew phonology/orthography interface. It anchors the sources of Hebrew spelling errors in the discrepancy between Modern Hebrew phonology and its classical ancestry. This discrepancy provides us with a unique opportunity to examine Hebrew spelling as a window on the inconsistent and often opaque linkage between current Hebrew phonology, its orthography, and the manifestations of current morphology in speech and in writing.

Roots of Modern Hebrew The history of Classical Hebrew (1100 BCE–250 CE) is usually divided into two distinct and consecutive periods: Biblical and Mishnaic Hebrew. Biblical Hebrew was a derivative of Canaanite (a northwestern Semitic language), the language spoken in the Land of Israel during the time of the First Temple from the beginning of the second millennium BCE until the middle of the first millennium BCE. It is recorded in written form in the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament) and in various inscriptions (Bergstra¨sser, 1982; Kautzsch, 1910). The living heritage of Biblical Hebrew consists of core lexical items, such as kinship terms, names of animals, basic nouns, verbs and adjectives, and the Semitic morpho-syntactic underpinnings of Hebrew, such as root and pattern D.D. Ravid, Spelling Morphology, Literacy Studies 3, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-0588-8_5, Ó Springer ScienceþBusiness Media, LLC 2012

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5 Historical and Sociolinguistic Perspectives on Hebrew

morphology and the construct-state smixut compounding. A later form of the language, known as Mishnaic Hebrew, succeeded Biblical Hebrew at the time of the second Temple, and was used alongside another northwestern Semitic language, Aramaic, up to approximately the middle of the first millennium CE (Kutscher, 1982; Rabin, 1972). Mishnaic Hebrew differed from the earlier Biblical period in many respects, including the tense system, SVO word order, analytic compounding, and the morphological category of deverbal nominals – all of which are important features of current Modern Hebrew (Bendavid, 1971; Berman, 1978). For about 1,500 years, until the 20th century, Hebrew was dormant, no longer a spoken native language – however used extensively and richly in writing in the Jewish Diaspora for liturgical, religious, cultural, scholarly and scientific purposes, serving as the lingua franca of Jews speaking different languages in the world (Ben Hayyim, 1985; Schwarzwald, 2001). Despite the absence of native speakers during this long period, Hebrew continued to change, acquiring new lexical items and grammatical forms, many of which are used extensively nowadays in Modern Hebrew. For example, two important morphological categories, both critical to the expression of written Hebrew discourse style (Berman & Ravid, 2008; Ravid & Berman, 2009) emerged and consolidated in Medieval Hebrew as the result of continuous contact with Arabic. One is the class of denominal i-suffixed adjectives which derives adjectives from nouns (e.g., ekroni ‘principled’ from noun ikaron ‘principle’, or omanuti ‘artistic’ from omanut ‘art’), prevalent in written Modern Hebrew, especially in the NP-modifying position and in conjunction with higher-register abstract nouns. Before denominal adjectives began to flourish, Hebrew did not have a separate and distinct morphological class of adjectives (Ravid & Levie, 2010; Schwarzwald, 1998, 2001). A second development in Medieval times is the evolution of abstract nouns suffixed by –ut such as mardanut ‘rebelliousness’ from mardan ‘rebellious’, or ruxaniyut ‘spiritualness’ from ruxani ‘spiritual’, necessary for the interpretational exegesis of the Talmud and midrash often cited in medieval biblical commentaries (Schwarzwald, 2000). The phenomenon known as ‘‘the revival of Hebrew’’ and the subsequent creation of Modern Hebrew actually consisted of two separate yet consecutive processes (Ravid, 1995a): First, in the middle of the 19th century, Hebrew was standardized by central European Jews into a single written language integrated from its historical layers (Biblical, Mishnaic, and Medieval), together with major contributions from Indo-European languages (mainly German, Russian, and Polish) as well as from Yiddish, a Jewish non-Semitic language. Subsequently, at the turn of the 20th century, Hebrew was revived as a spoken language, first in Eastern Europe, and mostly in pre-state Israel, with a new phonology based on Yiddish consonants and Ladino vowels. Within an astonishingly short period of less than 50 years, Modern Hebrew, a new synergistic entity firmly anchored in its various written historical sources, became the only common means of spoken and written communication among Jewish Israelis. From about 1914, Hebrew has served as the sole language of teaching at all

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levels of education in Israel, and by the 1920s it had already emerged as the mother tongue of a first generation of native Hebrew speakers – among them my own parents, Batya (nee´ Rivkin) and (the late) Yehoshua Diskin, whose home languages were Russian, Polish, Yiddish – and Hebrew. The revival of Hebrew as a spoken language is astonishing from any point of view – and for me, in my double role of participant in and student of the phenomenon, it is endlessly fascinating. The question of how a dormant (some claim, dead) written language returned to living status has of course important implications for universal questions of language acquisition and language change (Ravid, 1995a). But beyond its revival as a mother tongue of native speakers, Modern Hebrew is now the chief language of writing of these speaker/writers. While Hebrew phonology has undergone tremendous changes, its orthographic system has come through the generations almost unscathed. The dynamic clash between Hebrew phonology and orthography has been mediated by morphological considerations from the earliest days of Modern Israeli Hebrew. Every language undergoes phonological change, and obviously changes in the orthography always lag behind those in speech. Thus, all languages show a discrepancy between speech and writing, and few – if any – orthographies are completely transparent, reflecting phonology fully, consistently and unambiguously. But due to the circumstances of its revival, the gap between current Hebrew phonology and its written morphology is significantly large with unique characteristics, reminiscent of a diglossic situation. The long written history of Hebrew has left its mark in the form of a chasm between current spoken and written usage. Beyond lexical and syntactic change, the difference is largest in the domain of morpho-phonology, especially regarding vowels. The main reason for this gap is the historical neutralizations which have rendered the phonology-morphology link opaque and inconsistent in Modern Hebrew, as discussed in the next sections below. Consonant and vowel neutralizations of historical phonological distinctions have blurred the phonological underpinnings of Hebrew morphology. These neutralizations have critical implications for the oral and written behavior of Hebrew users: they have been shown to constitute the main sources of child language errors, some of which persist to middle childhood and adolescence. Moreover, they distinguish Modern Hebrew sociolects, and in some cases consolidate into language change phenomena (Ravid, 1995a). In a fascinating twist, literacy, with attendant knowledge of written Hebrew, systematically re-introduces those blurred historical phonological distinctions through the orthographic system, and gradually reveals the morpho(phono)logical underpinnings of Hebrew to gradeschool children (Schwarzwald, 1995). For example, the current Hebrew consonant v derives from two historical sources – the glide w (spelled W ‫)ו‬, and the spirantized form of b (spelled B ‫ב‬, exactly like the stop b). A less literate, morphologically naı¨ ve Hebrew speaker/ writer will have difficulty spelling the v in a word such as yevarer ‘will inquire’, with both B ‫ ב‬and W ‫ ו‬as options: This requires lexically-specific knowledge

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about root b-r-r relating future tense yevarer to other manifestations of the same root as in past tense berer ‘inquired’ or action nominal berur ‘inquiry’ – all containing the stop alternant. This should be coupled with general morphophonological knowledge about stop/spirant alteration patterns, especially relating to the frequent distribution of stops at word-initial position (Bar-On & Ravid, 2011; Ravid, 1995a; Ravid & Bar-On, 2005). Familiarity with written Hebrew, where B ‫ ב‬often stands for both the stop and the spirant versions, will greatly help in the correct spelling of yevarer. However, the discrepancy between spoken and written Hebrew – especially between phonology, orthography, and morphology – constantly increases, with crucial implications for the interface of spoken language, orthography and literacy in the Hebrew-speaking population in Israel (Ben Rafael, Olshtain, & Gajst, 1994; Ravid, 1996; Ravid & Shlesinger, 2001). Before embarking upon the roots of the spoken/written split in Israeli Hebrew, I would like to embed my psycholinguistic analysis within the larger sociolinguistic context of changing Hebrew demographics. Hebrew, an ancient yet young language undergoing speedy evolution, is a laboratory for ongoing massive linguistic change because of a constant languages-in-contact situation impinging on it. The Hebrew-speaking community in Israel, now numbering about seven million people, has always constituted an extreme case of an immigrant society, and as a result Modern Hebrew has undergone swift and radical changes since its revival. Immigration waves – mostly from Eastern Europe and Yemen – began in the late 19th century, joining the native-born, mostly Arabic-speaking Jews in pre-Israel Palestine, and have been coming in more or less every decade since then. Between 1948 and 1970 Israelis took in double their number in Jewish refugees from communities in Europe, Asia and Africa, speaking a Babel of languages, a time during which Hebrew acquired many of its current characteristics. Immigration to Israel continued throughout the second half of the 20th century, culminating in the two most recent aliya waves – over a million Russian-speaking immigrants from the former Soviet Union in the 1990s (Emmons, 1997; Shuval, 1996; Statistical Abstract of Israel, 2006), and about 80,000 immigrants from Ethiopia speaking Amharic and Tigrinian (Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, 2007). While immigrant adults do not always achieve full proficiency in Hebrew (DeKeyser, Alfi-Shabtay, & Ravid, 2010), contributing to the intense ‘languages in contact’ situation, their children invariably join the widening circles of native speakers (Alfi-Shabtay, 2006; Olshtain & Horenczyk, 2002). This situation has brought on a consolidation of the colloquial vernacular of spoken Hebrew all Israelis share, while at same time it means a continuous pressure for the language to change and adapt itself at the spoken level, all the time growing further apart from the historical written forms, especially in the last decade of electronic proliferation (Schwarzwald, 2006). In addition to the recent, huge immigration wave from ex-Soviet countries, the impact of two large Israeli-born minority groups, rapidly increasing in size in the younger generation of Israelis, should be taken into consideration in the

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second decade of the new millennium. One of them is the Israeli Arabs, currently constituting about a fifth of Israel’s total population, actively participating in Israel’s public life, many of whom use Hebrew as a major language in addition to their native Arabic in academy, industry, white-collar professions and journalism. A second up-and-coming minority group is the Yiddishspeaking ultra-orthodox Jewish community, slowly and painfully relinquishing segregation from secular life. Both groups have such high birth rate that according to some estimates, half of Israel’s first graders at the end of this decade will be either Arab or Ultra-Orthodox. Ongoing, constant sociolinguistic and demographic pressures from segments of the population speaking other languages than Hebrew further enhance and promote the natural process of Hebrew departing from its historical roots. My book Language change in child and adult Hebrew (1995a, OUP) presented a paradoxical picture of Hebrew at the end of the 20th century: A language with a closely hovering, protective Academy of the Hebrew Language fiercely invested in preserving its historical morpho(phono)logy and lexicon, at the same time beset by naı¨ ve hordes of young native speakers, blithely ignorant and unmindful of the Byzantine rules and stipulations concerning these domains (Schwarzwald, 1981). At the time of its publication, my book documented the fast lexical, morphological, and especially morpho-phonological changes wrought into Hebrew by children and adolescents from different SES backgrounds in the face of incoherent and often contradictory morphophonological patterns. For example, I showed that two sets of defective roots were coalescing in the spoken present-tense form of binyan Hif’il: n-initial roots (such as mapil ‘dropping,Tr’ from n-p-l ‘fall’) and w-medial roots (such as mekim ‘raising’ from q-w-m ‘rise’) to a common mVCiC structure (where V stands for either the vowel e or a). In the absence of any systematic cue for vowel choice, the higher frequency of w-medial meCiC led to the disappearance of the maCiC alternant in present tense, hence both mepil and mekim. The ever widening gap between Academy stipulations and speakers’ search for linguistic generalizations created an attitude of uncertainty and defensiveness on the part of native Hebrew speakers regarding the proper pronunciation of vowels and stops vs. spirants. In the two decades that have passed, two trends regarding Hebrew morpho-phonology have been noted by both erudite Hebraists and lay lovers of Hebrew. First, more areas have been undergoing even swifter and more pervasive changes that have led, for example, to the annihilation of the vowel i in past-tense Hif’il, which is now rendered e by virtually all speakers under 25, and by many older ones. For another example, all literate alternants of ve- ‘and’ such as vi-, va- or vo- have completely disappeared, leaving u- as a single alternant whose morpho-phonological contexts have widened beyond bi-labials and initial clusters to include structures such as u-xamesh ‘and-five’. At the same time, several completed syntactic, morphological and morphophonological changes which used to be the target of fierce criticism as solecisms,

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have dropped entirely below the horizon of native speakers’ intuitions and awareness. These include, for example, the inappropriate accusative marking of post-verbal subjects (Givoń, 1976) following the existential/possessive particle yesh (e.g., yesh li et ha-praxim she-bikasht ‘be to-me Acc the-flowers that(you,Fm)-asked ¼ I have the flowers you asked for’); the disappearance of the complicated and confusing gender agreement marking on numerals (Ravid, 1995b); or the complete fusion of ?- and h-final roots to the extent that both hitmale and hitmala are accepted as phonological variations of ‘became filled’. The dramatic increase in frequency of such prescriptive ‘solecisms’ is now accompanied with a concomitant change in attitudes in young speakers: unlike former generations, they are no longer intimidated by prescriptivistic requirements for ‘correct’ Hebrew pronunciation, and are often genuinely puzzled by the very suggestion that there are alternative forms to the ones they confidently use. The issue of spoken solecisms for them is now moot. The themes of the last paragraphs are not the focus of this book, nor are my impressions always based on hard experimentation of the type presented in my 1995 book. Nevertheless, my insights are gained from constant interactions with the same native-speaking populations whose spoken and written Hebrew I have been investigating in the last 30 years. My purpose here is not to denounce the Academy of Hebrew Language in its failure to affect the very domains it holds so dear. I wish to point out that these changes in spoken Hebrew are due to the impact of shifting patterns underlying any sweeping processes of language change – frequency, opacity, irregularity, inconsistency and resemblance, coupled with pressures deriving from the languages-in-contact situation that continues to pervade Israeli society. But our interest in the current analysis is in revealing the psycholinguistic underpinnings of the Hebrew orthography. Due to the stability of the written mode and the lesser visibility of those problematic vowels and stops/spirants in the Semitic orthography of Hebrew, we will see that orthographic changes have been slower to occur. Nonetheless, occur they did, and thus they constitute the sources of current spelling errors in Israeli Hebrew. The topic of the next chapters is the impact of the deep historical space in which Hebrew orthography has existed in the last millennia, on the one hand, combined with the effect of the same connectionist factors on its construal by current speaker/writers, on the other.

References Alfi-Shabtay, I. (2006). Hebrew as a second language in Russian speakers. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. School of Education, Tel Aviv University, Israel. Bar-On, A., & Ravid, D. (2011). Morphological decoding in Hebrew pseudowords: A developmental study. Applied Psycholinguistics, 32, 553–581. Bendavid, A. (1971). Biblical Hebrew and Mishnaic Hebrew. Tel Aviv: Dvir [in Hebrew].

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Ben Hayyim, Z. (1985). The historical unity of Hebrew. In M. Bar-Asher (Ed.), Studies in language I. Jerusalem: The Hebrew University [in Hebrew]. Ben Rafael, E., Olshtain, E., & Gajst, I. (1994). Aspects of identity and language acquisition among immigrants from the Commonwealth of Independent States. Jerusalem: Research Institute for Innovation in Education, School of Education, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem [In Hebrew]. Bergstra¨sser, G. (1982). Hebraïsche Grammatik. (Hebrew translation by M. Ben Asher.). Jerusalem: Hebrew University, Magnes. Berman, R. A. (1978). Modern Hebrew structure. Tel Aviv: University Publishing Projects. Berman, R. A., & Ravid, D. (2008). Becoming a literate language user: Oral and written text construction across adolescence. In D. R. Olson & N. Torrance (Eds.), Cambridge handbook of literacy (pp. 92–111). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DeKeyser, R., Alfi-Shabtay, I., & Ravid, D. (2010). Cross-linguistic evidence for the nature of age effects in second language acquisition. Applied Psycholinguistics, 31, 413–438. Emmons, S. (1997). Russian Jewish immigration and its effect on the state of Israel. Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies, 5, 341–356. Givoń, T. (1976). On the VS order in Israeli Hebrew: Pragmatic and typological change. In P. Cole (Ed.), Studies in Modern Hebrew syntax and semantics. Amsterdam, NY: North Holland. Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics. (2007). Immigrants, by period of immigration, country of birth and last country of residence, from the Statistical Abstract of Israel 2007 – No. 58. Kautzsch, E. (1910). Gesenius’ Hebrew grammar. (A. E. Cowley, Rev.). Oxford: The Clarendon Press. Kutscher, E. Y. (1982). A history of the Hebrew language. Jerusalem: Magnes. Olshtain, E., & Horenczyk, G. (Eds.). (2002). Language, identity and immigration. Jerusalem: The Hebrew University & Magnes Press. Rabin, H. (1972). History of the Hebrew language. Jerusalem: World Zionist Association. Ravid, D. (1995a). Language change in child and adult Hebrew: A psycholinguistic perspective. New York: Oxford University Press. Ravid, D. (1995b). Neutralization of gender distinctions in Modern Hebrew numerals. Language Variation and Change, 7, 79–100. Ravid, D. (1996). Accessing the mental lexicon: Evidence from incompatibility between representation of spoken and written morphology. Linguistics, 34, 1219–1246. Ravid, D., & Bar-On, A. (2005). Manipulating written Hebrew roots across development: The interface of semantic, phonological and orthographic factors. Reading & Writing, 18, 231–256. Ravid, D., & Berman, R. (2009). Developing linguistic register in different text types. Pragmatics & Cognition, 17, 108–145. Ravid, D., & Levie, R. (2010). Adjectives in the development of text production: Lexical, morphological and syntactic analyses. First Language, 30, 27–55. Ravid, D., & Shlesinger, Y. (2001). Vowel reduction in Modern Hebrew: Traces of the past and current variation. Folia Linguistica, 35, 371–397. Schwarzwald, O. R. (1981). Grammar and reality in the Hebrew verb. Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University Press [in Hebrew]. Schwarzwald, O. R. (1995). Teaching spelling by morphophonemic alternations. In O. R. Schwarzwald & Y. Shlesinger (Eds.), Hadassah Kantor jubilee book: Language research papers (pp. 196–204). Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan Press [in Hebrew]. Schwarzwald, O. R. (1998). Adjective format, derivation and inflection. Helkat Lashon, 27, 9–19 [in Hebrew]. Schwarzwald, O. R. (2000). Verbal roots and their links to nouns. In O. R. Schwarzwald, S. Blum-Kulka, & E. Olshtain (Eds.), Raphael Nir jubilee book (pp. 426–438). Jerusalem: Carmel [in Hebrew].

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Schwarzwald, O. R. (2001). Modern Hebrew. Languages of the world/materials (Vol. 127). Muenchen: LINCOM EUROPA. Schwarzwald, O. R. (2006). Between last year and next year. Helkat Lashon, 37–38, 165–176. [in Hebrew]. Shuval, J. (1996). Editorial: Two waves of Russian immigration: Comparative reference groups. Israel Journal of Psychiatry and Related Science, 33, 2–4. Statistical Abstract of Israel No. 57. (2006). Jerusalem: Central Bureau of Statistics.

Chapter 6

The Hebrew Phonology-Orthography Interface

The Hebrew orthography is alphabetical, with the typical grapho-phonemic relationship holding between phonology and written graphemes. For example, G ‫ ג‬stands for g, and N ‫ נ‬stands for n. Nevertheless, this and the next chapters will show that the representation of consonants and vowels in writing is very different from most European languages, and might be considered a sort of syllabaric hybrid. Hebrew is written from right to left, as in ‫זה נאמר כבר קודם‬ ‘this has already been said before’ (spoken form ze ne’emar kvar ko´dem, Latinized orthographic [non-voweled] version ZH NAMR KBR QWDM). The Hebrew orthography has 221 letters, of which 18 designate consonants alone, while the other four – AHWY ‫ – אהוי‬have a double function of standing for both consonants and vowels.

Current Orthographic Versions The non-voweled version. The universally used so-called non-vocalized or nonvoweled orthographic version of Modern Hebrew relies on the 22 letters alone, with consequent under-representation of vowels – which is why it is considered ‘‘deep’’ or opaque. This orthographic version represents consonants by all 22 letters, while vowels are represented only by the four dual-function matres lectionis AHWY ‫אהוי‬. For example, both the initial glide y and final vowel i in the word yalduti ‘childish’ are represented by the same letter Y ‫ י‬in the written string YLDWTY ‫ילדותי‬. Moreover, vowel representation by AHWY ‫ אהוי‬is partial and ambiguous, and falls short of conveying the full phonological value of the word. To illustrate this claim, note the 11-letter written string WKSˇBMKTBYYK ‫‘ וכשבמכתבייך‬and-when-in-letter-s- your,Fm,Pl ¼ and when in your letters’. There are two ways of reading this string. In both cases, it represents the eight consonants x, sˇ, b, m, x, t, v, x, standing for the root radicals of ‘write’ and for several affixal elements - conjunctions, a preposition, a pattern prefix, and a genitive suffix. The difference between the two readings is in the register context, which is expressed in the phonology of the string. In a formal context, this string would be pronounced uxshebemixtavaýix, starting with u-, the literate, formal alternant of ve- ‘and’ required before a consonant cluster, followed by the spirant alternant D.D. Ravid, Spelling Morphology, Literacy Studies 3, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-0588-8_6, Ó Springer ScienceþBusiness Media, LLC 2012

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6 The Hebrew Phonology-Orthography Interface

xshe- of conjunction kshe- ‘when’, represented here by KSˇ ‫כש‬. In this nonvoweled version, only two of the seven vowels in the word are represented in writing – the initial u (by W ‫ )ו‬and the i following to the glide y towards the end of the word (by Y ‫)י‬. In a less formal context, this string would be pronounced vekshebemixtavaýix, where solely the i, out of all vowels, would be represented in writing, and where the same grapheme sequence KSˇ ‫ כש‬would contain the stop version of kshe- ‘when’. This example, which is not esoteric or very rare at all2, illustrates the fact that in general, the missing phonological information in nonvoweled Hebrew consists of vowels and stop/spirant alternation. The voweled version. The second, transparent orthographic version of Hebrew fully represents the phonological values of both consonants and vowels. In addition to using the 22 letters to stand for consonants and vowels (the latter by the AHWY ‫ אהוי‬set), this orthographic version represents the five vowels of modern Hebrew – a,e,i,o,u – by 13 nikud diacritic marks, originally designated to represent medieval Hebrew phonology. This means that each Modern Hebrew vowel is expressed by at least two, in some cases three, homophonous written diacritics. For example, the same vowel e is represented by the nikud diacritics serey, segol and hataf-segol appearing under the letters in se´fer ‘book’ spelled ‫( ֵסֶפר‬SPR, vocalized by serey and segol from right to left) and in emet ‘truth’ spelled ‫( ֱאֶמת‬AMT, with hataf-segol and segol from right to left). Diacritic marks also have some consonantal functions. For example, the left position of the diacritic dot above the letter ‫ ש‬Sˇ indicates its pronunciation as s rather than sh. The most important consonantal marking of nikud is dagesh (in the form of a dot inside the letter) to distinguish between the stop and spirant versions of the letters P,K,B ‫פ‬,‫כ‬,‫ב‬. Thus kotev ‘writes’ is spelled KWTB ‫תב‬ ֵ ֹ‫ּכו‬ with dagesh in the K ‫ ּכ‬to mark the stop k; while yixtov ‘will write’ is spelled YKTB ‫ִיְכּתֹב‬, where the absence of the dagesh in the K ‫ כ‬signifies the spirant alternant x. But beyond stop / spirant alternation, the dagesh diacritic expresses the lost phonological dimension of gemination, which, while having no phonetic expression in Modern Hebrew, is a clear marker of morphological structures and systems which can host more than three root letters, such as the three binyan verb patterns Pi’el, Pu’al and Hitpa’el. The nikud diacritic system is familiar to psychologists and educators as expressing phonological values. But in fact, nikud in its entire complexity, including lost phonological dimensions such as gemination, expresses the morphological underpinnings of Hebrew and explains the morpho-phonological behavior of verbal and nominal patterns which are phonologically identical. As this secret life of nikud is not the topic of the current book, its historical roots are described below, while its construal by native speaker / writers still awaits its exploration using psycholinguistic methods. The vowel letters AHWY ‫ אהוי‬are not made redundant by the presence of nikud in vocalized orthography. Rather, they constitute at the same time both an alternative and a complementary mechanism of marking vowels in written Hebrew, while continuing to mark the same values as they do in the nonvocalized version. For example, yafe ‘pretty’ is spelled ‫( ָיֶפה‬YPH). Although

Vowel Representation: A Historical Review

83

the word is vocalized, it is incorrect to represent yafe by ‫ ָיֶפ‬YP, missing the final H ‫ה‬. Briefly at this point, for both orthographic versions, all AHWY ‫ אהוי‬letters are (almost always) obligatory at word-final position (when they are obligatorily absent they are a major source of spelling errors), while Y ‫ י‬and W ‫ ו‬are also often marked in word-internal positions. For example, gvura ‘courage’ is spelled GBWRH ‫גבורה‬, marking the internal vowel u and the final vowel a. In contrast, gneva ‘theft’ only marks the final a in GNBH ‫גנבה‬, making this nonvoweled string homographic with ganva ‘she stole’ and the (unlikely) ganava ‘her thief’. If this is your first encounter with Hebrew homography, welcome! While Hebrew writers are not bothered by homography, readers may be, especially when young and/or inexperienced (Bar-On & Ravid, 2011). Vowel marking offers different distributional patterns in different contexts, and as a result, Hebrew readers may encounter anything between complete absence of vowels to full marking, with anything in-between, depending on the vowel and the vowel letter. Thus single words containing only internal a and/or e such as sapar ‘hairdresser’, safar ‘counted’, se´fer ‘book’, or saper ‘tell,IMP’ would need to be fully vocalized by nikud (e.g., ‫פר‬ ָּ ‫ ַס‬sapar, ‫פר‬ ֵּ ‫‘ ַס‬tell’) in order to be distinguished; otherwise the non-vocalized homographic string SPR ‫ ספר‬will do for all of them. However, if these same vowels are word-final, they will (almost always) be marked by a final A ‫ א‬or H ‫ ה‬in both vocalized and nonvocalized writing, as you will recall from the example of yafe ‘pretty’ spelled ‫פה‬ ֶ ‫ָי‬ or YPH ‫( יפה‬the latter standing for both masculine yafe and feminine yafa, as well as for the high-register past tense verb yipa ‘made beautiful’ and some other esoteric forms). Finally, o, u and i are usually marked word-internally, but not very consistently, even in non-vocalized script. For example, of the two vowels i and u in sipur ‘story’, only W ‫ ו‬is marked consistently, whereas Y ‫ י‬is often omitted by writers, who may spell sipur as either SYPWR ‫ סיפור‬or SPWR ‫ספור‬ even within the same piece of writing (in the latter case, this string stands for adjective safur ‘counted’ or the imperative verb sfor ‘count’). Voweled Hebrew is mainly used for beginner reading instruction, where it is critical to isolate and link phonemes and graphemes in a systematic manner. Beyond this stage, vocalized Hebrew is used in special communicative contexts requiring precise enunciation of Hebrew words, such as poetry and Bible reading. Beyond these contexts, non-professional writers3 do not use nikud.

Vowel Representation: A Historical Review The orthography that has come down to us through the ages4 is evidenced in various inscriptions, in the Dead Sea scrolls, and of course in the Hebrew Bible and its interpretation in the Talmud and Mishna.5 Across its long history, the under-representation of vowels has been a central characteristic of written Hebrew which renders it different from what is conceived as the canonical alphabetical orthography. Like all Semitic orthographies, Hebrew started out as almost entirely consonantal. Here is what the 19th century Biblical scholar

84


W. Gesenius writes about this feature in the classical text edited by Kautzsch (1910): ‘‘No system of writing is ever so perfect as to be able to reproduce the sounds of a language in all their various shades, and the writing of the Semites has one striking fundamental defect, viz. that only the consonants (which indeed form the substance of the language) are written as real letters’’ (p. 5). The sources of the notorious under-representation of vowels in Semitic writing are not entirely clear. It might be that the extreme prominence of consonants reflects the fundamental role of Semitic roots as carrying the main lexical content of the word. A well-known theory claims that Semitic writing started out as a syllabary and later on became purely consonantal (Coulmas, 1989; Gelb, 1963). Whatever its origins, the imbalance between consonant and vowel representation is a major Semitic feature which impacts on the acquisition and processing not only of reading (Koriat, 1984; Shimron, 1999) but also, relevantly, of spelling in Modern Hebrew. Modern Hebrew retains the use of the consonantal orthography of its Semitic ancestry, as indicated by the fact that the non-voweled orthography is the default version for reading and writing. However, twice in its long history, auxiliary orthographic mechanisms were introduced into Hebrew, aimed at representing vowels in addition to consonants: First, with the re-assignment of the group of AHWY‫ אהוי‬to serving as vowel letters; and then again, with the introduction of the nikud diacritic system. These two mechanisms are still functioning in Modern Hebrew orthography to certain extents, though far from the same capacities and scope as at the time of their introduction. At the same time, they both display great opacity and vulnerability to change. Beyond the brief historical narrative below, a separate chapter (9) is devoted in this book to the psycholinguistics of AHWY‫ אהוי‬in written Hebrew. The first vowel representation device was introduced into Mishnaic (Second Temple) Hebrew. With the increased influence of Greek in the Middle East in post-Alexandrian times, and the growing number of loan words whose meaning could not be inferred from the context by the use of morphology and syntax, Semitic writing was no longer transparent enough for efficient reading. Thus, the designation of the four letters AHWY changed into the double consonant/vowel function. This was an orthographic evolution rather than revolution, a drawn-out process which probably started as the result of early sound changes in the evolution of North Semitic languages. Initially, vowels became marked by letters at word-final position, and later on marking spread to medial positions as well, driven by contact with the more transparent orthographies of Greek and Latin. At first, two sets of ‘weak’ consonantal Semitic graphemes represented long vowels in word-final position – one, Y ‫י‬ and W ‫ו‬, representing the semi-vowels y and w respectively; and two, A ‫ א‬and

Vowel Representation: A Historical Review

85

H ‫ה‬, designating two low consonants already undergoing blurring in Mishnaic Hebrew – the glottal stop ? and the voiceless pharyngeal fricative h (Blau, 1981). At the end of the process in Mishnaic Hebrew, the four letters AHWY (Hebrew ‫ )אהוי‬took on the additional function of designating word-internal vowels, in a manner similar to Greek and Latin. AHWY ‫ אהוי‬thus acquired the name matres lectionis ‘mothers of reading’ for their role in facilitating consonantal reading (Bendavid, 1971). The spelling system using matres lectionis for vowel designation came to be known as plene or full writing (Coulmas, 1989). The introduction of matres lectionis was a big improvement over the totally vowelless Semitic script, however this voweling mechanism was not precise and consistent enough for the full disambiguation of vowel reading. Moreover, while its invention simplified reading by indicating vowels, the AHWY ‫אהוי‬ set introduced more complexity and opacity into Hebrew spelling, testified by their inconsistent overuse in Mishnaic Hebrew. For example, in addition to the semi-vowel or glide w, the letter W ‫ ו‬now represented both back vowels u and o, while e and a were represented by both H‫ ה‬and A ‫ – א‬in addition to their roles as consonant designators. It took about a thousand more years, in the 7th and 8th centuries CE, for the fuller and more consistent auxiliary mechanism of vowel marking termed nikud ‘pointing’ to be developed so as to enable precise reading of the Biblical Hebrew. The idea for marking vowels by diacritics ancillary to consonantal graphemes had been floating around in the Semitic Middle East in those times. For Hebrew alone, three variations of the nikud mechanism were in competition in the second half of the first millennium. The winning diacritic system – which is still in use in Hebrew today – was developed under the influence of the Nestorian system of Syrian by the Tiberian Masoretes (tradents), and is known as the Tiberian vocalization system of nikud – also termed vocalization, voweling, pointing, or punctuation.6 The full mechanism originally represented vowels, consonantal spirantization and gemination, as well as the musical cantillation of the reading tradition (Bergstra¨sser, 1982; Khan, 1997; Rendburg, 1997). Tiberian nikud represented its contemporary phonology at the end of the first millennium fully and accurately – especially regarding vowels. It is the major source of our knowledge about Classical Hebrew morpho-phonology. It consists of eight diacritics placed mainly under, above and within letters, to which a ninth (schwa @) was added to mark vowel absence or the presence of a reduced non-high vowel before the accent (Bolozky, 1997). The schwa also participates in a composite type of diacritic called hataf, representing auxiliary vowels (Blau, 1976; Ravid & Shlesinger, 2001). The phonology of Modern Israeli Hebrew has grown distant from the phonology of Tiberian times – but since it is tightly related to Hebrew morphology, nikud is still pertinent to a psycholinguistic analysis of the phonology-orthography-morphology juncture. In the millennia that have passed since the introduction of the two voweling mechanisms, Hebrew orthography has morphed into a three-partite system: 22 letters denoting consonants, the four AHWY letters denoting both consonants

86


and vowels, and the nikud pointing diacritics denoting vowels and stop/spirant alternation. By the very nature of reading and writing, it is clear that nikud pointing is critical for precise, non-contextualized reading, but is far less important and perhaps more cumbersome when writing. Thus, the two orthographic versions described above have emerged out of this tri-partite system: the shallow and transparent voweled orthography, using all three systems – consonant letters, vowel letters, and nikud; and the deep and opaque non-voweled orthography, using only the two letter systems. As the second, non-voweled default version is used for writing, it is the focus of our spelling analysis.

Orthographic Changes Language change is a natural phenomenon affecting all spoken and written dimensions, from phonetics and phonology to lexicon and morpho-syntax, as well as discourse style. Change results from both external causes, such as contact with other languages and social factors, as well as from internal causes, such as phonetic ‘‘mutations’’ arising spontaneously in a system. The powerful forces governing associative memory – type and token frequency of phonological segments, lexical items and categories, family size, transparency, regularity, resemblance and consistency – all serve to promulgate or check the spread of language change. Spoken language is our main communication vehicle in multiple contexts: Even in these literate days, more people speak than write at more occasions, with a consequent massive impact of oral linguistic interactions on interlocutors. Spoken language is thus very susceptible to change, especially given its non-stable, ephemeral character in such interactions. In contrast, written language changes more slowly. This is because writing is more stable on scroll / paper /screen than speech and also less restricted by the constraints of on-line processing in real time. Hebrew writing, where many written words carry less phonological information than their spoken versions, also denotes fewer features that are likely to change than spoken language. Written language is more conservative than spoken language, retaining and upholding rarer, higher-register and lexically specific vocabulary and more marked word orders in genre-specific texts (Ravid & Berman, 2009). But most pertinently to our topic, alphabetic systems encode grapho-phonemic information in more abstract and complex ways than spoken language, restricting the ways they can change. Therefore shifts and changes in phonology are likely to be reflected in the corresponding alphabet which interacts with the phoneme pool of the language – albeit more slowly than in speech. The Hebrew case shows that its orthography has changed across the millennia, but has also grown more complex, tending to adopt new devices to stand for new phonological distinctions without shedding old ones that no longer represent relevant phonological information.

Orthographic Changes

87

The introduction of new phonological distinctions into Modern Hebrew entailed one type of orthographic change – the expansion of the orthographic system through the introduction of graphemes or change in their functions to accommodate the new phonological distinctions. For example, the letter C ‫צ‬ changed its original phonological designation in response to phonological change: It historically represented the emphatic coronal fricative s ̣, but, with the loss of the class of emphatics, C ‫ צ‬now uniquely designates the voiceless alveo-dental affricate as a new Hebrew phoneme acquired from central and east European phonologies. It now represents a distinct phoneme as in root c-l-m ‘image’ and its derivatives such as tsalam ‘photographer’, tsilem ‘take a photograph’, tsilum ‘photo’ and tsalmit ‘computer icon’. Palatalization. More systematically, to accommodate a set of newly gained palatal sibilants, Hebrew now has at its disposal a new orthographic device borrowed from European languages – the apostrophe, attached to letters with phonological affinity to the new acquisitions. Two Hebrew letters originally designating alveo-dental sibilants – Z ‫( ז‬standing for the voiced fricative z) and C ‫( צ‬the voiceless affricate c) now sport the apostrophe as Zˇ ‫ זי‬and Cˇ ‫ צי‬to respectively designate the corresponding palatal consonants zˇ and cˇ. In the same way, the voiced palatal affricate j is now spelled with an apostrophe in Hebrew as J ‫ – גי‬where, stripped of the apostrophe, G ‫ ג‬designate the voiced velar stop g. The three new palatal sibilants cˇ, j and zˇ are all of foreign extraction and almost exclusively occur in borrowed words such as ji-pi-es ‘GPS’, cˇupar ‘bonus’, or zˇaket ‘jacket’. They have already been integrated into Hebrew morphophonology, as indicated by their participation in root structure when extracted from borrowed words (e.g., cˇiper ‘give a bonus’), and even more tellingly, undergoing metathesis in Hitpa’el like all sibilants in initial root position – as evidenced by slang hicˇtakmek ‘became rumpled’. Doubling. A second systematic innovation in the Modern Hebrew orthography is the doubling of W ‫ ו‬and Y ‫י‬. Historically, W ‫ ו‬had stood for the semivowel/glide w, which was subsequently lost from Hebrew phonology, replaced by consonantal v in Modern Hebrew. Moreover, recall that W ‫ ו‬now represents vowels u and o. However, the semi-vowel/glide w has now been re-introduced into Modern Hebrew, mostly in borrowings from Arabic or English such as Washington or (Arabic) dawin ‘charade, trick’. Thus w needs to be uniquely specified by grapheme doubling as in DAWWYN ‫( דאווין‬for dawin). W ‫ ו‬is often (not always) doubled in such foreign borrowings. Although not a loan consonant, the glide represented by Y ‫ י‬belongs to the same subset of the matres lectiones group, and is affected by the orthographic behaviors of W ‫ו‬. Doubling of W ‫ ו‬and Y ‫ י‬is also practiced for morphological or lexical rather than phonological motivations. For example, Y ‫ י‬is doubled to set apart futuretense third-person y- in the Nif’al verb-pattern from the same future-tense morpheme in other binyanim (YYBNH ‫‘ ייבנה‬will be built’, pronounced yibane, vs. YBNH ‫‘ יבנה‬will build’, pronounced yivne). W ‫ ו‬is doubled to designate consonantal rather than vocalic value W ‫ ו‬where the orthographic context is ambiguous, e.g., reading the name of my daughter Sivan rather than

88


Sion given the doubling of W ‫ ו‬in SYWWN ‫סיוון‬. These new accommodations in the Hebrew orthography are not very consistent and mostly do not entail what writers consider to be spelling errors. They do however cause a blurring of the conditions under which certain orthographic patterns are deployed and contribute to the general spelling havoc wrecked by AHWY ‫( אהוי‬see Chapter 9). Changes in the orthography – phonology interface take a second, contrasting, direction in the loss or under-specification of phonological distinctions that historically existed in Hebrew. These changes constitute the main source of spelling errors in Hebrew, since the Hebrew orthography has not changed correspondingly.

Sources of Hebrew Spelling Errors Orthographic under-specification. While homophony always derives from the phonology/orthography interface, some homophonous cases are more due to orthographic reasons, whereas others are the direct result of phonological mergers. Recall that the fully specified voweled Hebrew orthography designates certain consonantal distinctions by diacritic marks, which are absent in nonvoweled script. As a result, non-voweled writing includes some under-specified or homographic written representations. For example, non-voweled K ‫ כ‬stands for both k and x. Voweled script can resolve this ambiguity since the stop is signified by the presence of the dagesh dot, while its absence signifies the fricative alternant. By itself, under-specification or homography is not a source of spelling errors (see P ‫ פ‬below); however, when homography meets homophony, spelling errors ensue. One such source of under-specification is the ‘left Shin’ (Shin smalit), where the non-voweled letter Sˇ ‫ ש‬has two sibilant pronunciations: sˇ and s. Analyses of classical Hebrew point at two correspondingly distinct phonemes (one probably a lateral s), which had merged into s by Biblical times7 (Blau, 1976; Steiner, 1977). The default designation of Sˇ ‫ ש‬nowadays is sˇ, which in principle should be marked in voweled script by a dot at the top right side ‫ש‬ ׁ , but in fact virtually always appears as dotless ‫ש‬. The special or marked pronunciation is s, marked in voweled script by what is termed ‘shin smalit’ or ‘left shin’, i.e., Sˆ ֹ‫ש‬, and this is where homophony comes in: since the default grapheme designating s is S ‫ס‬, and given the absence of diacritics from non-voweled Hebrew, s can now be potentially spelled by either S ‫ ס‬or Sˇ ‫ש‬. Spirantization. Another meeting point of under-specification and neutralization is stop/spirant alternation. Historically, the historical set of the six stops p, b, t, d, k, g spirantized by regular phonetic rule into f, v, y, ð , x, r, respectively. This set was phonologically symmetrical in applying to three places of articulation (bi-labial, alveo-dental, and velar) and to both voiced and voiceless segments. The conditions of classical spirantization were phonologically determined – spirant after a long vowel, stop elsewhere. Therefore the stops and spirants in this set were considered allophonic variations of each other. Of this

Sources of Hebrew Spelling Errors

89

historical set, only three stop/spirant pairs – p / f, b / v, and k / x – now remain in Modern Hebrew. The rest have lost their spirant alternants, so that, for example, current t now stands for both the stop t and the historical spirant y allophone. The remaining BKP ‫ בכפ‬stop-spirant pairs now alternate under complex morpho-phonological and lexical conditions (Bolozky, 1997; Ravid, 1995). Moreover, these three remaining pairs cannot support the representation of a coherent phonetic class either by place of articulation or by voicing: one is voiced, two are not; two are bi-labial, one is velar. Therefore, each of the six consonants in the dwindled set now behaves as an independent phoneme. Despite the phonological opacity of the current set, stop/spirant alternation is a fundamental and pervasive feature of Modern Hebrew morpho-phonology, so that many roots occur in two or more versions. Recall the example of the first radical of root p-z-r ‘scatter’ which occurs as p in pizur ‘scattering’ and as f in mefazer ‘scatters’. The spelling correlate is that each pair is signaled by a single letter – p / f by P ‫פ‬, b / v by B ‫ב‬, and k / x by K ‫כ‬. Voweled script marks the distinction by the dagesh dot within the letter, but non-voweled script does not differentiate between the stop and spirant versions. Hebrew writers have no problem with under-specification or homography as in P ‫ פ‬standing for both versions. But again, when under-specification joins neutralization in the other two pairs, as discussed in the next section, the result is a major spelling problem, as one or both of the consonant alternants are now phonetically identical with another consonant, thereby creating a situation of homophony. Phonological neutralizations. The second source of spelling errors is phonological neutralization. Extensive neutralizations (or mergers) of previously distinct phonemes have rendered Modern Hebrew phonology very different from its classical counterparts (Bolozky, 1997; Ravid, 2005). Several sets of classical consonants have merged, resulting in loss of historical phonological distinctions (Laufer & Condax, 1981; Weinberg, 1966). Neutralized distinctions have resulted in phoneme mergers, while the Hebrew orthography continues to mark these historical distinctions by separate letters. When phonological distinctions are no longer directly encoded in the orthography, homophony is entailed: a single phoneme can be spelled by more than one grapheme. The main causes for consonantal homophony and their ramifications for spelling are delineated below. Loss of the semi-vowel w. Recall that the historical value of W ‫ ו‬was the Semitic glide w, while in Modern Hebrew phonology, W ‫ ו‬designates the fullfledged consonantal v, which has merged with v, the spirant alternant of b (recall also that when W ‫ ו‬nowadays stands for the glide, it is doubled). As a result, v is now a homophonous segment that can be spelled either by either B ‫( ב‬as the spirant option) or by the consonantal pronunciation of W ‫ו‬. My favorite example is present-tense mevater which can either mean ‘gives up’ and be spelled as MWTR ‫מותר‬, or ‘carves’, with the spelling MBTR ‫מבתר‬. Emphatics. Classical Hebrew had a set of emphatic consonants – the voiceless dental plosive t,̣ spelled Ŧ ‫ ;ט‬the alveolar fricative s,̣ spelled C ‫צ‬, and the velar plosive q, spelled Q ‫ק‬. Two phonological mergers were entailed by the loss of

90


these Semitic emphatic distinctions from Modern Hebrew phonology, combined with spirantization underspecification. One relates to t, a frequently occurring phoneme with important morphological functions. In addition to the loss of the spirant y, emphatic t ̣and non-emphatic t are now merged, so that all marked variants of t (emphatic, spirant) have coalesced into a single unmarked phoneme – the homophonous voiceless alveo-dental stop t. The difference between the spirant and stop versions of t is formally expressed in writing by a diacritic sign – the dagesh qal dot inside the T ‫ת‬. This has no bearing on spelling, since nikud is never used in non-specialized writing, and moreover, the dagesh qal in T ‫ ת‬hardly occurs even in current vocalized texts, since only a few diehards are familiar with the formal conditions under which it is assigned. Many publishers and educational consultants prefer to leave it out altogether, based on the (justified) claim that it has no impact on pronunciation. In contrast, the historical emphatic and non-emphatic versions of t are extremely relevant to spelling, since they are now respectively expressed in the letters Ŧ ‫ ט‬and T ‫ת‬. Homophony of t is a classical source of spelling errors in Hebrew, as in tapil with two spellings, signaling two different constructions: TPYL ‫‘ תפיל‬you/she will drop’, where T ‫ ת‬is a function letter denoting futuretense person inflection; or ŦPYL ‫‘ טפיל‬parasite’, where Ŧ ‫ ט‬is a root letter. A second major source of spelling errors derives from the loss of emphatic q, which has merged with non-emphatic k into the homophonous voiceless velar stop k, now spelled as either Q ‫ ק‬or K ‫כ‬. For example, yakir can be spelled as YQYR ‫‘ יקיר‬dear, precious’ (based on root y-q-r), or as YKYR ‫‘ יכיר‬he will recognize’ based on root n-k-r). This is not the only homophonous relationship involved here. Historical non-emphatic k is the stop alternant of current x, and they are both spelled by the same letter K ‫כ‬. This has no bearing on spelling, as the phonological difference is denoted in writing by the dagesh qal dot, which is rarely marked in writing. However, x itself is a homophonous segment, which can be either spelled by K ‫ כ‬or by Ħ ‫ח‬, signifying the historical voiceless pharyngeal fricatives h, as explained at the end of the next section. To illustrate the homophony, consider samax, spelled SMK ‫‘ סמך‬relied’ or SˇMĦ ‫‘ שמח‬was happy’. Gutturals/pharyngeals. As a Semitic language, Hebrew has a class of gutturals and pharyngeals, traditionally termed groniyot (unsurprisingly, ‘gutturals’). These are the glottal stop ?, spelled A ‫ ;א‬the voiceless fricative h, spelled H ‫ ;ה‬and the respectively voiceless and voiced pharyngeal fricatives h (spelled Ħ ‫ )ח‬and ‘ (spelled 9 ‫)ע‬. Unlike the emphatics, which have disappeared from Modern Hebrew, gutturals/pharyngeals are still with us in several senses, but they have a weakened psycholinguistic status as designating consonants. This class is one of the most fascinating in the Hebrew phonological inventory, with powerful impact on phonology, orthography, and their interface in morphology. It is no accident that half of the segments comprising this category – A ‫א‬ and H ‫ – ה‬also double as vowel letters, and no further accident that for gradeschoolers, 9 ‫ ע‬also functions, to some extent, as a vowel letter. The vocalic aspect of this class will be discussed in Chapter 9: Here I mostly focus on their consonant values as sources of spelling errors.

Sources of Hebrew Spelling Errors

91

Gutturals and pharyngeals are the least stable Hebrew consonants, phonologically eroded in Modern Hebrew by a process that already started in Mishnaic Hebrew (Blau, 1981). This weakening has different effects and outcomes in the guttural/pharyngeal class. Within this class, the gutturals have almost a non-consonantal psycholinguistic status. Across the board, native Hebrew speakers of all ethnic origins omit the glottal stop in most phonetic environments, except for utterance-initial position (Bolozky, 1997). This applies to the informal, neutral register, as well as to formal contexts such as newsreading. This means that the letter A ‫ א‬has little phonetic realization as a consonant and is strongly construed as a vowel letter. The phonetic status of h is similar, though not identical. Across the board, and again, with no distinction of ethnic origin, Hebrew speakers either omit the h or pronounce it as a glottal stop. However, unlike ?, the precise enunciation of h is maintained in formal spoken Hebrew, where everyday alax would be carefully pronounced halax ‘walked’. H ‫ ה‬too has little phonetic realization as a consonant letter. This can be considered a new merger resulting from the neutralization of A ‫ א‬and H ‫ ה‬to zero, with two outcomes: The glottal stop is now homophonous with two possible spellings, A ‫ א‬or H ‫ה‬, and both letters are perceived now as principally designating vowels. The status of pharyngeal ‘ and h is different, with differential impacts on spelling. Modern Hebrew has two ‘accents’ or ‘pronunciations’. I prefer these two less professional terms to ‘dialects’ or ‘sociolects’, since the morphophonological and syntactic aspects of the non-standard Hebrew sociolect (for lack of a better term) do not necessarily coincide with any one of the accents (Ravid, 1995). The most widespread Hebrew pronunciation is Ashkenazi, nonMizrahi, or non-Mid-Eastern, the universal accent of young Israelis and Jewish Israeli children, including sons and daughters of immigrant Russian, Arabic and Amharic speakers. This pronunciation does not retain the pharyngeal phonetic expression of ‘ and h. The former is now phonetically identical to the glottal stop, with the same distribution – omitted at most positions, retained as a glottal stop at utterance-initial position. The only difference is that formal Hebrew reading sometimes attempts to reconstruct the ‘ at least in word-initial position (I know I do, when I give formal talks in Hebrew, but despite my good intentions, I don’t always succeed and I am not always consistent). Unlike the emphatics, Hebrew speakers will be exposed to the pronunciation of ‘ at some time or other: from the large Arab population living with us, and from the minority of Israeli Jews of Mideastern extraction who still pronounce pharyngeal ’. It is my impression from informal surveys I regularly convey in my classes (certainly not a result of rigorous testing) that ‘ pronunciation is declining even in speakers of Mideastern origin compared to 20–25 years ago (Ben Tolila, 1984). The result is that ‘ has now joined ? and h in being expressed phonologically by either the glottal stop or zero, and is now a third spelling competitor for the homophonous set of ? Ø - A ‫א‬, H ‫ה‬, and 9 ‫ע‬. For example, sa’ar can be interpreted as ‘storm’, spelled S9R ‫סער‬, or as ‘moon’, spelled SHR ‫ ;סהר‬while amad can be interpreted as ‘estimated’, spelled 9MD ‫אמד‬, or as ‘stood’, spelled

92


AMD ‫עמד‬. This status of course also endows 9 ‫ ע‬with vowel properties, since together with A ‫ א‬and H ‫ ה‬it now designates open-vowel contexts, especially in word-final position, as in the well-known example of kara – ‘read’ (QRA ‫)קרא‬, ‘happen’ (QRH ‫)קרה‬, or ‘tear’ (QR9 ‫)קרע‬. Thus, 9 ‫ ע‬competes with the two gutturals spellings at two fronts – as a ‘bleached’ glottal stop and as a vowel letter adjoined to the AHWY ‫ אהוי‬set. As a result, the AHWY ‫ אהוי‬interim status between consonantal and vocalic value is further eroded towards vowel representation. Although Y ‫ י‬does not designate a ‘low’ consonant, this is the place to discuss its contribution to the AH9 ‫ אהע‬spelling competition under specific conditions. When the sub-syllable yi occurs in word-initial position, the glide often erodes to a glottal stop alternating with zero in casual speech, i.e., ? i or i, making Y ‫ י‬a fourth homophonous candidate. I have two distinct memories from my time as an 18-year-old soldier participating in the (then four-day) Jerusalem March – seeing a wondrous comet in the skies at 3 AM, and shuddering at the constant and consistent glottal pronunciation of Y ‫ י‬in yismexu ‘they will be happy’, part of a song we sang every day on our march. The spelling counterparts of this glottal pronunciation are extremely prevalent in current-day children’s spellings of yi-initial words, who use A ‫א‬, H ‫ה‬, and even 9 ‫ ע‬as alternatives to Y ‫י‬. This is not the whole story here: morphology has an important role in this issue, and I will return to it in the next chapters. Finally, we come to the voiceless pharyngeal h, spelled Ħ ‫ח‬. Speakers of Mideastern versus non-Mideastern Hebrew differ sharply on this consonant. While many of the former retain the Semitic pharyngeal, the general Israeli pronunciation neutralizes h to velar x. This neutralization means that x too is now homophonous, with two spellings – one retaining the h-derived (pharyngeal) historical identity (Ħ ‫ )ח‬and one expressing the fact that x stands for spirantized k-derived K ‫( כ‬as elaborated above). The Ħ ‫ ח‬/ K ‫ כ‬pair is somewhat similar to the A ‫ א‬/ 9 ‫ ע‬pair in having some phonetic realization in speakers of the Mizrahi or Mideastern accent and in Arabs. A recent study on Jewish children of Yemenite descent living in a densely populated and traditional Yemenite neighborhood compared with peer speakers of general Israeli Hebrew found that the children who made the pharyngeal/velar distinction also had significantly higher scores on the A ‫ א‬/ 9 ‫ ע‬and Ħ ‫ ח‬/ K ‫ כ‬spellings (Levie, Binenshtock, & Atiya, 2008).

Summary Modern Hebrew orthography now encodes several new phonological distinctions, and at the same time reflects ancient and defunct phonological distinctions in the form of distinct graphemes. Figure 6.1 presents a summary of the major fault lines in Hebrew spelling and the homophony networks that underlie many (but not all) spelling errors.

Summary

Fig. 6.1 Summary of the major sources of spelling errors in Hebrew

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Letter Frequencies Before embarking upon the history and psycholinguistics of Hebrew orthography, here are some facts about the frequency of letters. The information presented here is based on a study by Levin, Ravid, and Nir (2005), in which we sampled 250,653 letters in 137 storybooks for children. This is not a large number of letters, and I am aware of the fact that the distributions may change once we sample texts for or by older speaker/writers. Nevertheless, this information can serve as a first window onto current written Hebrew, and will be useful in the following chapters. The information in Table 6.1 below indicates that the most frequently occurring letters in the Hebrew alphabet are the four ‫ אהוי‬AHWY double-function letters, followed by the consonantal letters B ‫ב‬, L ‫ ל‬, T ‫ ת‬, M ‫מ‬, N ‫ נ‬and Sˇ ‫ש‬. This chapter has laid down the groundwork for understanding the sources of Hebrew spelling errors along the phonology-orthography axis. But as I explained above, spelling is not only about which letter stands for which phoneme and what sounds more like what. The major function of spelling is lexical, which spells morphology in many languages, and especially so in Hebrew. It is now time to plow ahead using the major spelling vehicle, morphological structure. Table 6.1 Frequencies (in percentages) of the occurrence of Hebrew letters Hebrew letter Latinized form Percentage ‫א‬ ‫ב‬ ‫ג‬ ‫ד‬ ‫ה‬ ‫ו‬ ‫ז‬ ‫ח‬ ‫ט‬ ‫י‬ ‫כ‬ ‫ך‬ ‫ל‬ ‫מ‬ ‫ם‬ ‫נ‬ ‫ן‬ ‫ס‬ ‫ע‬ ‫פ‬ ‫ף‬ ‫צ‬ ‫ץ‬ ‫ק‬ ‫ר‬ ‫ש‬ ‫ת‬

A B G D H W Z Ħ Ŧ Y K Final K L M Final M N Final N S 9 P Final P C Final C Q R Sˇ T

7.64 5.11 1.59 2.67 9.26 10.07 1.11 2.71 1.14 9.39 2.58 0.64 7.80 4.83 3.17 3.27 1.24 1.29 2.89 2.30 0.31 1.53 0.26 2.18 5.78 4.19 5.03

References

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Notes 1. This number does not include the five word-final variants of the following letters: K (nonfinal ‫כ‬, final ‫)ך‬, M (non-final ‫מ‬, final ‫)ם‬, N (non-final ‫נ‬, final ‫)ן‬, P (non-final ‫פ‬, final ‫)ף‬, and C (non-final ‫צ‬, final ‫)ץ‬. If these variants are included, the number of Hebrew letters rises to 27, with 23 of these designating consonants alone. 2. I have been accused in the past by anonymous reviewers of my papers of using esoteric and / or rare examples of words with bound morphemes. As any reader of Hebrew will know, this is not at all the case in texts targeting or written by adults. 3. Except for traditional poets writing rhymed verse. 4. The fonts of the ancient Hebrew orthography originally looked different and had evolved to their current form by the Mishnaic period (Yardeni, 1997). 5. Where the same orthography serves for both Hebrew and Aramaic. 6. Visitors to Tiberias walking down to the shore of the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee) can see an artistic rendition of the Tiberian nikud set embedded into the main boardwalk. 7. The current palatal pronunciation of sh is itself the result of a merger of two phonemes (one of which, probably s) in pre-Biblical times.

References Bar-On, A., & Ravid, D. (2011). Morphological decoding in Hebrew pseudowords: A developmental study. Applied Psycholinguistics, 32, 553–581. Bendavid, A. (1971). Biblical Hebrew and Mishnaic Hebrew. Tel Aviv: Dvir [in Hebrew]. Ben Tolila, Y. (1984). The pronunciation of Hebrew: Social phonology. Jerusalem: Hebrew University [in Hebrew]. Bergstra¨sser, G. (1982). Hebraïsche Grammatik. (Hebrew Translation by M. Ben Asher). Jerusalem: Hebrew University, Magnes. Blau, Y. (1976). A grammar of Biblical Hebrew. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz. Blau, Y. (1981). Weakening of the gutturals. Leshonenu, 45, 32–39 [in Hebrew]. Bolozky, S. (1997). Israeli Hebrew phonology. In A. S. Kaye & P. T. Daniels (Eds.), Phonologies of Asia and Africa (pp. 287–311). Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. Coulmas, F. (1989). The writing systems of the world. Oxford: Blackwell. Gelb, I. J. (1963). A study of writing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kautzsch, E. (1910). Gesenius’ Hebrew grammar. Revised by A. E. Cowley. Oxford: The Clarendon Press. Khan, G. (1997). Tiberian Hebrew phonology. In A. S. Kaye & P. T. Daniels (Eds.), Phonologies of Asia and Africa (pp. 85–102). Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. Koriat, A. (1984). Reading without vowels: Lexical access in Hebrew. In: H. Bouma & D. G. Bouwhuis (Eds.), Attention and performance: Control of language processes (pp. 227–242). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Laufer, A., & Condax, I. (1981). The function of the epiglottis in speech. Language and Speech, 24, 24–39. Levie, R., Binenshtock, T., & Atiya, E. (2008). The development of homophonous spelling in Hebrew-speaking children of Yemenite extraction compared with non-Yemenite peers. Unpublished manuscript, Department of Communications Disorders, Tel Aviv University. Levin, I., Ravid, D., & Nir, B. (2005). Frequencies of Hebrew letters in children’s storybooks. School of Education (unpublished manuscript), Tel Aviv University. Ravid, D. (1995). Language change in child and adult Hebrew: A psycholinguistic perspective. New York: Oxford University Press.

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Ravid, D. (2005). Hebrew orthography and literacy. In R. M. Joshi & P. G. Aaron (Eds.), Handbook of orthography and literacy (pp. 339–363). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Ravid, D., & Berman, R. (2009). Developing linguistic register in different text types. Pragmatics & Cognition, 17, 108–145. Ravid, D., & Shlesinger, Y. (2001). Vowel reduction in Modern Hebrew: Traces of the past and current variation. Folia Linguistica, 35, 371–397. Rendburg, G. A. (1997). Ancient Hebrew phonology. In A. S. Kaye & P. T. Daniels (Eds.), Phonologies of Asia and Africa (pp. 65–83). Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. Shimron, J. (1999). The role of vowels signs in Hebrew: Beyond word recognition. Reading and Writing, 11, 301–319. Steiner, R. C. (1977). The case for fricative-laterals in Proto-Semitic. New Haven, CT: American Oriental Society. Weinberg, W. (1966). Spoken Israeli Hebrew: Trends in departure from classical phonology. Journal of Semitic Studies, 11, 40–68. Yardeni, A. (1997). The book of Hebrew script: History, palaeography, script styles, calligraphy & design. Jerusalem: Carta.

Chapter 7

Morpho-Orthographic Infrastructure

One of the main assumptions in this book is that spelling serves the lexicon in the representation of a word, and for this purpose it relates phonology, morphology, and orthography. Like all linguistic structures and systems, spelling is formally organized in ways which facilitate access to meanings and functions in a specific language. In Hebrew, in order to establish correct or orthographic spelling beyond initial grapho-phonemic correspondences, literate Hebrew users rely on systematic morphological patterns identified in the written nonvoweled word and associate them with specific letters in particular orthographic sites. This requires data-mining of systematic patterns in Hebrew writing. As knowledge categories are formed by the gradual reduction of variability in the data, spellers’ expectations are initially based on broadly frequent, regular and consistent generalizations, gradually acquiring systematic information from the smaller and less consistent patterns. In this way, pattern identification forges links between phonological and morphological entities, on the one hand, and their written correlates, on the other, thus creating morphological shortcuts which constitute the route to overcoming homophony in spelling. With these assumptions in mind, the current chapter and the ones that follow have two related aims. One is to provide a morphological analysis of the morphologically-rich content-word categories1 of nominals (nouns, adjectives, and present-tense bynoni verbs) and verbs in order to establish how the general representations of morphological constructs in the Hebrew written word are formed. A second aim is to examine the role of smaller, less frequent and consistent patterns in various categories and to show how each contributes in its own way to the establishment of spelling generalizations. The current chapter describes the general morpho-orthographic structure of the written Hebrew word which informs reader/writers how morpho-phonological information is encoded within the word. It is important to define the context in which spelling takes place. As noted in Chapter 6, adept Hebrew readers – approximately all non-disordered readers starting from the older years of grade school – encounter almost only nonvoweled texts, and Hebrew spellers write exclusively without vowels. Nonvoweled orthography under-represents vowels – a and e are not marked word-internally in native Hebrew words, while the overt internal marking of D.D. Ravid, Spelling Morphology, Literacy Studies 3, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-0588-8_7, Ó Springer ScienceþBusiness Media, LLC 2012

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7 Morpho-Orthographic Infrastructure

the other three vowels – i, u , o – is restricted. This ‘skeletal’ writing serves as a launching board for the analysis of morphological structure and the acquisition of shortcuts to spelling, since the orthographic landscape magnifies consonantal cues within the word and links them up to grammatical constructs already identified in spoken words, such as roots framed by pattern affixes. To borrow a metaphor from a different domain, the no-vowels bug is an informative feature highlighting morpho-orthographic regularities. Chapter 4 portrayed the two facets of morphology – semantics on the one hand, structure (systems and morpho-phonology) on the other. One premise of this analysis is that morphological structure has cognitive primacy in both spoken and written modalities over the semantics and functions that it encodes in linguistic communication. Without detracting from the importance of meaning, morphology is the mechanism that motivates the structural composition of the word, which signals how meaning piggybacks structure. Morphology and syntax are two different structural mechanisms in the service of semantic expression, as demonstrated by the word-internal vs. syntagmatic expressions of the comparative and superlative forms in English (compare morphological smallest with syntactic most interesting) or possessive forms in Hebrew (compare morphological yomani with syntactic ha-yoman sheli ‘my diary’). Structure identification is critical in gaining lexical access, as shown in priming experiments by Hebrew University psychologist Ram Frost (Frost, Forster, & Deutsch, 1997), who demonstrated that the homographic root sequence SPR ‫ ספר‬facilitates access to written words sharing it even when prime and target words have completely different semantics, e.g. tispo´ret ‘haircut’ (TSPWRT ‫ )תספורת‬and sipur ‘story’ (SYPWR ‫)סיפור‬. The notion of structure or form was attributed in Chapter 4 to two dimensions: Local-scope structures, where phonological constructs such as consonants, vowels, syllables or prosody serve morphology and the lexicon – e.g., strident consonants participating in Hitpa’el metathesis; and larger-scope morphological architectures such as roots, patterns (e.g., Hitpa’el) and linear affixes (e.g., plural –im or abstract –ut), which systematically participate in the internal organization of a word. To these I now add yet a third dimension of written morphological form – morpho-orthographic organization, the representation of morphological systems and constructions in written Hebrew. Morpho-orthography is not a written replica of spoken morphology, but rather a distinct, autonomous system subject to its own particular constraints. The morpho-orthographic regularities that can be extracted from Hebrew words are based on two phenomena: (i) constraints on the representation of phonological units in different orthographic sites, such as the near absence of vowels in writing, which determines the ways in which morphemes can be arranged in the word; and (ii) morphological patterns identified in the different classes of nouns, verbs and adjectives. Following the exposition on the two main morphological Hebrew systems in Chapter 4, one important characteristic of native Hebrew words – whether spoken or written – is that many of them are composed of (at least) two

Spelling Non-linear Morphology

99

meaning-bearing morphemes. These can be affixed to each other non-linearly, as in the case of root z- h-l ‘crawl’ and instrument pattern maCCeCa combining to form noun mazxela ‘sled’; or linearly, as in the suffixation of stem tsel ‘shade’ by the instrument suffix –on to form tsilon ‘awning’. The difference between the two morphological operations is fundamental: in the first case two nonlinear, sub-lexical constituents are brought together to form a word, whereas in the second case a word is extended by a suffix. In the current analysis, we will first focus on non-linear formation which is widespread and basic in both speech and writing.

Spelling Non-linear Morphology We have already seen that in spoken Hebrew, root and pattern are both two phonetically meager entities, neither of which can separately achieve phonological threshold to create syllable and word structure. This is a job to which the Semitic root brings a set of discontinuous consonants (e.g., root p-l-g ‘divide’), while the morphological pattern, a discontinuous prosodic template obligatorily complements the root by superimposing vowels between its radicals, and, depending on pattern type, adds external affixes. For example, abstract pattern miCCaCa combines with root p-l-g to derive miflaga ‘political party’. This word is one member of a morphological family sharing the basic sense of ‘divide’, all based on the Semitic root p-l-g (or its allomorph f-l-g). The actual morphophonological shape of each word is systematically determined by the specific pattern superimposed on the set of root radicals: hiflig ‘sail, exaggerate’, pileg ‘divide,Tr’, hitpaleg ‘split up’, haflaga ‘sailing, superlativeness’, pilug ‘split’, hitpalgut ‘distribution’, palgan ‘divider’, mefulag ‘divided’, muflag ‘extreme’, pe´leg ‘stream’, miflaga ‘political party’, miflag ‘section’, pluga ‘military unit’, and plugta ‘polemics’. This so-called non-concatenative word structure cannot be accounted for using linear means: if we cut up a word such as miflaga into syllables (mif-la-ga or mi-fla-ga), or chop it in the middle (mif-laga), the result would be nonsensical, since the two main components do not follow each other linearly but form a synergistic morpho-phonological whole. However, when we shift to the realm of written morphology, the representation of root and pattern becomes more distinctly separate, for two reasons, both of them concerning vowel representation. Firstly, the absence of e, a (and sometimes i) word-internal vowels detracts from the non-linearity of the rootand-pattern synergy; and secondly, because ‘weak’ root radicals with an ambiguous semi-consonantal value such as w or y which render the spoken form rather opaque appear transparently in written form. Demarcating root from pattern. As a direct result of the diminished role of vowels, the structure of the written Hebrew word clearly demarcates root from pattern. In writing, instead of a construction of intertwined Cs and Vs based on two discontinuous entities, the two basic morphological constructs of Hebrew

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are represented as a continuous root and a partial, discontinuous or split pattern (7-1): (PATTERN LETTERS) ROOT LETTERS (PATTERN LETTERS) Here are some examples, with root letters in bold and the pattern letters in regular font. First, hitpalgut ‘distribution’ (7-2): ‫ התפלגות‬HTPLGWT Next, miflag ‘section’ (7-3): ‫ מפלג‬MPLG haflaga ‘sailing’ (7-4): ‫ הפלגה‬HPLGH And pe´leg ‘stream’ (7-5): ‫ פלג‬PLG

In all of these examples, root PLG ‫ פלג‬appears as a full and continuous, virtually linear string of letters at the core of the word. This is because the vowels a and e are not expressed by letters in mid-word position. At the same time, the pattern is never fully represented in the non-voweled word, for exactly the same reason: all internal vowels in root-and-pattern structures derive from the pattern, and in the case of e and a, they simply do not show up. Therefore representation of the morphological pattern in non-voweled words ranges from total absence in nonaffixed stems, as in pe´leg ‘stream’, where only root letters PLG ‫ פלג‬are expressed; to partial representation at the periphery of the root, for example by prefix M as in miflag ‘section’, spelled MPLG ‫ ;מפלג‬or, at most, a split representation of the pattern by the prefix HT- ‫הת‬- and the suffix –WT ‫ות‬- of hitpalgut ‘distribution’ at both sides of the root unit. Note from the outset that this analysis of the written root as a continuous unit has nothing to do with phonological generativistic models denying the existence of the root morpheme and of non-linear processes in spoken Hebrew: the evidence is overwhelming for the productive use of discontinuous root and pattern in spoken Hebrew (Ravid, 2003). The claim for continuous root representation refers to root and pattern letters, anchored within the structure of the


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written word, rather than to phonological constructs. However, I have no doubt that written representation is central in literate adult Hebrew speaker/writers who mature into thinking about language through the particular prism of their orthography, in line with David Olson’s (1994) idea that the acquisition of a specific script (or orthography) shapes linguistic thought. One construction directly resulting from the interface of discontinuous morphophonology with Hebrew orthographic constraints is what I label the ‘root-word’ such as PLG ‫פלג‬. This is in fact a complex stem based on the combination of a root with a pattern consisting only of e and/or a (sometimes i as well) vowel slots and prosodic stress information. What all of such complex stems share is a completely vowel-less representation of the core root such as PLG ‫ פלג‬for pe´leg ‘stream’ or KPR for kfar ‘village’. The most frequent patterns assigned to stem root-words are either e´-e (e.g., pe´leg ‘stream’) or a-a (either nominal, as in davar ‘thing’, or pasttense Qal forms, as in barax ‘escaped’). In addition, root-words are based on several other more minor patterns such as CaCeC adjectives (ayef ‘tired’) or CCaC nominals (ktav ‘writing’), including patterns assigned to quadrilateral roots such as PRSM ‫ פרסם‬standing for pirsem ‘advertised’. Analyses of the morpho-orthography of complex stems appear in Ravid (1990, 1995) and BarOn (2010). As the form of such root-words are indistinguishable from the abstract representation of a root, they blur the distinction between root, stem and word in metalinguistic thinking about Hebrew, on the one hand, and enhance the root morpheme as a central morphological entity, on the other. Splitting the root. You will notice that the dichotomous representation of continuous root and split or absent pattern is not entirely consistent with the full facts. In addition to the examples analyzed above, the p-l-g root family contains roots which do not appear as entirely continuous in written words. For example, pluga ‘military unit’, muflag ‘extreme’, and mefulag ‘divided’ respectively, where the letter W ‫ו‬, signifying in this case the vowel u, is inserted between root letters or precedes them (7-6): PLWGH ‫פלוגה‬ MWPLG ‫מופלג‬ MPWLG ‫מפולג‬ In the case of pileg ‘divide,Tr’, Y ‫ י‬separates root letters (7-7): PYLG ‫פילג‬ And in pilug ‘split’, the root is divided by both W ‫ ו‬and Y ‫( י‬7-8): PYLWG ‫פילוג‬

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But note that these are not exceptions to root continuity: The only letters legally allowed to break the internal continuity of the transparent written core are the two slim vowel letters Y ‫ י‬or W ‫( ו‬each consisting of a small vertical line), standing for the other three Hebrew vowels i, o or u. The insertion of Y ‫ י‬and W ‫ ו‬is governed by a set complicated and opaque conditions set by the Hebrew Academy of Language. Not being able to share in the knowledge of this venerable institute, Hebrew reader/writers follow complex morphoorthographic patterns which, in the best scenarios apply consistently, as the W in PYLWG ‫פילוג‬, in other cases appear most though not all of the time, as the W in MWPLG ‫מפולג‬, and in most other cases are considered optional by the general literate populace, including media editors (though not by the Hebrew Language Establishment). As a result, the orthographic representations of Y ‫י‬ and W ‫ ו‬are weak and unstable, making it difficult to draw generalizations and construct coherent categories. Rachel Schiff (Bar Ilan University) and I have shown in a series of studies (Ravid & Schiff, 2004; Schiff & Ravid, 2004a, b) that Hebrew speaker/writers are ‘blind’ to the interfering occurrence of Y ‫ י‬and W ‫ו‬ root-internally, and would accept as correct the spelling of both MLWMD ‫ מלומד‬and MLMD ‫ מלמד‬as representing melumad ‘scholar’. In previous work with Kubi (2003) I found the same for Y ‫י‬, e.g., both RYBH ‫ ריבה‬and RBH ‫רבה‬ standing for riba ‘jam’. What would be the status of W ‫ ו‬and Y ‫ ? י‬On the one hand, they can signify pattern vowels which are allowed to be marked word-internally, e.g., i-u in CiCuC action nominals (e.g., sipur ‘story’, nihul ‘managing’); and even then, W ‫ו‬ and Y ‫ י‬are not marked consistently – indicating that their role is at the interface of orthography and phonology rather than standing for morphological constructs. Moreover, W ‫ ו‬and Y ‫ י‬are not restricted to marking pattern vowels, but are rather used to mark word-internal vowels all over the place, whether the stem has internal morphological structure (as does sovel ‘suffers’ spelled ‫)סובל‬ or whether it does not (as in xamor ‘donkey’ spelled ĦMWR ‫)חמור‬. In fact, W ‫ו‬ and Y ‫ י‬mark the occurrence of i, u and o in various structures for which it is very difficult to make a decision whether they have morphological or just phonological structure, e.g., aron ‘cupboard’ (ARWN ‫)ארון‬, goral ‘destiny’ (GWRL ‫)גורל‬, kise ‘chair’ (KYSA ‫ )כיסא‬or xut ‘thread’(ĦWŦ ‫)חוט‬. In all of these cases, i, u and o are marked by W ‫ ו‬and Y ‫ י‬with varying degrees of (in)consistency. I therefore designate them internal vowels, which behave more like phonological than morphological entities. As an interim summary, when the internal pattern vowels are e or a, literate Hebrew users are exposed to Hebrew words consisting of continuous2 strings of three-letter roots. When the internal vowels are i, o or u, Y ‫ י‬and W ‫ו‬ inconsistently intervene between root letters (as pattern vowels or in phonological roles), and are often ignored. The visibility of the root as a continuous written entity reinforces its unity and coherence as a morphological unit. Patterns, on the other hand, are at best represented in writing as partial or split entities.


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Quadrilateral roots. Since Hebrew derives root skeletons with great facility from any possible source, it has an increasingly large inventory of quadrilateral roots of various structures and affinities, e.g., p-r-s-m (as in mefarsem ‘advertiser’ and pirsum ‘advertising’) or h-n-d-s ‘engineer’ (as in hindes ‘engineered’ and handasa ‘engineering’). Many quadri roots are foreign in origin, derived from nominal borrowings such as te´lefon or subsidiya or directly from foreign words such as cancel or compile. Many others are based on Hebrew words and roots, extending original structures by means of reduplication (e.g., me’avrer ‘fan’ based on root ?-v-r-r from avir ‘air’, difdef ‘go through pages’ based on root d-f-d-f, from daf ‘page’), or reanalyzing old structures by extracting all consonants, including affixes, into the new word, as in mixzer ‘recycle’ based on root m-x-z-r from maxzor ‘cycle’, where m- is a pattern prefix. The overwhelming majority of new quadrilateral roots find their way into native manipulation through the triad of traditionally ‘heavy’ i.e., (historically geminated) binyanim Pi’el, passive Pu’al, and complex, middle hitpa’el. In writing, quadri roots enter the same morpho-orthographic constructions as trilateral roots, with the root represented in the center and pattern affixes flanking it. For example, memaxzer ‘(is) recycling’ in 7-9, where the first M is a present-tense marker of binyan Pi’el and the second one, bolded with the rest of the root, is a reanalyzed root radical: MMĦZR ‫ממחזר‬ Weak roots. Phonological under-specification provides further support for coherent morphological representations at the written level. Roots are perceived by Hebrew speakers as consonantal entities, but many roots are not fully transparent or ‘defective’ in the sense of containing non-consonantal or semi-consonantal ‘weak’ radicals, e.g., root q-w-m ‘rise’, y-l-d ‘give birth’, ?-m-r ‘say’, q-r-? ‘read’, or b-k-y ‘cry’.3 Weak radicals contribute to morphophonological opacity in two ways. First, they are phonologically unstable – sometimes realized as glides e.g., yalda ‘she gave birth’, as weakened glottal stops, as in kar’u ‘they read (Past Tense)’, or else as vowels, as in kum ‘get up’, molad ’birth’. The same root radical may surface in some contexts as more or less consonantal, e.g., b-k-y in bexiya ‘weeping’ vs. baxa ‘cried’, ?-m-r in ne’emar ‘be said’ vs. tomar ‘she will say’, or q-r-? in kri’a ‘reading’ vs. nikra ‘we will read’. Again, as predicted by Olson, it is the underspecified phonologyorthography interface in Hebrew writing that compensates for the opaque phonological and morpho-phonological structures resulting from weak root radicals. In sharp contrast to spoken morpho-phonology, the semi-consonantal nature of defective weak roots is no longer a problem in writing. While the phonology-orthography interface decrees that a, e and sometimes i cannot be represented word-internally, morphology requires that even weak root radicals such as h, y, ? and w be represented by letters whether they have consonantal or vocalic realization. Thus root q-r-? is represented as QRA ‫ קרא‬in both nikra

104


‘read’ NQRA ‫ נקרא‬and kri’a ‘reading’ QRYAH ‫ ;קריאה‬and root q-w-m is represented as QWM ‫ קומ‬in tkuma ‘arising’ TQWMH ‫ תקומה‬and la-kum ‘torise’ LQWM ‫לקום‬. Though weak radicals may not always be fully represented even in writing,4 spelling expresses roots, including those with weak radicals, much more transparently and consistently than does phonology, and promotes their representation as abstract morphological entities. From another perspective, the combination of weak roots with morphological patterns creates opaque allomorphs with different vowels from those in the canonic patterns. For example, compare ne’emar ‘be said’, based on weak ?-m-r, with nivxan ‘examined’ or based on regular, fully transparent b-h-n. Such combination of defective roots with patterns is one of the major sources of allomorphic opacity in Hebrew, so that a single pattern may be expressed in several allomorphs in addition to its canonic form. For example, abstract pattern miCCaC is realized canonically in mivxan ‘examination’ and mirdaf ‘chase’, based on full or regular roots, but its form changes in mexdal ‘omission’, ma’amar ‘article’, mikre ‘case’, ma’ase ‘deed’, morad ‘slope’ and matsav ‘situation’, all based on defective roots. In the same way, the ubiquitous pattern CeĆeC is expressed not only in its canonic form by ne´zek ‘damage’ or re´gesh ‘emotion’ based on full roots, but also as te´va ‘nature’, pa´xad ‘fear’ or be´xi ‘crying’, based on weak roots. In this respect, again, spelling upholds and enhances morphological generalizations in words with weak root radicals. Due to the under-representation of vowels, differences such as between the structure of weak ma’amar ‘article’ and regular mivxan ‘examination’ are apparent in speech, but disappear in the corresponding written forms of MAMR ‫ מאמר‬and MBĦN ‫מבחן‬, each with four letters. Moreover and paradoxically, allomorphic opacity and underspecification of vowels lend more salience to morphological patterns, which are cued by just four letters5 – MTNH ‫מתנה‬. These always appear at word-final position, as written prefixes (e.g., M ‫ מ‬as above) or at word-final position, as written suffixes (e.g., N ‫ ן‬as in palgan ‘divider’, spelled PLGN ‫)פלגן‬. The small number of pattern affixes, their peripheral (initial or final) positions, and the absence of specific vowels to accompany them all serve as reliable morphological pointers to patterns. Orthography thus serves as a direct shortcut to root and pattern morphological structure and subsequently to the meanings and functions expressed by them. For example, M ‫ מ‬is a frequent and salient prefix denoting on-going and general states and activities (mefaxed ‘scared’, mitnadne´det ‘swinging, Fm’), instruments (maghets ‘iron’, mikle´det ‘keyboard’), places and collectives (midraxa ‘sidewalk’, meltaxa ‘wardrobe’) and abstract processes (mahaluma ‘blow’, mahalax ‘move’). And while die-hard purists justifiably complain at the resultant phonological confusion and partial mergers between patterns such as meCaCeC and maCCeC, or maCCeCa and miCCaCa, readers and spellers make efficient use of the non-voweled written prefix M ‫ מ‬as a reliable cue which signals these meanings in lexical access and production.

Spelling Linear Morphology

105

One more contribution to Hebrew thinking about roots as abstract morphological units comes from the absence of dagesh marking in writing. Recall the three sets of related stop and spirant in Hebrew morpho-phonology – p/f, b/v and k/x. While stop and spirant alternants of roots containing such pairs have different distributions in various morphological and morpho-phonological contexts, writing systematizes and standardizes these often opaque and inconsistent relationships, since each pair is represented by a single letter – P ‫ פ‬for p/f, B ‫ ב‬for b/v, and K ‫ כ‬for k/x. In the course of reading and spelling, Hebrew speaking children will realize that different-sounding forms such as kvisa ‘laundry’ and mexubas ‘laundered’ are actually related through a single root k–b-s with a non-alternating orthographic form KBS ‫כבס‬. In doing so, they will form local networks for specific roots and more explanatory global networks regarding root and pattern systems, as well as some of the complex conditions for stop/ spirant alternation such as position in the root and the word, lexical class, and inflectional paradigm.

Spelling Linear Morphology Let us extend the discussion of morpho-orthographic regularities to the realm of linear structure, which is as important for Hebrew morphology as root-andpattern structure (Ravid, 2006). As agreed by many Hebraist researchers, linear prefixes are not a productive part of Hebrew morphology. They mostly denote recent borrowings mainly used for scientific discourse such as anti- or hydro-, or else Aramaic quantifiers such as du- ‘dual’ or tlat- ‘tri’, but in either case such prefixes do not participate in derivational word structure. I will thus devote most of the discussion here to the canonical stem-suffix structure as a further elaboration of the core-periphery morpho-orthographic construction of written Hebrew. Linear morphology involves a stem, virtually always a word, and a suffix attached at its end. The critical difference between a Semitic root and a stem is that the latter, but not the former, is in possession of vowels and a prosodic template. The difference between a morphological pattern and a linear suffix is that that patterns intertwine with roots and provide them with the missing vocalic phonology and prosodic contours, whereas a suffix attaches to the end of a stem – with this operation sometimes causing morphological changes to the stem. Pattern prefixes and suffixes (e.g., m- and –t in miCCeĆet) are an inherent part of the whole package that makes up the word, and would never operate independently of the full prosodic template. In contrast, linear suffixes attach to already extant words constructed with different stress and vocalic patterns. Recall that linear morphology operates across both derivation and inflection. Thus, extant nominal stems can be lexically extended by the addition of an array of linear suffixes expressing agents (guf ‘body’ and -an as in gufan ‘font’),

106


places and collections (tinok ‘baby’ and –iya to yield tinokiya ‘nursery’), diminutives and instruments (tiyul ‘walk’ and –on to yield tiyulon ‘baby carriage’, kash ‘straw’ and –it to yield kashit ‘drinking straw’), and abstract nouns (balshan ‘linguist’ and -ut to yield balshanut ‘linguistics’). In addition, nouns, adjectives and verbs receive linear gender-number-person inflectional suffixes, as in tanurim ‘ovens’, adum-a ‘red,Fm’, nifrad-nu ‘we split up’, and kx-u ‘take,Pl’. The forms that Hebrew reader/writers encounter and produce in spelling linear morphology have the same, though sometimes more elaborated, morpho-orthographic construction as written root-and-pattern words. In a slight modification of 7-1 above, linear words are constructed of a core continuous stem (in shadowed font) and peripheral suffix (7-10): STEM LETTERS (SUFFIX LETTERS) For example, kashit ‘drinking straw’ (7-11) KŠYT ‫קשית‬ nifradnu ‘we split up’ (7-12) NPRDNW ‫נפרדנו‬ Or tinokiya ‘nursery’ (7-13) TYNWQYH ‫תינוקיה‬ Now note that this representation is in many cases already more layered than the root-and-pattern construction, since stems are usually words which may have root-and –pattern construction. For example, consider again nifrad-nu ‘we split up’ (7-12). Stem nifrad actually consists of root p-r-d and verb pattern Nif’al, which shows up in the pattern prefix N – so that now 7-14 will show the entire layered construction, with the stem shadowed and the root in bold: NPRDNW ‫נפרדנו‬ in the same way tinok ‘baby’ actually consists of root y-n-q and pattern tiCCoC, so that tinokiya (7-13) is actually layered with what looks like prefix and suffix on both sides of the root, but in fact these consist of the pattern prefix and the stem linear suffix (7-15). Stem TYNWQ ‫ תינוק‬is shadowed, while root YNQ ‫ ינק‬is bolded. Note moreover that while Y is a root radical, W serves as an internal vowel. TYNWQYH ‫תינוקיה‬

Complex Morphology in Spelling

107

At this stage of our analysis it is already obvious that writing demarcates core from affix morphological constructs by their orthographic site: the obligatory core lexical components of the word – roots and stems – sit in the middle of the word, while the additional information conveyed by pattern affixes and linear suffixes is provided at the edges. Orthographic structure blurs the root/stem or pattern/suffix distinction since both their written forms are continuous and are permitted to display exactly the same internal vowels – thus reinforcing the mental representation of word-roots and roots as continuous written units.

Complex Morphology in Spelling Affix combination such as stacking several derivational suffixes or inflecting derived words follows the same morpho-orthographic patterns, as in tiv’iyut ‘naturalness’ (7-16), derived from stem te´va – which in by itself a morphologically complex word, based on root t ̣-b-‘ and pattern CeĆeC, with allomorphic change due to the final pharyngeal root radical. To derive tiv’iyut from te´va, it is suffixed first by denominal –i to yield adjective tiv’i, and then by abstract noun suffix –ut. Stem vowels are all lost in the non-voweled written form of tiv’iyut, except for i, which is expressed in a package deal as Y together with the glide which is obligatorily added so that the suffix should not attach to a vowel. The derivational history of the word is clearly expressed in its skeletal form (7-16). ŦB9YWT ‫טבעיות‬ Here is an example of what complex words with both derivational and inflectional structure would look like in writing. First, hitnagadti ‘I objected’ (7-17): HTNGDTY ‫התנגדתי‬ The stem hitnaged (shadowed) is a past-tense verb combining root n-g-d and pattern Hitpa’el, which shows up in writing only in the HT prefix to the left of the root core. The verb is inflected for first person singular marked by the linear suffix –ti. Future-tense verbs are also good examples of complex morphology, e.g., titnagedna ‘they.Fm will object’ (7-18), where root n-g-d is flanked on both sides by affixes: tit-, expressing the future tense of binyan Hitpa’el, on the left, and on the right – the literate, high-register suffix expressing 3rd person feminine plual –na.6 TTNGDNH ‫תתנגדנה‬

108


The quadrilateral-based verb memaxze´ret ‘she recycles’ (7-19) is prefixed by present-tense M and suffixed by feminine T: MMĦZRT ‫ממחזרת‬ A final multiply complex example is maxshevonim ‘pocket calculators’ (7-20), constructed of maxshev ‘computer’ suffixed with the diminutive –on and with the masculine plural suffix –im. Like many native words, maxshev itself is morphologically complex, combining root h-sˇ-b ‘think, calculate’ and instrument pattern maCCeC – of which only the prefix M shows up in writing. MĦSˇBWNYM ‫מחשבונים‬ Stems and roots. To continue the line of thought from 7-15 above, frequency of exposure to stems and roots represented in exactly the same way, with the same under-representation of vowels, blurs the distinction between non-linear and linear structure in another way – by promoting the notion that ‘everything is a root’. In writing, root-words (complex root-and-pattern stems) look exactly like morphologically simplex stems, both represented by a sequence of letters mostly representing consonants, with only W and Y allowed to intervene. As a case in point, take the example of xatulim ‘cats’ (7-21), a plural noun based on the opaque stem xatul which looks morphologically complex (compare adjective shatul ‘planted’, based on root sˇ-t-l and resultative passive pattern CaCuC), but is not related to any morphological category through either root or pattern: ĦTWLYM ‫חתולים‬ Two more examples of simplex stems are nouns dargash ‘stool’ (7-22, a word which was already obscure to Mishnaic sages) and delpek ‘counter’ (7-23, of Greek origin), which look in writing exactly like any quadrilateral root-word, and are therefore indistinguishable from the representation of roots. DRGSˇ ‫דרגש‬ DLPK ‫דלפק‬ The orthographic merger of root-word stems and opaque stems in writing partially accounts for root salience and productivity in Hebrew. Olson’s scriptas-model predicts that literate language users’ linguistic cognition is shaped by the way they appear in writing, and as both simplex and root-based stems have

Extending Written Word Boundaries

109

identical representations, they are both likely to serve as bases for root extraction, which would mean using the consonantal skeletons appearing in writing. The script-as-model would also predict that Hebrew reader/writers would treat consonants and vowels differently due to their different prevalence and distribution in writing. Indeed, any interaction with school and kindergarten teachers who work a great deal on written language with their students indicates that they (both teachers and students) often refer to the absence of vowels. I have often encountered surprise and disbelief when I taught that phonemes included consonants and vowels (‘‘but there’re no vowels in words!’’), and words such as MWRH ‫‘( מורה‬teacher’ – feminine mora or masculine more) are supposed to have a ‘silent H’ at the end, as ‘the H ‫ ה‬isn’t heard’. In many ways, given both the under-representation of vowels and inconsistency of their representation by AHWY ‫אהוי‬, literate Hebrew users treat most vowels as though they do not exist or are of lesser value in the word.

Extending Written Word Boundaries So far, written Hebrew words look very much like written Romance-derived English words such as DISAGREEMENT, with stem/roots flanked on both sides by an envelope of affixes – except that there are fewer vowels in Hebrew writing. So how come some literate Hebrew words are so long? This is because the morpho-orthographic structure of writing extends in both peripheral directions to include two additional written morphological constructs – optional bound morphology suffixes and MSˇH WKLB ‫ משה וכלב‬clitic prefixes. WKSˇBMS9DWTYH ‫וכשבמסעדותיה‬ I once used the spelling of the word WKSˇBMS9DWTYH ‫ וכשבמסעדותיה‬u-xshebe-mis’adoteha ‘and-when-in- restaurants-her’ (7-24) in one of my journal articles to demonstrate the written structure of Hebrew words. At its core lies the stem mis’ada ‘restaurant’, with the root s-‘-d ‘dine’ clearly marked in the very center. On the right, mis’ada is suffixed by the plural –ot (WT ‫ )ות‬and by the optional possessive marker of 3rd person feminine –eha (YH ‫)יה‬. On the left there is the place nominal miCCaCa prefix M ‫מ‬, and beyond it – a series of clitics expressing (from left to right) coordination (W ‫)ו‬, temporality (KSˇ ‫ )כש‬and place (B ‫)ב‬. One annoyed reviewer of my paper instructed me to ‘remove this monstrosity’ – which I did (no choice if you want to publish on Hebrew for English-speaking audiences). But this example is far from being a monstrosity, i.e., a convoluted rarity, to Hebrew reader/writers – it is a long word, granted, but it’s not longer than the English phrase that would replace it in writing ‘and when in her restaurants’. And 7-24 is how you would spell it in Hebrew if this is what you wanted to say. And it’s not as though Hebrew would provide you with

110


much shorter and clearer options. Indeed, longer words with optional bound morphology require a higher degree of literacy in both speech and writing than shorter words – so it is possible to use the periphrastic construction u-xshe-bamis’adot shela so as to present the same idea in two words. But writing the clitics attached to the beginning of the word is not optional (see below). Spelling optional bound morphology. Optional bound morphology suffixes expressing gender-number-person come at the very end of what you want to say in the written Hebrew word, thus adding to the long-tailed periphery beyond the core. For example, accusative verb hilbashtiv ‘I-dressed-him’ (7-25), where the prefix H represents binyan Hif’il, the suffix TY ‫ תי‬refers to the 1st person singular grammatical subject, and the final suffix YW ‫( יו‬Y ‫ י‬appears just once) refers to the 3rd person singular object: HLBSˇTYW ‫הלבשתיו‬ Example 7-26 of possessive noun malxuyotehem ‘their kingdoms’ is based on the root-word MLK ‫ מלך‬me´lex ‘king’ followed by the WT ‫– ות‬ut abstract suffix, which deletes its final t before the plural suffix WT ‫– ות‬ot (with an intermediate glide inserted), followed at the end by the suffix YHM ‫– יהם‬eyhem ‘of them’ referring to the plural possessors of the kingdoms. MLKWYWTYHM ‫מלכויותיהם‬ Spelling clitic prefixes. The set of 7 syntactic constructs, phrasal and clausal clitics MSˇH WKLB are obligatorily written as prefixed elements attached to the left of the stem. All of them are expressed by single letters, and therefore cannot be written as fully separate words. These prefixed letters fall into three subsets: Clausal (1) conjunction ve- ‘and’ spelled W ‫ ו‬and the subordinating marker shespelled Sˇ ‫ ;ש‬Prepositional (2) me- ‘from’ spelled M ‫מ‬, be- ‘in’ spelled B ‫ב‬, ke- ‘as’ spelled K ‫כ‬, and le- ‘to’ spelled L ‫ ;ל‬and Phrasal (3) the definite article ha- ‘the’ spelled H ‫ה‬. For example ve-halax ‘and-went’ is spelled WHLK ‫והלך‬, she-ba ‘and-arrived’ is spelled SˇBA ‫שבא‬, ha-ish ‘the-man’ is spelled HAYSˇ ‫האיש‬, and le-admato ‘to-his-land’ is spelled LADMTW ‫לאדמתו‬. The traditional designation of prefixal clitics is moshe ve-kalev MSˇH WKLB ‫מש"ה וכל"ב‬, a mnemonic containing all 7 elements arranged into the names of two Biblical leaders – Moses and his successor’s Joshua’s contemporary and master spy Caleb. Hebrew linguists interested in spelling conventions are not in agreement relating the grammatical status of MSˇH WKLB ‫משה וכלב‬. Some regard them as morphemic word components, given that they do not only precede words in writing, but also interact with them morpho-phonologically. Thus, initial stops should spirantize following W ‫ ו‬and three of the prepositions – K ‫כ‬, B ‫ב‬, L ‫ל‬, with subsequent allomorphic changes to these same clitics. For example, in

Extending Written Word Boundaries

111

attaching the coordinator ve- ’and’ to praxim ‘flowers’, they both change to u-fraxim; and in attaching le- to it, the result is li-fraxim. These morphophonological alternations are confined to literate, high-register spoken Hebrew, since they all involve vowel changes and stop/spirant alternation, which are absent from non-voweled writing. Thus both neutral ve-praxim and highregister u-fraxim would be spelled in exactly the same way as WPRĦYM ‫ופרחים‬. I find these examples especially fascinating, since we have two literate conventions competing here – the spoken one, which is confined to very formal contexts such as news and poetry reading, and the written one, which simply does away with less and more literate spoken alternations altogether. As a result of the extremely restricted spoken contexts and the absence of distinctions in writing, MSˇH WKLB ‫ משה וכלב‬morpho-phonology is a linguistic domain undergoing fast change. Only the initiated few know all of the correct permutations and allomorphic changes in clitics and attached words, and the most esoteric of them, like incorporation of o prior to certain glottals (vo-oniya ‘and-ship’) sound grotesque to me by now. But even the more frequently heard ones are sort of fraying at the edges, losing members and produced in inappropriate contexts, mostly leaning on frequently heard constructions such as u-gdal ‘and-grow up’. When my daughter Sivan was 3, she would use u- in counting both appropriately, before initial clusters (u-shtaýim ‘and-two’), and inappropriately (u-shalosh ‘and-three’), clearly regarding the special allomorph as part of the counting system. At that time, it sounded like a wonderful juvenile solecism, but today I hear u- used by news reporters (who should know better) in similar inappropriate contexts. By now, most clitics retain only one major alternant, e.g., coordinator ve-/u-, definite article ha-/he-, with limited, and what would be regarded by the Hebrew Language Establishment as erroneous, distribution (which indeed still jars my ear). Finally, WKLB ‫ וכלב‬is also the second largest morpho-phonological domain requiring stop/spirant alternations, in addition to roots, and it is in shambles by now, with initial spirant obstruents relegated to the role of higher-register alternants across the board, as in the now-familiar solecism ba-fa´’am ha-ba’a ‘next time’ (correct form ba-pa´’am). However literate Hebrew speakers recognize the high-register alternants – even the ridiculously obsolete ones – as such, and would be able to relate them to the neutral, default forms of MSˇH WKLB ‫משה וכלב‬. Acquiring sensitivity to allomorphic variants is part of later language development and of becoming a literate Hebrew user. Tellingly, ve- ‘and’ is spelled correctly as W ‫ ו‬by 98% of 1st graders, despite homophony with B, however the correct spelling of the formal allomorph u- is delayed to the end of gradeschool, by which time children come to the realization that these are two variants of the same notion (Gillis & Ravid, 2006). From a written point of view, MSˇH WKLB ‫ משה וכלב‬pose different challenges. Following English spelling conventions as THE authoritative source on language, some Hebrew linguists regard attached MSˇH WKLB ‫ משה וכלב‬writing as spelling accidents of words which should have been granted separate spelling status. In one notable study, adult Hebrew readers

112


were given texts with hyphenated MSˇH WKLB ‫( משה וכלב‬e.g., W-B-BYT ‫ובבית‬ standing for ve/u?-ba-baýit ‘and-in-the-home’), with the prediction that hyphenated spelling would speed up reading, under the assumption that reading attached clitics slows down reading. The result was of course just the opposite – as readers slowed down considerably when faced with hyphens (Loewenstein & Kozminsky, 1999). In other cases, linguists working on the analysis of text production count MSˇH WKLB ‫ משה וכלב‬as separate words (because that’s the way it is in English), thus greatly blowing up the number of words in a text, on the one hand, and decreasing mean word length, on the other. Both practices violate Hebrew ecological validity or, if you wish, psycholinguistic reality – since MSˇH WKLB ‫ משה וכלב‬clitics have vast token frequency, and they occur just everywhere in their Hebrew conventional sites. They participate prominently in the psycholinguistics of reading Hebrew as morphological and syntactic cues, and are supported by knowledge of reciprocal clitic-word morphophonological processes and relationships. I have no strong view in the morphological/syntactic controversy regarding MSˇH WKLB ‫ משה וכלב‬prefixes, as my approach to linguistic and cognitive constructs is gradual rather than dichotomous. The psycholinguistic evidence is in favor of a prefixal status with looser ties to the structure of the word than any other component. For one thing, research shows that novice spellers – kindergarteners, but also 1st and sometimes even 2nd graders sometimes write some of the clitics separately – most frequently the subordinating Sˇ ‫( ש‬Sandbank, Walden, & Zeiler, 1995). The fact that almost MSˇH WKLB ‫ משה וכלב‬singleletter prefixes have longer morpho-lexical alternants with separate word status also supports the looser-ties approach to clitics. For example, subordinating she-, a Mishanic construction (spelled Sˇ ‫)ש‬, alternates with Biblical asher spelled as the full word ASˇR ‫אשר‬, while ‘from’ me- M ‫ מ‬alternates with the full word min MN ‫מן‬. But while there is no doubt as to the historical links between the two possible expressions of these notions, there is not much information about their psycholinguistic status and relationship. This should be an interesting topic to investigate. Spelling multi-prefixal words is one of the hallmarks of literate Hebrew. For one thing, multiple prefixing is required in packaging several locative, temporal, pragmatic and syntactic pieces of information as part of extended text production. Secondly, it involves knowledge about the hierarchical arrangement of these elements – as they are arranged from most inclusive (outermost) to expressing local syntax (innermost), that is, clausal ! prepositional ! phrasal markers, with coordination preceding subordination. For example, u-kshe-meha-baýit ‘and-when-from-the-house’ is spelled WKSˇMHBYT ‫וכשמהבית‬. Moreover, prefixal clitics enter into combinations with each other for phonological or lexical motivations. Thus all prepositions, except for me- ‘from’, merge with the weak definite article ha- yielding ba- ‘in-the’, ka- ‘as-the’, and la- ‘to-the’, while their non-voweled spelling remains the same. Contextual pragmatics and syntactic structure direct Hebrew readers to read BĦWP ‫בחוף‬ as be-xof ‘at-beach’ or as ba-xof ‘at-the-beach’. The simplex prepositions

Notes

113

me- ‘from’, ke- ‘as’ and le- ‘to’ also combine with the subordinating marker she- to yield complex subordinators such as mishe- ‘since’, kshe- ‘when’ and lixshe- ‘by the time’.

Word or Box? The term ‘word’ is not exactly appropriate for the written constructions analyzed here, in which a lexical core (root or stem) can be garnished with numerous morphological and morpho-syntactic adjuncts. Such written words may indeed signify lexemes and wordforms, as in English and other European languages, but in many cases they can also be construed as nominal or prepositional phrases, with a single written ’word’ extending even to include coordination and subordination markers. The Hebrew term for a written word, which may run from a word to a phrase, is appropriately teyva ‘box’ (TYBH ‫)תיבה‬. This morpho-orthgraphic structure of content word ‘boxes’ is the script-asmodel which guides how literate Hebrew users think about written words, and where they find the cues for spelling.

Summary The structure of the written Hebrew word is much more uniform than the corresponding structure of spoken words. While spoken words may be constructed by linear or non-linear means, or else lack morphological structure at all, the morpho-orthographic structure of the written word blurs these distinctions. The written Hebrew word consists of, or contains, an obligatory lexical unit – a root or a stem – with derivational, inflectional and morpho-syntactic affixes flanking it at both sides in systematic order. The terms we will be using henceforth will be core for the root or stem letters and envelope for the affix or function letters. The following chapters analyze in depth the interface of phonological segments, morphological units and Hebrew graphemes constructing the core and envelope structure of written Hebrew words.

Notes 1. Including those function categories which are morphologically complex, like inflected prepositions. 2. The only case where root continuity is really interfered with is Hitpa’el sibilant metathesis, where the t affix interchanges with the initial root radical. This has indeed consequences for spelling acquisition. 3. Defective roots with missing radicals such as n-g-‘ are not discussed here.

114


4. For example, qam ‘he got up’ and hekim ‘lifted’ do not represent the medial glide w in either speech or writing. 5. Disregarding for the time being the two additional prefixal letters signaling person futuretense verbs – A ‫ א‬and Y ‫י‬. These will be discussed in the chapter on verb inflection. 6. In fact the t- in tit- participates in conveying the third person singular feminine.

References Bar-On, A. (2010). Acquiring non-voweled Hebrew. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, School of Education, Tel Aviv University [in Hebrew]. Frost, R., Forster, K. I., & Deutsch, A. (1997). What can we learn from the morphology of Hebrew? A masked-priming investigation of morphological representation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 23, 829–856. Gillis, S., & Ravid, D. (2006). Typological effects on spelling development: A crosslinguistic study of Hebrew and Dutch. Journal of Child Language, 33, 621–659. Loewenstein, M., & Kozminsky, E. (1999). The effect of morphological transparency of written Hebrew on the efficiency of reading. Script, 1, 127–142 [in Hebrew]. Olson, D. (1994). The world on paper. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ravid, D. (1990). Internal structure constraints on new-word formation devices in Modern Hebrew. Folia Linguistica, 24, 289–346. Ravid, D. (1995). Language change in child and adult Hebrew: A psycholinguistic perspective. New York: Oxford University Press. Ravid, D. (2003). A developmental perspective on root perception in Hebrew and Palestinian Arabic. In Y. Shimron (Ed.), Language processing and acquisition in languages of Semitic, root-based morphology (pp. 293–319). Amsterdam: Benjamins. Ravid, D. (2006). Word-level morphology: A psycholinguistic perspective on linear formation in Hebrew nominals. Morphology, 16, 127–148. Ravid, D., & Kubi, E. (2003). What is a spelling error? The discrepancy between perception and reality. Faits de Langue, 22, 87–98. Ravid, D., & Schiff, R. (2004). Learning to represent vowels in written Hebrew: Different factors across development. First Language, 24, 185–208. Sandbank, A., Walden, Z., & Zeiler, E. (1995). Young children’s writing. Jerusalem: Israeli Ministry of Education [in Hebrew]. Schiff, R., & Ravid, D. (2004a). Vowel representation in written Hebrew: Phonological, orthographic and morphological contexts. Reading and Writing, 17, 245–265. Schiff, R., & Ravid, D. (2004b). Representing written vowels in university students with dyslexia compared with normal Hebrew readers. Annals of Dyslexia, 54, 39–64.

Chapter 8

Root and Function Letters

Chapter 7 has shown that the written words Hebrew reader/writers are exposed to encode morphological information in a systematic way, that is, a continuous lexical core and a split function or affix envelope. Clausal, prepositional and phrasal clitics introduce the function envelope. If the word is based on a nonlinear stem, the inner part of the envelope may contain a pattern prefix and/or suffix on both sides of the core root. If the core comprises a simplex stem, it consists of its letters. Linear suffixes – derivational, and then inflectional, follow the stem at the other side of the orthographic envelope, with optional bound morphology always last. The core-and-envelope structure is illustrated in the examples below. Example 8-1 illustrates the structure of the feminine noun brexa ‘pool’, representing the three root consonants at the core and the linear feminine suffix H ‫ ה‬as the envelope letter. This is also the exact structure of braxa ‘greeting, blessing’, and berxa, meaning either ‘she greeted’ or ‘he greeted her’. Such homography is the price paid by Hebrew readers (but not writers) for the phonological under-specification of non-voweled writing. BRKH

‫ב רכ ה‬

Example 8-2 illustrates the structure of the future-tense verb tenadnedu ‘you,Pl will swing’. The future-tense stem (shadowed) starts with the 2nd person T ‫ ת‬, while the quadrilateral root core is bolded. The W ‫ ו‬at the end of the envelope represents the linear inflectional suffix –u, signifying plural number. TNDNDW

‫תנדנדו‬

Example 8-3 analyzes the structure of she-le-haxlatoteynu ‘that-to-our-decisions’. The envelope contains the subordinating she-, followed by the preposition le- ‘to’, and then by the prefix of the haCCaCa action nominal. The three root letters constitute the core, and the function envelope resumes with the plural suffix –ot, ending with the 1st person plural possessive suffix –eýnu ‘ours’.


115

116

8 Root and Function Letters

SˇLHĦLŦWTYNW

‫שלהחלטותינו‬

The last examples contain stems rather than roots, adhering to the same structure. Example 8-4 me-ha-jira´fot ‘from-the-giraffes’ contains the foreign stem jira´fa. The envelope starts with a preposition followed by the definite article. The core consists of the stem letters, including the internal vowel i marked by Y, and the envelope resumes with the feminine plural suffix –ot: MHJYRPWT

‫מהג'ירפות‬

The lexical core in Example 8-5 be-mahuto ‘in its essence’ is the grammatical word ma ‘what’, spelled MH ‫מה‬. The function envelope contains the preposition be- ‘in’, followed by the stem. The envelope resumes with the derivational abstract suffix -ut spelled WT ‫ות‬-, followed by the optional bound inflectional affix –o, representing possession by 3rd person masculine singular. BMHWTW

‫במהותו‬

Demarcating Core from Envelope Letters A critical step in constructing Hebrew morpho-orthographic representations – learning to spell – is demarcation, that is, identifying the boundaries of the two major sites in the written word – the core and the envelope. This is because core and envelope components not only occupy different orthographic sites in the word, as shown above – they also have different spelling properties. Correct identification of role and site are related to spelling success, since the morphological role of the component provides the shortcuts for overcoming spelling errors in case of homophony. Chapter 6 delineated the major sources of spelling errors in homophonous letters – (1) Sˇ ‫ ש‬vs. S ‫ ס‬in spelling s; (2) B ‫ ב‬vs. W ‫ ו‬in spelling v; (3) T ‫ ת‬vs. Ŧ ‫ ט‬in spelling t; (4) K ‫ כ‬vs. Q ‫ ק‬in spelling k; (5) K ‫ כ‬vs. Ħ ‫ ח‬in spelling x; and (6) A ‫א‬, H ‫ה‬ and 9 ‫( ע‬in some environments, also Y ‫ )י‬in spelling the glottal stop alternating with zero. Of these, the least morphologically interesting is spelling s by Sˇ ‫ ש‬and S ‫ס‬. In most cases writing one instead of the other is considered a spelling error – e.g., spelling simxa ‘joy’ (or any of the derivatives of root sˇ-m-h) as SMĦH ‫סמחה‬ rather than SˇMĦH ‫ שמחה‬is definitely incorrect. However the S ‫ ס‬alternant far outnumbers the Sˇ ‫ ש‬alternant, and in some cases they are interchangeable (e.g., tafas ‘catch, grasp’ can be spelled by either as TPS ‫ תפס‬or TPSˇ ‫)תפש‬. Most important, this pair has no morphological underpinnings that can be used as

Homophony and Morphology

117

hitching posts to spelling. Thus, while acnowledging the role of Sˇ ‫ ש‬/ S ‫ ס‬as sources of spelling errors, I will focus on the five other pairs and triplets in this analysis. From an orthographic perspective, 13 letters participate in Hebrew homophony and spelling errors: A, B, H, W, Ħ, Ŧ, Y, K, S, 9, Q, Sˇ, and T. And in Hebrew orthography: ‫ת‬, ‫ש‬, ‫ק‬, ‫ע‬, ‫ס‬, ‫כ‬, ‫י‬, ‫ט‬, ‫ח‬, ‫ו‬, ‫ה‬, ‫ב‬, ‫א‬.

Homophony and Morphology Here is the idea underlying this book in a nutshell. Homophony in Hebrew involves the possible assignment of more than one letter to a single phoneme, thereby interfering with the one-to-one mapping of phonology onto spelling, rendering the orthography ‘deep’ or ‘opaque’. Thus, in principle, the only way to learn spelling would be via phonological, orthographic and lexical frequencies – that is, computing the probability of one spelling over another as based on questions such as: How frequent is the phoneme in Hebrew? How frequently does each of its graphemic competitors represent it in writing? How frequently does the word containing the homophonous phoneme(s) occur in writing and in speech? While all of these considerations are certainly important in learning to spell, they all share a disregard of the role homophonous segments have in the internal morphological structure of the written Hebrew word, and what it can do to help overcome spelling errors. This is because, as we have already seen, the historical processes that created homophony in the first place have left their clear mark on Hebrew morpho-orthographic structure. Thus, while v, t, k, x, and ? 0 are homophonous, they are not homomorphous. A hidden link between the competing letters and their morpho-orthographic role supports correct spelling. Spelling morphology is the route to spelling success in Hebrew. If resolving homophony were only a phonology-orthography product, we would see the same spelling outcomes in homophonous root (or stem) core structures and in the function envelope. For example, consider two possible violations of the correct spelling SˇGYAWT ‫ שגיאות‬of shgi’ot ‘errors’. First, (8-6), replacing the root letter A ‫ א‬by 9 ‫ע‬: SˇGY9WT

‫ש גי עו ת‬

Secondly, (8-7), replacing the function letter T ‫ ת‬by Ŧ ‫ט‬: SˇGYAWŦ

‫שגיאוט‬

If the two violations occupied a similar place in the linguistic cognition of literate Hebrew users, they would treat both of them as equal spelling errors. But any native Hebrew speller would tell you at a glance that this is not the case. I have conducted this little demonstration in dozens of classes, and always got the same reaction: Despite the same basic homophony, 8-7, which violates the

118


spelling of a function letter, is always perceived as a ‘worse’ spelling error than 8-6, which violates the spelling of a root letter. The prediction deriving from this little experiment is as follows: In case of homophony, function (affix) letters would be easier to spell than root letters Identifying the morphological role of the homophonous sound is an important step towards writing it correctly. This is because the spelling competitors in each homophonous pair (and in the AH9 ‫ אהע‬triplet) participate in distinctly different morpho-orthographic components.

Spelling Root Letters Root letters can be homophonous and are often so – this is just an impression, though, as to the best of my knowledge there are no official counts for Hebrew. To get some clue, consider the information in my Reading and Writing paper (Ravid, 2001), which analyzed spelling errors in 378 texts written by school children. The texts altogether contained 15,997 homophonous root letters. If we estimate an average of 70 words per text, and an average of 4 letters per word, we would get about 105,000 letters in the 378 texts, so that a very rough estimate would be about 15% homophonous root letters in a text. I have no idea to what extent this estimate is correct, but it does present spellers with a challenge. Root homophony often results in incorrect root radical designation, e.g., spelling RKBT ‫ רכבת‬rake´vet ‘train’ with Q ‫ ק‬instead of K ‫כ‬, or with W ‫ו‬ instead of B ‫ב‬, or with both errors. Such an error interferes not only with word spelling and retrieval, but also with forming a stable representation for the full root. Homophonous root letters can also create homophonous root-words if they occur in affixless written constructions, e.g., satar ‘slap’ spelled SŦR ‫סטר‬ versus satar ‘disprove’ spelled STR ‫סתר‬, in which case two very close spellings compete for the same root representation within exactly the same grammatical contexts.1 But whatever their consequence is, the prediction for root errors is that they should prove a real challenge to learners, and that acquisition of root spelling should consequently be a laborious process across the school years. This prediction is grounded in several facts. First, there is no a-priori reason for preferring one of the two (or more) options for spelling the homophonous segment. In other words, if you are not familiar with how a root is spelled, there is no preference for either one of the spellings. For example, there is no reason why root s-t ̣-r ‘slap’ should be spelled with Ŧ ‫ ט‬and root s-t-r ‘disprove’ should be spelled with T ‫ת‬. To remind you, root transcription in this book is morphological, but the two roots – and the words deriving from them – actually sound exactly the same. Secondly, the distributions of root letters render the job of learning their correct spelling a hard one. Recall that Hebrew has 22 letters, more than half of

Spelling Root Letters

119

which are homophonous. All 22 letters may serve as root letters, given that AHWY ‫ אהוי‬letters too occur as root letters. For example, the written root of hitbager ‘grow old’, spelled HTBGR ‫התבגר‬, contains the consonantal letters G, B, and R – ‫ר‬, ‫ב‬, ‫ ;ג‬and the written root of bo ‘come, IMP’, spelled BWA ‫בוא‬, contains the root letters B, W, and A – ‫א‬, ‫ו‬, ‫( ב‬of which only B ‫ ב‬represents a consonant). This makes for a high type frequency of root letters. Moreover, root letters appear in trilateral and quadrilateral combinations, so that it is necessary to represent not only the actual root letter but also its relation to the other root radicals. This requires representing the root radical series and the place of the specific radical in the sequence. High type frequency is not restricted to root letters – the actual number of different roots (whatever ‘different’ means) in Hebrew is, by a conservative estimate, about 3,000.2 I have no wish to consider the notion of what it means to be a ‘different root’ in the current context, though clearly both structure and meaning should enter this definition. Rather, my purpose here is for spelling to account at least partially for Hebrew speakers’ construal of roots in writing and consequently in speech. In contrast to high type frequency, token frequency of roots is low, as roots are lexical bases whose distribution in discourse is determined by topic and they are not usually repeated in the same context with high frequency. It would make sense to talk or write about rofe RWPA ‫‘ רופא‬physician’ and MRPAH ‫ מרפאה‬mirpa’a ‘clinic’ in the same context, but it is just as natural to mention pragmatically but not morphologically related axot AĦWT ‫‘ אחות‬nurse’ and beyt-mirka´xat BYT MRQĦT ‫‘ בית מרקחת‬pharmacy’ in the same breath. Thus, high type frequency of root letters and roots and low token frequency of roots would constitute serious challenges to learning the spelling of the homophonous root letters. A final hurdle on the route to correct root spelling is the fact that roots constitute parts of words and their spelling is learned within the context of a word. Thus, learning the spelling of a root with two homophonous letters such as RKB ‫‘ רכב‬ride’ within merkava MRKBH ‫‘ מרכבה‬carriage’ would depend to a large extent on the frequency of that word in written texts. Moreover, roots are shared by words, and thus learning the correct spelling of a root within a specific word does not ensure that RKB will be spelled correctly in a related word such as rexiva spelled RKYBH ‫רכיבה‬: this would depend on the frequency of the word RKYBH ‫רכיבה‬, but also on forging semantic links between words. In a perfect psycholinguistic world, where all roots share the same semantics and phonology across word families, family size would be a major factor in root spelling – the larger the family, the more chance for a learner to home in on the correct spelling of the homophonous root letter. For example, a large family such as that of KTB ‫‘ כתב‬write’, containing at least 20 lexeme members, should help learning, since the root would appear in all kinds of words such as verb hixtiv ‘dictate’ (HKTYB ‫ )הכתיב‬or nouns tixto´vet ‘correspondence’ (TKTWBT ‫ )תכתובת‬and katava ‘report’ (KTBH ‫)כתבה‬. However, when examined in detail, family size interfaces with several other factors which might facilitate or hinder learning of root spelling.

120


First, in the case of small morphological families, there is a difference between verbs and nouns regarding root status and learning (Berman, 2003). In general, verbs are more salient as root ‘carriers’ than nouns, and the meanings of root and verb are often perceived as isomorphic. The default meaning of a root is most typically expressed in a basic, non-derived verb with that same meaning: For example, root d-r-s ‘trample’ (DRS ‫)דרס‬, prototypically represented by Qal verb daras, has only one more verbal member – passive nidras; and t ̣-y-l ‘travel for leisure’ (ŦYL ‫ )טיל‬is represented by the single Pi’el verb tiyel. But being a verb also generates multiple occurrences of the root in about 25 wordforms per verb lemma – including past tense, present tense, future tense, imperative and infinitive forms, with appropriate number-gender-person inflections. Moreover, most verbs have corresponding action nominals which are almost as automatic productive as verb inflections (Ravid & Avidor, 1998). This means that the small families of verb-based roots such as DRS ‫ דרס‬or even those with singleton representations such as ŦYL ‫ טיל‬would contain the respective action nominal members drisa ‘trampling’ and tiyul ‘pleasure trip’. Numerous inflections and a strong affinity to action nominals makes verbs potentially more numerous and more prominent as root representatives. To elaborate on this theme, consider the two roots Sˇ9L ‫‘ שעל‬cough’ and ĦRŦ ‫‘ חרט‬regret’, each with a singleton (and non-prototypically represented) verb and a corresponding (and not entirely regular) action nominal. The Sˇ9L ‫ שעל‬rootbased family consists of two members – verb hishta’el ‘cough’ HSˇT9L ‫ השתעל‬and action nominal shi’ul SˇY9WL ‫ ;שיעול‬the ĦRŦ ‫ חרט‬family again consists of two members – verb hitxaret ‘regret’ HTĦRŦ ‫ התחרט‬and its derived nominal xarata ĦRŦH ‫חרטה‬. Even two lemmas per family will generate several wordforms such as verb inflections HTĦRŦTY, HTĦRŦTM, ‫‘ התחרטתם התחרטתי‬I regretted, you,Pl regretted’, as well as action nominal inflections such as SˇY9WLYM, SˇY9WLYH ‫שיעולים‬, ‫‘ שיעוליה‬coughs, her coughs’. In contrast, singleton nouns are more genuinely isolated in being much less likely to have root-related lemmas. Nouns such as de´let (DLT ‫‘ )דלת‬door’, shulxan (SˇWLĦN ‫‘ )שולחן‬table’, smixa (SˇMYKH ‫‘ )שמיכה‬blanket’ or mishpaxa (MSˇPĦH ‫‘ )משפחה‬family’ have discernible linear or non-linear morphological structure, but no ‘root’ to speak of and no lemma relations. Borrowings such as te´lefon (ŦLPWN ‫ )טלפון‬or radyo (RDYW ‫ )רדיו‬are of course complete singletons lacking any morphological structure. Such nouns would thus have to learned as individual stems following the frequency of each word in written discourse. This status is not permanent, as it is of course entirely possible to derive root-related verb lemmas out of singleton nouns, as in the celebrated case of tilfen ‘to telephone’ – thus promoting the spelling of the new verb-based root. In other, much rarer cases, singleton nouns yield root- or stemrelated nominals, e.g., tsane´ret ‘pipe system’ from tsinor ‘pipe, hose’ or kale´vet ‘rabies’ and kalbiya ‘kennels’ from ke´lev ‘dog’. Membership in a large-size family does not ensure correct root spelling either, since roots do not have equal semantic and/or phonological status within words: Words sharing roots may bear different degrees of semantic or phonological

Morpho-Phonological Cues to Root Spelling

121

relationships to each other, and this may also be age- and literacy-dependent. For example, it is not a given that gradeschool children would relate merkava ‘carriage’ MRKBH ‫ מרכבה‬and rexiva ‘riding’ RKYBH ‫רכיבה‬, or magber ‘amplifier’ MGBR ‫ מגבר‬and gibor ‘hero’ GYBWR ‫גיבור‬. Relating such words would require abstract knowledge about root relationships, a large and coherently organized lexical pool, and an ability to overcome semantic deviations and establish broad meaningful relationships based on structural – i.e., phonological and orthographic – similarities. Moreover, Hebrew has words sharing the same structural skeleton, with completely unrelated meanings, such as sapar ‘barber’ SPR ‫ספר‬ and sipur ‘story’ SYPWR ‫סיפור‬, or maxsan ‘storage hut’ MĦSN ‫ מחסן‬and mexusan ‘immunized’ MĦWSN ‫מחוסן‬, where semantics would not make any contribution to learning correct root spelling (Bar-On, 2000). Phonology is another potentially detrimental factor to learning the orthography of roots. As I show in the next chapters, anything related to vowel representation is problematic in Hebrew, and thus spelling roots with the lesser consonantal values AHWY ‫ אהוי‬as radicals, and most especially with A ‫א‬, is subject to omissions, e.g., spelling matsati ‘I found’ MCATY ‫ מצאתי‬based on root m-c-? as MCTY ‫מצתי‬. Phonologically-based allomorphy diminishes root unity, so that roots with k/x and b/v alternants in different morpho-phonological contexts such as sikem ‘summarize, add up’ and sxum ‘sum’ (both based on root SKM ‫ )סכמ‬are likely to leave shallower memory traces than roots with no stop/spirant alternants (Bar-On, 2000; Ravid & Bar-On, 2005).

Morpho-Phonological Cues to Root Spelling Two morpho-phonological factors may serve as cues in mitigating homophony – stop/spirant alternation and vowel lowering. Stop/spirant alternation. This morpho-phonological process is central in both spoken and written Hebrew, as we have seen so far. When established as a ubiquitous process consistently relating specific phonemes, it can be used to point at correct spellings for k/x and b/v. For both of these cases, evidence of alternation would point to one spelling option, and absence of alternation would point to another. Regarding v, consistent occurrence of v as in various morphophonological contexts would point at the W ‫ ו‬spelling of root LWY ‫לוי‬: liva ‘accompanied’ – yelave ‘will accompany’ – hitlava ‘join’ – livuy ‘accompanying’ – levaya ‘funeral’ etc. In contrast, alternation of b/v as in sibex ‘complicated, Tr’ – histabex ‘got entangled’– mesubax ‘complicated’– savux ‘complex’– svaxa ‘iron network’ and svax ‘tangle’ would testify to the presence of B ‫ ב‬in root SBK ‫סבכ‬. The same reasoning would work for determining that words such as kara ‘happen’ – mikre ‘case’ share root QRY ‫קר י‬, whereas the alternation in kara ‘mine,V’ – mixre ‘mine,N’ would point at root KRY ‫כר י‬. In the same way, homophony such as saxar (SˇKR ‫‘ שכר‬rent’ or SĦR ‫‘ סחר‬trade’) can be disambiguated by systematically checking related words such as yisxar ‘will

122


trade’ – soxer ‘merchant’, or misxar ‘trade’ to determine that x has no stop variant – hence represents Ħ ‫ ח‬in root SĦR ‫‘ סחייר‬trade’; whereas relating saxar to yiskor ‘will rent’ – saxar ‘pay,N’ – haskara ‘renting’ – masko´ret ‘salary’ will point to K ‫ כ‬in root SˇKR ‫‘ שכר‬pay, rent’. This is not a failproof strategy, however. For example, bkp alternants at the end of native roots show up most of the time as spirants, so they cannot be good cues. For example, root h-sˇ-b ‘think, calculate’ (ĦSˇB ‫ )חשב‬has a huge, totally v-dominant family, where the only b alternant is found in xeshbon ‘arithmetic’. On the whole, using stop/spirants as pointers to spelling involves an explicit metalinguistic search for related words, requiring a familiarity with many roots and their permutation in words, as well as knowledge about frequency of alternants, such as the lower frequency of W ‫ ו‬versus B ‫ב‬. This takes most of the gradeschool years to achieve (Shany, Zeiger, & Ravid, 2001). Vowel lowering. A second morpho-phonological cue is vowel lowering in the vicinity of historically guttural or pharyngeal root radicals. Vowel lowering takes different forms depending on the morpho-phonology of root and pattern. Thus for example CeCCa is an allomorph of abstract pattern CiCCa (e.g., simxa ‘joy’) with i lowered to e, based on roots with initial h (e.g., xemla ‘compassion’, root ĦML ‫חמל‬, xezka ‘order’ root ĦZQ ‫)חז"ק‬. Pattern CeĆeC lowers e to a, taking the form of CeĆa in roots with final radical h or ‘, as in re´ga RG9 ‫‘ רגע‬minute’ or pe´rax PRĦ ‫‘ פרח‬flower’; and CaĆaC in roots with middle radical h, h or ‘, as in sa´har SHR ‫‘ סהר‬moon’, or sha´xak SˇĦQ ‫‘ שחק‬sky’, or ka´’as K9S ‫‘ כעס‬anger’. This attraction to lower vowels is a clear cue in spelling ‘low’ root radicals, pointing, for example, at Ħ ‫ ח‬as vowel-lowerer in ora´xat ‘guest,Fm’, based on root ARĦ ‫ארח‬, vs. ore´xet ‘editor,Fm’, based on root 9RK ‫ ערכ‬where no such lowering is found. However this strategy too is best used by literate spellers, who will be sensitive to subtle changes in different contexts promoting vowel-lowering. One example is the fact that A ‫ א‬does not participate in most vowel lowering contexts, however, like other low radicals, it does select the yiCCaC allomorph of futuretense Qal (e.g., yiftax ‘he will open’, spelled YPTĦ ‫יפתח‬, yid’ag ‘he will worry’, spelled YDAG ‫ )ידאג‬over the default yiCCoC. Taken together, the linguistic and distributional properties of roots support a prediction of a long developmental route to correct homophonous root spelling, related to lexical and grammatical development as well as a growing familiarity with ‘the language of literacy’, that is, the establishment of robust and coherent ties between speech and writing. This includes morpho-orthographic knowledge generating expectations about the representation of root and function letters.

Spelling Function (Affix) Letters All non-core morphological roles in the written word are assigned to function – or affix – letters, which constitute, as we have seen, the orthographic envelope surrounding the root core. Viewed from several perspectives, function letter distributions signify low type frequency and high token frequency. First, unlike

Spelling Function (Affix) Letters

123

root letters, only 11 out of the 22 Hebrew letters may function as affix letters. Hebraist tradition has, as usual, a nice acronymic mnemonic for them: ANY SˇLMH KWTB ‫אנייי שלמייה כותייב‬, pronounced ani shlomo kotev and translated loosely as ‘I, Solomon, write’. Of these 11, 8 are homophonous, excluding Ħ ‫ח‬, Ŧ ‫ט‬, Q ‫ ק‬and the two letters designating s – Sˇ ‫ ש‬and S ‫ס‬, none of which has a function morphological role. In this respect, function letters not only constitute half the number of root letters, they also encompass only 7 homophonous letters – A ‫א‬, Y ‫י‬, H ‫ה‬, K ‫כ‬, W ‫ו‬, T ‫ת‬, and B ‫ב‬. This great difference in category type frequency is expressed in the number of homophonous function letters found in Ravid (2001) – 6,618 homophonous function letters altogether in 378 texts containing about 105,000 letters. This translates to a rough estimate of about 6% homophonous function letters in a text. From a morphological perspective, function letters designate a much smaller set of morphemes than the set of root morphemes. Although a considerable set of affixes is involved here, as delineated below, it still constitutes dozens rather than thousands of morphemes. Since there are only 11 function letters and many more affix morphemes, function letters (such as the ubiquitous T ‫ )ת‬often designate a variety of morphemes. This helps in cementing clear affix functions to this small class of letters, while at the same time generalizing across the diverse roles of the affix morphemes designated by the same letter. Moreover, function letters require less contextualization within the grammatical morpheme. Indeed, function letters combine to designate grammatical morphemes (e.g., -suffix -tem spelled TM ‫תם‬ denoting 2nd person plural); but unlike root letters, which have to be represented according to their relative place in the root triad, many function letters are soloists, such as the AYTN ‫ איתן‬future-tense prefixes on verbs or the definite article H. This helps identify the letter with the entire function role. In sharp contrast to root letters, function letters have a high token frequency due to the dense morphological structures of written Hebrew words, which represent derivational (pattern and linear) affixes, inflectional number-genderperson agreement markers and tense affixes, optional bound morphology, and MSˇH WKLB ‫ משה וכלב‬clitic prefixes. Despite the high number of root-word stems, this means that most content words and some grammatical words (for example, prepositions) carry an enormous amount of function elements. Recall that roots are not entirely reliable in relating words – they might have slightly to completely different meanings in different words and contexts, and they participate in families with huge differences in sizes – from one to two dozens and more. This is because roots belong to the derivational of lexical part of morphology, meaning their meanings and meaning permutations are often idiosyncratic and cannot be captured productively and systematically. Assigning function letters to meanings and functions is a much more consistent and systematic task, since these remain invariable across different contexts and settings. Thus, connectors and prepositions, the definite article, designators of gender, number, person and tense, of binyan and mishkal patterns are all highly transparent and predictable in meaning and do not take on different shades of meanings. This of course is a great help in learning to associate function letters

124


with affixal roles, despite the homonymy resulting from a small number of letters designating a larger set of affixes with even more meanings. But the most important feature which sets apart homophonous function from root letters is their predictability. Beyond the (not always reliable) morpho-phonological cues of stop/spirant alternation and vowel lowering, there is nothing to tell you which root letter to select in case of homophony – certainly there is no semantic cue, since all root letters serve in is roots. But function letters are subject to homophony but not to homomorphy: In case of homophony, you can always tell which of the optional letters designating the same sound should be used for spelling, since in most of the cases, only one of the homophonous pair belongs to the set of function letters. Let us go back to the 5 sets of competing homophonous letters and substantiate this claim: (1) W ‫ו‬/B ‫ ב‬in spelling v – both W ‫ ו‬and B ‫ ב‬are function letters, but W ‫ ו‬should almost always be selected for function roles involving v, since B ‫ ב‬as v designator is limited to the spirant alternant of the preposition be-, which is hardly used and is a marker of high-register, formal spoken usage. (2) T ‫ת‬/Ŧ ‫ ט‬in spelling t. For designating any function in the word involving t, only the spelling of T ‫ ת‬can be selected. Ŧ ‫ ט‬is only a root letter. (3) K ‫כ‬/Q ‫ ק‬in spelling k. For designating any function in the word involving k, only the spelling of K ‫ כ‬can be selected. Q ‫ ק‬is only a root letter. (4) K ‫כ‬/Ħ ‫ ח‬in spelling x. For designating any function in the word involving x, only the spelling of K ‫ כ‬can be selected. Ħ ‫ ח‬is only a root letter. (5) A ‫א‬, H ‫ ה‬and 9 ‫( ע‬and Y ‫ )י‬in spelling ?/0. This is slightly more complicated, since both A ‫ א‬and H ‫( ה‬as well as Y ‫ )י‬are function letters. 9 ‫ ע‬is only a root letter. In sum, function roles rely on a direct link from letter to morphological function, sidestepping the phonology-orthography issue, in most of the cases. We can now make a set of predictions regarding spelling homophonous letters. The first one is a general prediction regarding root and function letters. 1. In case of homophony, function letters would be easier to spell than root letters The rest of the predictions relate to function letters. 2. In case of homophony in function letters, W ‫ו‬, T ‫ת‬, and K ‫כ‬, which have no function competitors, should be preferred over the homophonous option designating only root letters.

3. In case of homophony in function letters, A ‫א‬, H ‫ה‬, and Y ‫ י‬should be preferred over their homophonous competitor 9 ‫ע‬, but they will compete with each other, especially in contexts where they serve similar functions.

Mapping Morphological Roles of Function Letters

125

Mapping Morphological Roles of Function Letters The notion ‘function/affix letter’ encompasses a wide variety of morphological roles. Table 8.1 below presents all the morphological functions associated with each of the Hebrew letters beyond their shared role as root letters, with corresponding examples. Homophonous letters are asterisked. Letters with only root and no function/affix roles are marked by –. Morphological functions are designated as systematically as possible, referring to both spoken and written morphology values. Functions are listed by order of frequency and/or by subcategory, so that functionally close roles are listed together – e.g., H ‫ה‬ functions as marker of feminine and masculine gender. Examples are of written forms and show the relevant letters in bold. Note the following: P ¼ Person; Fem, Masc ¼ Feminine, Masculine respectively; Sg ¼ Singular. Letter

Table 8.1 Hebrew function letters with all their morphological roles Morphological function Example

A* ‫א‬

1. Future tense 1st P Sg prefix ?2. Pattern prefix ?3. Part of agentive suffix –ay

B‫ב‬

1. Prefixed preposition/clitic b- ‘in’ (*spirant alternative)

1. BĦCR ‘in the yard’ ‫בחצר‬

G‫ג‬

–

–

D‫ד‬

–

–

4. Alternative to Fem H ‫( ה‬of Aramaic origin)

H* ‫ה‬

W* ‫ו‬

1. Definite article/clitic ha2. Fem suffix –a on nouns, adjectives, verbs 3. Masc suffix –e on nouns, adjectives, verbs 4. Fem pattern suffix (e.g., miCCaCa) 5. Part of linear Fem suffix (e.g., -iya) 6. 3rd P Fem suffix on prepositions –a and –eýha 7. Optional 3rd P Fem suffix – possessive nouns and accusative verbs –a and –eýha 8. Manner adverb suffix –a 9. Hif’il prefix h-, Hitpa’el part of prefix hit10. Hif’il nominal prefix h-, Hitpa’el nominal part of prefix hit11. Part of l-h- prefix of infinitive verbs 12. High-register interrogative marker 13. ABSENT Ø in 2nd person masculine contexts

1. ADBR ‘I will talk’ ‫אדבר‬ 2. ABĦNH ‘diagnosis’ ‫אבחנה‬ 3. 9YTWNAY ‘journalist’ ‫עיתונאי‬ 4. DWGMA ‘example’ ‫דוגמא‬

1. HMSˇRD ‘the office’ ‫המשרד‬ 2. DYRH ‘apartment’ ‫דירה‬ 3. QWNH ‘buyer’ ‫קונה‬ 4. MKLLH ‘college’ ‫מכללה‬ 5. 9YRYH ‘city council’ ‫עיריה‬ 6. MMNH ‘from her’ ‫ממנה‬ 7. BYTH ‘her home’, LHDQH ‘to tighten her’ ‫ להדקה‬,‫ביתה‬ 8. NAMNH ‘loyally’ ‫נאמנה‬ 9. HTRGZ ‘got angry’ ‫התרגז‬ 10. HSBR ‘explanation’ ‫הסבר‬

11. LHYKNS ‘to enter’ ‫להיכנס‬ 12. HYD9T ‘did you know?’ ‫ה י ד עת‬ 13. MKRTØ ‘you,Masc sold’ ‫מ כ רת‬ 1. Coordinating conjunction prefix ve-, u-, vi1. WLQĦ ‘and took’ ‫ולקח‬ 2. 3rd P Masc suffix on prepositions –o, -u, -av 2. LPNYW ‘in front of him’ ‫לפניו‬ 3. Optional 3rd P Masc suffix –o, -u, -iv, -av 3. BNW ‘his son’ ‫בנו‬ 4. Plural 2nd & 3rd P suffix on past, future and 4. HSKYMW ‘they will agree’ modal verbs –u ‫יסכימו‬ 5. Part of 1st P Plural suffix on verbs -nu 5. HSKMNW ‘we agreed’ ‫הסכמנו‬ 6. Part of linear suffixes –ot, -ut, -on 6. QLWT ‘ease’ ‫קלות‬

126

8 Root and Function Letters Table 8.1 (continued)

Letter

Morphological function

Example

Z‫ז‬

–

–

Ħ* ‫ח‬

–

–

Ŧ*‫ט‬

–

–

Letter


Y* ‫י‬

K* ‫כ‬

Example 1. Future tense 3rd P Sg prefix y1. YRSˇM ‘will subscribe’ ‫ירשם‬ 2. Fem suffix on modal verbs –i 2. QĦY ‘take ,IMP’ ‫קחי‬ 3. Part of 1st P Sg suffix on past tense verbs –ti 3. GRTY ‘I lived’ ‫גרתי‬ 4. 1st P Sg suffix on prepositions –i, -ay 4. TYQY ‘my bags’ ‫תיקי‬ 5. Optional 1st P Sg suffix–i, -ay 5. ĦLWMY ‘my dream’ ‫חלומי‬ 6. Part of Masc Plural suffix -im 6. GLYM ‘waves’ ‫גלים‬ 7. Part of Masc bound Plural suffix -ey 7. GLYKM ‘your waves’ ‫גליכם‬ 8. Denominal adjective suffix –i 8. ŦYPWSY ‘typical’ ‫טיפוסי‬ 9. Part of derivational suffixes –ay, -it, -iya 9. 9YTWNAY ‘journalist’ ‫עיתונאי‬ 10. Diminutive (unstressed) suffix –i 10. ĦTWLY ‘kitty’ ‫חתולי‬ 1. Prefixed preposition/clitic k- ‘as’ 2. Part of 2nd P suffixes on prepositions –ax, xa, -eýxa, -xem 3. Part of optional bound 2nd P suffixes ex, xa, -eýxa, -xem

1. KĦTWL ‘like a cat’ ‫כחתול‬ 2. BKM ‘in you, PL’ ‫בכם‬,

L‫ל‬

1. Prefixed preposition/clitic l- ‘to’ 2. Infinitive prefix l-

1. LMSRD ‘to the office’ ‫למשרד‬ 2. LHBYA ‘to bring’ ‫להביא‬

M‫מ‬

1. Prefixed preposition/clitic m- ‘from’ 2. Prefix on present-tense verbs m3. Pattern prefix m4. Part of Masc Plural suffix –im 5. Part of Plural suffixes on verbs, prepositions, optional –tem, -xem

1. MRĦWQ ‘from afar’ ‫מרחוק‬ 2. MSˇQR ‘is lying’ ‫משקר‬ 3. MQLŦ ‘shelter’ ‫מקלט‬ 4. SWPRYM ‘writers’ ‫סופרים‬ 5. LKM ‘to them’ ‫להם‬, HSTRTM ‘you,Pl hid’ ‫הסתרתם‬

N‫נ‬

1. Future tense 1st P Plural prefix n2. Nif’al present- and past-tense prefix (þ alternative Nitpa’el form) 3. Part of high-register Fem Plural suffixes on verbs, prepositions, optional –ten, -xen 4. Part of pattern and linear suffixes –an, -on

1. N9TYQ ‘we will copy’ ‫נעתיק‬ 2. NRDM ‘fell asleep’ ‫נרדם‬

3. LBK ‘your heart’, YDYKM ‘your,Pl hands’ ‫ ידיך‬,‫לבך‬

3. BGDYHN ‘their,Fm clothes’ ‫בגדיהן‬ 4. BYŦĦWN ‘security’ ‫ביטחון‬

S* ‫ס‬ 9* ‫ע‬ P‫פ‬ C‫צ‬ Q* ‫ק‬ R‫ר‬ Sˇ* ‫ש‬

– – – – – – 1. Prefixed subordinating conjunction/clitic she-

Letter


Example

T* ‫ת‬

1. Part of 1st & 2nd P/tense suffixes –ti, -ta, -t, -tem/n 2. Part of Fem Plural suffix on nouns, adjectives, verbs -ot

1. HSBRTY ‘I explained’ ‫הסברתי‬

– – – – – – 1. SˇHWA ‘that he’ ‫שהוא‬

2. BWNWT ‘they,Fm are building’ ‫בונות‬

Summary

127 Table 8.1 (continued)

Letter


Example 3. Fem suffix –t 3. NSˇYT ‘feminine’ ‫נשית‬ 4. Epenthetic bound Fem suffix –t 4. ARWĦTW ‘his meal’ ‫ארוחתו‬ 5. Epenthetic redundant Fem t in y-final roots 5. CYPTH ‘she expected’ ‫ציפתה‬ 6. Suffix –t on infinitival y-final verbs 6. LBNWT ‘to build’ ‫לבנות‬ 7. Part of derivational linear suffixes –it, -ut, -ot 7. AĦWT ‘sister’ ‫אחות‬ 8. Future tense 2nd P Masc & 3rd P Fem 8. TSGWR ‘you/she will close’ prefix t‫תסגור‬ 9. Part of pattern suffixes –ut, -eĆet,- oĆet 9. MLKWDT ‘trap’ ‫מלכודת‬ 10. Part of Hitpa’el prefix hit10. HT9LP ‘fainted’ ‫התעלף‬ 11. TPRYŦ ‘menu’ ‫תפריט‬ 11. Nominal pattern prefix t-

Summary Root and function letters have different morphological roles in the written Hebrew word, and generate different predictions regarding the pace of spelling acquisition. In case of the 22 root letters, the single-function derivational role coupled with high type and low token frequency predict serious challenges to spelling acquisition. Thus, there is no way to know whether the t in tipul ‘treatment’ is spelled with T ‫ ת‬or Ŧ ‫ט‬, both viable options. General letter frequency will orient spellers towards T ‫ת‬, given that it has almost five times (5.3) the frequency of Ŧ ‫( ט‬1.14); however root t ̣-p-l is spelled with Ŧ ‫ט‬. The only way to learn this is to create a strong orthographic representation of this root, based on as many lexemes and wordforms sharing it, including more semantically distant family members such as tapil ‘parasite’. Obviously, acquiring this knowledge network is expected to take a long time and to require a robust spoken and written lexicon. However, in case of homophonous t occurring as a function letter, e.g., tapil ‘you/she will drop’, ma’alit ‘elevator’, or saxe´vet ‘procrastination’, there is no doubt about the spelling, since of the two competitors, only T ‫ ת‬designates function roles. A much lower threshold of vocabulary is necessary to establish this connection, since there are so many Ts ‫ ת‬around in spelling, most of them with function roles. Therefore, learning about the correct spelling of homophonous function letters is expected to consolidate much earlier before root letters. The critical question is of course to determine if the letter under consideration has a root or function role. I am not claiming any metalinguistic knowledge here, no explicit strategies of determining whether t is part of a root or signifies, say, a bound stem as in simlat shabat ‘Sabbath dress’ (where the free stem would be simla ‘dress’). There is no need and no ground to posit such knowledge. The visual frequencies are enough: roots sit in the middle, function letters on both sides, so some experience with various written ‘boxes’, including root-word stems, would suffice to make a decision.

128


Again, in a perfect psycholinguistic world there would be a difference among letters of one kind or another, and demarcating root from function sites would be straightforward. This, however, is not the case (but then of course, a perfect psycholinguistic world wouldn’t be interesting!). AHWY ‫ אהוי‬letters, sporting two millennia of consonant-vowel ambiguity, are more vulnerable to omission, substitution and stacking than consonantal letters. Moreover, words based on defective roots may have less canonical allomorph structures, which might detract from the ability to demarcate envelope-core boundaries. For example, a word such as to’elet ‘benefit’ (spelled TW9LT ‫ )תועלת‬is based on root y-‘-l, blurring the boundaries between prefix and root core. Forms, as always in language, may also be misleading, so that a string such as xanut might denote ‘shop’, based on root h-n-y, ending with the abstract suffix –ut – in which case t should be spelled with T ‫ת‬. It could also denote the word ‘mummy’, based on root h-n-t ̣ ‘mummify’, where the last root radical would be spelled Ŧ ‫ט‬. The next chapters are devoted to these questions of demarcation in various contexts. Chapter 9 introduces the complex world of AHWY ‫אהוי‬, while the following chapters explore the effect of spelling cues in transparently and opaquely structured nouns, adjectives and verbs.

Notes 1. The problem is exacerbated in the few cases two root-words are close in meaning, as in t-‘-y ̣ ‘err’ spelled Ŧ9H ‫ טעה‬and t-‘-y ‘lose one’s way’ spelled T9H ‫תעה‬. 2. In a recent October, 2010, email exchange among leading Hebrew linguists and psycholinguists following a query by Ruth A. Berman regarding the number of roots in Modern Hebrew, O. Schwarzwald estimated the total number at about 3000, while S. Bolozky’s analysis yielded about 500 active roots.

References Bar-On, A. (2000). Root perception in a developmental perspective. MA thesis, Department of Communications Disorders, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv [in Hebrew]. Berman, R. A. (2003). Children’s lexical innovations: Developmental perspectives on Hebrew verb-structure. In J. Shimron (Ed.), Language processing and acquisition in languages of Semitic, root-based, morphology (pp. 243–291). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Ravid, D. (2001). Learning to spell in Hebrew: Phonological and morphological factors. Reading and Writing, 14, 459–485. Ravid, D., & Avidor, A. (1998). Acquisition of derived nominals in Hebrew: Developmental and linguistic principles. Journal of Child Language, 25, 229–266. Ravid, D., & Bar-On, A. (2005). Manipulating written Hebrew roots across development: The interface of semantic, phonological and orthographic factors. Reading & Writing, 18, 231–256. Shany, M., Zeiger, T., & Ravid, D. (2001). Development and validation of diagnostic tools for assessing basic processes in reading and spelling. Script, 2, 167–203 [in Hebrew].

Chapter 9

The Phono-Morpho-Orthographic AHWY ‫ אהוי‬Juncture

Chapter 5 reported the proportional frequencies of letters in 137 Hebrew children’s books. The rather startling distributions show the four AHWY ‫אהוי‬ matres lectiones have the highest token frequencies of all other letters – A ‫ א‬with 7.64%, H ‫ ה‬with 9.26%, W ‫ ו‬with 10.07%, and Y ‫ י‬with 9.39%. The only consonantal letter that comes close to these numbers is L ‫( ל‬7.8%), with B ‫ב‬, R ‫ר‬, and T ‫ ת‬each having about half the frequency size of W ‫ו‬. Note that the books where these frequencies were identified were all vocalized with nikud diacritics, which diminishes the number of some of the W and Y internal vowels. It stands to reason that if we were to count frequencies in schooltexts which are unvoweled and contain many more optional bound suffixes and complex prefixal clitics, as well as more non-native words, which are less restricted by midvowel representation, these AHWY ‫ אהוי‬frequencies would be even higher. These high distributions are due to several reasons. Firstly and most simplistically, AHWY ‫ אהוי‬represent vowels in addition to consonants, so that despite the multiple restrictions and ambiguities involved in vowel representation, vowels do crop up in written Hebrew. But beyond that, AHWY ‫ אהוי‬have a constant, albeit not very salient, presence in written discourse because they are multitasking letters. AHWY ‫ אהוי‬have double and triple functions in every dimension of representation. Phonologically, they represent a continuum from vowels to consonants, from presence to absence; morphologically, they can serve as either root or function letters, as well as designating internal vowels. And their orthographic distribution reflects these phonological and morphological roles. The only way to appreciate the richness and complexity of the AHWY ‫אהוי‬ system is to examine them through the triple-dimensioned prism of the phonomorpho-orthographic juncture; that is, through the orthographic restrictions on AHWY ‫ אהוי‬occurrence in the written word as designators of different phonological entities with various morphological roles. Since every pattern is a cue with some validity in establishing a categorial network, we will examine the different interfaces of this juncture.


129

130

9 The Phono-Morpho-Orthographic AHWY ‫ אהוי‬Juncture

Blurring the Consonant-Vowel Distinction The easiest way to approach this complexity is to reduce one dimension, thereby starting with the single phonology-orthography link. So let us for the time being pretend that morphology is not an issue in this analysis, and examine the nature of the AHWY ‫ אהוי‬phonology-spelling link in Hebrew writing. From the very first analysis, AHWY ‫ אהוי‬fall into two subsets – AH ‫ אה‬and WY ‫וי‬, with different distributions, characteristics, and behaviors. Orthographic distributions of AHWY consonants. Even as consonants, whose occurrence is not subject to as many restrictions as vowels, the distributions of A ‫ א‬and H ‫ ה‬are restricted (in much the same way) in the written Hebrew word. Thus, consonantal A ‫ א‬and H ‫ ה‬can occur only in initial and middle positions: A ‫ א‬standing for the glottal stop occurs at word initial position in etgaber ‘I will prevail’ spelled ATGBR ‫אתגבר‬, in mid-position in te’una ‘accident’ spelled TAWNH ‫תאונה‬, but in final position A ‫ א‬never has consonantal value. H ‫ה‬ standing for h occurs at word initial position in haxlata ‘decision’ spelled HĦLŦH ‫החלטה‬, in mid-position in tahaluxa ‘parade’ spelled TAHLWKH ‫תהלוכה‬, but in final position H ‫ ה‬too has no consonantal value in Israeli Hebrew. In contrast, W ‫ ו‬and Y ‫ י‬are less restricted as consonants, and are both permitted to occur in all three positions – e.g., for W ‫ –ו‬varod ‘pink’ spelled WRWD ‫ורוד‬, mehave ‘constitutes’ spelled MHWH ‫מהוה‬, and stav ‘autumn’ spelled STW ‫ ;סתו‬and for Y ‫ – י‬yarok ‘green’ spelled YRWQ ‫ירוק‬, mexayex ‘smiling’ spelled MĦYK ‫מחיך‬, and yeladay ‘my children’ spelled YLDY ‫ילדי‬.1 Phonological attributes of AHWY consonants. Again, even as consonants, the AHWY ‫ אהוי‬reader/writers encounter are not as robust as other consonants. They are weakened, in many cases pronounced as semi-consonantal, semivocalic, or simply absent, a state of affairs that was already true in Mishnaic Hebrew (Blau, 1981). Thus glottal stops rarely occur in speech, while the voiceless pharyngeal fricative requires special application in pronunciation and most of the time ends up as the glottal stop (I was just reading that one of the coaches of the ‘‘Israeli Idol’’ ‘A Star is Born’ did his best to get one of the competitors to pronounce the h – but to no avail, to his and the judges’ chagrin. The audience didn’t mind in the least). As far back as in my student days in the 1970s, linguistics forums were arguing whether at least the initial glottal stop should be transcribed or left out (Bolozky, 1997). So it’s no wonder non-linguist teachers and academics find it extremely difficult to decide when A stands for a consonant and when it stands for a vowel. Y ‫ י‬poses a different problem to the ‘softening’ of the consonant/vowel distinction in the matres lectiones. While the difference between i it represents as a vowel and the y it represents as a consonant is clear and unequivocal, Y ‫י‬ also stands for a continuum of semi-vowels or glides which run from a clear –ey to some sort of –e. I have been asked several times by colleagues working on Hebrew letters what vowels Y ‫ י‬stands for, and they were not satisfied with just i, claiming that it also stands for e. I have no idea if this is correct or whether the

Blurring the Consonant-Vowel Distinction

131

murky continuum between consonantal and vocalic values is responsible for this obscurity. It looks to me much more reasonable to say that Y ‫ י‬stands for i alone, while the e results from the erosion of the final –y. Although I am trying to be systematic and avoid the morphological dimension for the time being, this is not always possible – as indeed you will note when considering that most occurrences of –ey represent the plural morpheme which crops up on the bound head noun in compounds (e.g., avney rosha ‘head stones’).2 W ‫ ו‬is the only AHWY ‫ אהוי‬letter with extreme distance between its fully consonantal v and the vowels it stands for, but it too participates in blurring the consonant-vowel boundary in another way, as delineated in the next section. AHWY as vowels. The task of vowel representation is not uniquely assigned to each one of the four AHWY letters. Both A ‫ א‬and H ‫ ה‬stand for e (MLA ‫מלא‬ male ‘full’, QSˇH ‫ קשה‬kashe ‘hard’) and for a (MCA ‫ מצא‬matsa ‘found’, QNH ‫ קנה‬kana ‘bought’), and both infrequently designate o (LA ‫ לא‬lo ‘no’, SˇLMH ‫ שלמה‬shlomo ‘Salomon’). W ‫ ו‬stands for two vowel values – o, as in matok ‘sweet’ spelled MTWQ ‫מתוק‬, and u, as in sagur ‘closed’ spelled SGWR ‫סגור‬. Y ‫י‬, as presented above, stands for i. But consider the fact that not only are AHWY ‫ אהוי‬the only letters with a double phonological value as consonants and vowels, they alone represent morphemes with both consonant and vowel allomorphs. One example is the coordinating conjunction spelled W, of which the default form is pronounced ve-, and the best preserved high-register allomorph is u-. However the strongest evidence for the dual phonological nature of AHWY ‫ אהוי‬comes from the behaviour of root letters in different morphophonological environments, that is, when morphology mediates between phonology and orthography. AHWY ‫ אהוי‬as root letters. Roots are by definition consonantal entities, and anyone writing in English for international audiences about spoken Hebrew morphology has a store of canonical fully transparent roots (i.e., with no weird radicals such as c, sˇ, or t ̣), preferably with non-alternating radicals, such as g-d-l. But a good number of roots are defective, with either missing radicals (e.g., n-p-l, where the initial n- does not surface in all environments), or with weak semivocalic/consonantal radicals – ?, h, w, and y. The very fact that written Hebrew represents these radicals as AHWY ‫ אהוי‬letters blurs the distinction between consonants and vowels. To examine AHWY ‫ אהוי‬as root letters, we need to bring morphology back into the picture (I know I promised to keep it out for the time being to simplify matters, but as you see, this is impossible if we really want to understand the interaction of root AHWY ‫ אהוי‬letters with their phonological values). The interesting thing about AHWY ‫ אהוי‬root letters is that they frequently display alternating phonological values in different morpho-phonological environments. For example, the first radical in A ‫א‬-initial roots such as ?-k-l ‘eat’ or ?-h-b ‘love’ shows up in the same paradigm as either consonantal (e.g., ?axa´lnu ‘we ate’, spelled AKLNW ‫אכלנו‬, or ?ahava ‘she loved’, AHBH ‫ )אהבה‬or vocalic (yoxlu ‘they will eat’, YAKLW ‫יאכלו‬, tohav ‘she will love’ TAHB ‫– )תאהב‬ depending whether they are followed by a vowel or enter a consonant cluster

132


in traditional Hebrew grammar. But note that even initial ? radical followed by a vowel would be rarely pronounced as a glottal stop in running speech, unless in utterance-initial position. Bolozky’s (1997) analysis of this weak consonantal status of ? is the reason most Hebrew linguists opt to omit it in phonemic transcription (rendering ‘we ate’ and ‘she loved’ as axa´lnu and ahava respectively) even when stressed. The sole phonological remnant is intervocalic ’ as in ma’amar ‘article’ (root ?-m-r, spelled MAMR ‫)מאמר‬. All ‫א‬-final roots alternate like that across paradigms and patterns. For example, root m-c-? ‘find’ spelled MCA ‫ מצא‬may display a vowel in mitmatset ‘she knows her way’, spelled MTMCAT ‫מתמצאת‬, or a glottal stop in metsi’a ‘finding’, spelled MCYAH ‫מציאה‬. Similarly, the initial y in roots such as y-d-‘ ‘know’ or y-l-d ‘give birth’ may show up as glide y in some contexts (ye´da ‘knowledge’ YD9 ‫י ד ע‬, meyale´det ‘midwife’ MYLDT ‫)מילדת‬, or else be expressed in vowel form (moda’a ‘notice’ MWD9H ‫מודעה‬, mole´det ‘homeland’ MWLDT ‫)מול דת‬. This is unstable behaviour, disrupting the link between orthographic and phonological representation, leaving the written letter as the sole representative of this elusive entity. And it gets even more elusive in cases where the initial y disappears completely in both spoken and written form, in nouns such as de’a ‘opinion’, spelled D9H ‫דעה‬ (root y-d-?), leda ‘birth’ spelled LDH ‫( ל דה‬root y-l-d), or shena ‘sleep’ spelled SˇNH ‫( שנה‬root y-sˇ-n). AHWY ‫ אהוי‬instability as root letters has more, and different, dimensions. They are not only unstable between consonants and vowels, they also tend to alternate among themselves. For example, a large class of frequently occurring roots end with h which often alternates with y (I adopt the traditional approach here and call them y-final roots). Thus the same root b-k-y ‘cry’ generates baxa spelled BKH ‫‘ בכה‬he cried’ and boxe BWKH ‫‘ בוכה‬cries’, bexiya BKYH ‫בכיה‬ ‘weeping’ and be´xi BKY ‫‘ בכי‬crying’; and root r-?-y ‘see’ yields nir’a ‘was seen’ spelled NRAH ‫נראה‬, mar’e MRAH ‫‘ מראה‬vision’ and mar’a MRAH ‫מראה‬ ‘mirror’, but also nir’eti ‘I was seen’ spelled NRAYTY ‫ נראיתי‬and re’i RAY ‫‘ ראי‬mirror’. The y/h alternation affects both speech and writing, so that the two semi-consonantal root radicals and their representation by Y ‫ י‬and H ‫ ה‬form a network of their own. To pacify the purists I need to add here that 5 roots (in the quaint Hebraist tradition designated the acronym mnemonic GNKTM ‫ גנכתיימ‬pronounced gan katom ‘orange garden’) historically ended with a purely consonantal h, which – unlike all other h-final roots does not alternate with –y.3 Although the phonological distinction between the two types of h-final roots was already lost in my childhood in 1950s Israel, the morpho-phonological evidence is still there: Compare, for example, two very similar roots ending with -h: root g-b-h ‘grow tall’ with consonantal h, yielding gavati ‘I grew tall’, spelled GBHTY ‫ ;גבהתי‬and root g-b-y ‘collect money’ with vocalic h, yielding gaviti ‘I collected’, spelled GBYTY ‫גביתי‬. H ‫( ה‬or, rather h/y- final roots) alternates in certain environments with ?, another weak radical, and its orthographic correspondent A ‫א‬. For example, consider root h-n-y ‘enjoy’ in verbs nehena ‘he enjoyed’ spelled NHNH ‫ נהנה‬and

Blurring the Consonant-Vowel Distinction

133

neheneńu ‘we enjoyed’ spelled NHNYNW ‫ – נהנינו‬but also hana’a ‘enjoyment’ where the y segment is spelled with A ‫ – א‬HNAW ‫הנאה‬. Another example is roots sˇ-g-y ‘err’ in mishge ‘mistake’ spelled MSˇGH ‫ משגה‬vs. shgi’a ‘error’ spelled SˇGYAH ‫ ;שגיאה‬and sˇ-w-y ‘equal’ in shivyon ‘equality’ spelled SˇWYWN ‫ שויון‬vs. mishva’a ‘equation’ spelled MSˇWAH ‫משואה‬. An internet source cites close to 200 h/y-final roots in Classical Hebrew (http://tora.us.fm/ tnk1/ljon/jorj/l-h¼l-y.htm), and even if only half of them still operate in Israeli Hebrew, that’s quite a lot given that active Hebrew roots do not exceed 600 (Bolozky, 1999). Thus in fact this numerous root category constitutes a ‘basin’ which draws together h, y and ?, contributing to the instability of AHWY ‫אהוי‬ root letter representation. W ‫ ו‬and Y ‫ י‬constitute a third example of the fragility and instability of the vowel-consonant distinction and of mutable AHWY ‫ אהוי‬membership. They both occur in initial and mid-root positions, and behave not only similarly but are often interchanged. In initial position, formal Hebraist tradition lumps them together as naxey pe vav/pe yud – that is weak W- and Y-initial roots, as indeed shown by their behavior in different morpho-phonological contexts. For example, root y-t-r ‘give up’ shows up with y in meyutar ‘redundant’ (MYWTR ‫ )מיותר‬and yotrut ‘redundancy’ (YWTRWT ‫ ;)יותרות‬as v in viter ‘gave up’ (WYTR ‫ )ויתר‬and vatran ‘compliant’ (WTRN ‫ ;)ותרן‬and as vowels in hotir ‘left out’ (HWTYR ‫ )הותיר‬and mutar ‘allowed’ (MWTR ‫)מותר‬. In the same way root y-k-h ‘prove’ appears as v in hitvake´’ax ‘argued’ (HTWKĦ ‫ )התוכח‬and viku´’ax ‘argument’ (WYKWĦ ‫)ויכוח‬, but in the form of vowels in hoxaxa ‘proof’ (HWKĦH ‫ )הוכחה‬and toxexa ‘reproach’ (TWKĦH ‫)תוכחה‬. All of these examples of related viable words with mutable weak-root forms must surely leave their mark on category formation in the linguistic cognition of literate Hebrew users. To complete the picture, Y ‫ י‬and W ‫ ו‬radicals in mid-root positions are frequently expressed solely in vowels, as in manof ‘lever’ (NWP ‫ )נוף‬and tnufa ‘impetus’ (TNWPH ‫)תנופה‬, la-kum ‘to-rise’ (LWWM ‫ )לקום‬and makom ‘place’ (MQWM ‫)מקום‬, nasim ‘we will put’ (NSˇYM ‫ )נשים‬and mesima ‘task’ (MSˇYMH ‫)משימה‬. All of these roots also occur, in addition, in forms totally missing the mid-root radical in both speech and writing, such as henif ‘brandish’ (HNYP ‫הניף‬, where the vowel i derives from pattern Hif’il), kam ‘rose’ (QM ‫ )קם‬or sam (SˇM ‫‘ )שם‬put’. A new class of fully transparent roots has emerged from these older, vocalic, mostly opaque structures, making systematic use of the flexible link forged between consonants and vowels in this context, so that consonant-vowel and internal AWHY ‫ אהוי‬mutability cannot be viewed just as old, non-productive processes in Hebrew. This is a set of monosyllabic, perhaps monomorphemic, three-letter nouns spelled with W ‫ ו‬and Y ‫ י‬in the middle, which have given rise to verbs based on new, robustly consonantal roots (Ravid, 1990). For example, nouns bul ‘stamp’ (spelled BWL ‫)בול‬, shuk ‘market’ (SˇWQ ‫) שוק‬, hon ‘capital’ (HWN ‫) הון‬, ‘light’ (AWR ‫)אור‬, or ir ‘city’ (9YR ‫ )עיר‬respectively generate verbs biyel ‘stamp’ (BYL ‫)ביל‬, shivek ‘market’ (SˇYWQ ‫)שיוק‬, hiven ‘capitalize’


134

(HYWN ‫)היון‬, iyer ‘illustrate’ (AYR ‫)איר‬, and iyer ‘urbanize’ (9YR ‫)עיר‬. The new class may have taken hold of the Classical Semitic vowel-consonant path as in inflectional shor/shvarim ‘bull/s’ or shuk/svakim ‘market/s’, but the easy and productive shift between the old, opaque noun stems and new, transparent verbs and action nominals testifies to the link forged between W and Y, v and y, o, u and i across speech and writing. What can we learn from this complicated network of AHWY ‫ אהוי‬root letters? What impact can it have on how Hebrew speaker/writers represent such roots? The most obvious outcome is the instability of AHWY ‫ אהוי‬root letters – they do not link up transparently and consistently to phonological segments or to each other. The blurring of phonological distinctions between consonants, glides and vowels and the dissolution of the boundaries between speech and writing seem to create a chaotic picture. Indeed, writing is the only venue that lends some coherence to the complex clusters of AHWY subsets in the form of stable letter representations tying together different vowel and consonant values, thus enhancing the morphological unity of AHWY ‫אהוי‬ roots. However, as we have seen, even spelling works here only up to a certain extent, since root AHWY ‫ אהוי‬do not always put up an appearance and if they do, it might be misleading. With so many permutations and relationships between phonemes and graphemes, presence and absence of phonological and written segments, it is really very hard to sort roots into distinct spoken and written entities in the cognition of mature Hebrew users. Together with the root-word phenomenon, AHWY ‫ אהוי‬roots dissolve the division between oral and written representation. The internal classification of the AHWY ‫ אהוי‬set into the two smaller sets of AH ‫ אה‬and WY ‫ וי‬is taken up below in the expanded exposition of AHWY ‫אהוי‬.

Phono-Morpho-Orthographic Features of Vowel AHWY We have already seen which vowels are designated by which AHWY ‫ אהוי‬letters, but it remains to be seen where in the written word they are allowed to appear. Again we start by ignoring the morphological aspect to simplify this representation. Table 9.1 summarizes the interface between AHWY ‫ אהוי‬phonological segments and their orthographic representation in the word.

Hebrew letter

Table 9.1 Phono-orthographic map of vowel AHWY Latin Vowels letter represented Orthographic restrictions as vowel designator

‫א‬

A

a, e

‫ה‬ ‫ו‬ ‫י‬

H W Y

a, e o, u i

Only at word-final position (unless root letter at stem end) Only at word-final position No restrictions Restriction on preceding consonantal cluster

Phono-Morpho-Orthographic Features of Vowel AHWY

135

The sub-classification into AH ‫ אה‬and WY ‫ וי‬is even clearer here. A ‫ א‬and H ‫ ה‬not only represent the same two vowels, they are also both severely constrained as vowels to the end of the word – the original historical site for the appearance of vowel letters. A ‫ א‬seems to violate this general restriction as it occurs as a vowel letter at stem-final position in past-tense inflected verbs, preceding consonant-initial person-number-gender suffixes such as –ti or –nu. For example, root m-c-? in himtseńu ‘we invented’ spelled HMCANU ‫המצאנו‬, or root q-r-? in kara´ta ‘you read’ spelled QRAT ‫ – קראת‬but this too is a restricted environment. H does not even have this option, since virtually all roots ending in h obligatorily appear as y in mid-word position. Only the aforementioned GNKTM ‫ גנכתיימ‬roots with historical consonantal –h display H ‫ ה‬in the stem-final position prior to past tense suffixes, as in kamahta ‘you longed’ spelled KMHT ‫כמהת‬, or hitmahmanu ‘we lingered’ spelled HITMHMHNW ‫ – התמהמהנו‬but these inflected forms are rare. Although W ‫ ו‬and Y ‫ י‬do not represent the same vowels at all, they are similar in their distributions, and, as we are going to see, in their morphological roles. The Academy for the Hebrew Language set up complicated rules for the appearance of AHWY ‫אהוי‬, and in particular, Y and W, in nonvoweled Hebrew. These rules can be summed up by the Hebrew saying gzera she-ha-tsibur eyno yaxol la’amod ba ‘a decree that the public cannot uphold (or tolerate)’ – requiring not only extensive formal knowledge of inflection and derivation, but also of Classical phonology and nikud vocalization diacritics in the corresponding voweled forms. For example, Y ‫ י‬cannot be inserted before a consonant cluster, or, in traditional terms, when the schwa sign refers to a lack of vowel (schwa nax ‘a resting schwa’), which is a morpho-phonological rather than a phonological phenomenon requiring knowledge about traditional grammar. As these rules are not a viable option for native speakers, only the frequencies of discoverable patterns count, and these are generated by the same people who are not familiar with the rules, i.e., the literate Hebrew-writing population. Patterns that can be discovered are about the gross restrictions – A ‫ א‬and H ‫ ה‬only at final position, Y ‫ י‬and W ‫ ו‬more or less wherever the sounds o, u and i occur. True, professionally edited texts follow the Hebrew Academy edicts, but they too are subject to friction resulting from the complexity and inconsistency of these stipulations. Indeed, university students and even university professors specializing in Hebrew literacy spell words such as tizmo´ret ‘orchestra’ as TYZMWRT ‫ תיזמורת‬rather than as TZMWRT ‫תזמורת‬. The problem of optionality. AHWY ‫ אהוי‬thus pose two spelling problems. The first is the competition for the representation of glottal stop ? (alternating with Ø) by A ‫א‬, H ‫ה‬, 9 ‫ ע‬and in some cases, Y ‫י‬. The second is their instability in midword position and the lack of coherent patterns of presence and absence. This last problem is intensified in view of the interface between the letters and nikud diacritics representing three vowels – i, u, and o. Recall that in many cases, especially, but not only, in final position, AHWY ‫ אהוי‬are obligatory whether the word is voweled with diacritics or not. But i, u, and o sometimes offer two


136

alternative written representations, one with diacritics but no AHWY ‫אהוי‬, e.g., shutaf ‘partner’ spelled SˇTP ‫ת ף‬ ָּ ‫ש‬ ֻ or else with AHWY ‫ אהוי‬but no diacritics, shutaf spelled SˇWTP ‫שותף‬. This alternation too is motivated by a complex set of rules which requires knowledge of the morphological structure, and eventually the correct historical vocalization by diacritics of said construction. This knowledge is sadly beyond the abilities of literate, well educated native Hebrew speaking Israelis who did not receive special university instruction in formal Hebrew language. For example, in order to spell the colors kaxol ‘blue’ and yarok ‘green’ correctly you need to know that they do not share the same morphological pattern with shaxor ‘black’. This means not only different morpho-phonological behavior (the former, but not the latter, involve change of vowel from o to u and spirant/stop alternation if applicable), but also different orthographic behavior. Colors kaxol and yarok should be spelled with the W ‫ ו‬when unvoweled (KĦWL ‫ כחול‬and YRWQ ‫ ירוק‬respectively), and without it when voweled (‫ ָכּחֹל‬, ‫ – )יָרֹק‬whereas shaxor ‘black’ never omits its W ‫ ו‬and should be spelled SˇĦWR ‫ שחור‬whether voweled or not. Morpho-orthographics of AHWY ‫אהוי‬. We have already seen that while all four AHWY ‫ אהוי‬serve as root and function letters, only W ‫ ו‬and Y ‫ י‬denote internal vowels. The full psycholinguistic picture of AHWY ‫ אהוי‬representation is summed up in Table 9.2, involving their morphological roles as root and function morphemes, designating (and sometimes mutating between) both consonants and vowels. Given that as roots AHWY ‫ אהוי‬denote both consonants and vowels, and that W ‫ ו‬and Y ‫ י‬may also be completely omitted

Table 9.2 Predictability of AHWY ‫ אהוי‬letters by phonological and morphological roles and orthographic site Morphological role Phonological role

Root letters

Designating consonants

– Word-initial AHWY ‫אהוי‬, e.g., definite article, coordinator, binyan or future-tense Final 3rd person -v Roots with (mostly, and Word-final AHY, Word-Internal often alternating) e.g., feminine –a, W‫ו‬Y‫י‬ vowel manifestations denominal -i of AH ‫ אה‬WY ‫וי‬ Mostly obligatory in Obligatory in function Both obligatory AH ‫אה‬, sometimes envelope and optional missing in WY ‫וי‬ Occurrence as consonant or vowel predicted by morpho (phono)logical environment

Designating vowels

Predictability

AH ‫ אה‬WY ‫וי‬ Roots with (mostly) non-alternating consonantal ?, h, v, y

Function letters

Internal vowels

Phono-Morpho-Orthographic Features of Vowel AHWY

137

in some root declensions, knowledge of the written representations of AH ‫אה‬ and WY ‫ וי‬in roots requires familiarity with a broad range of sets and categories in various morpho-phonological contexts. As function letters, AHWY ‫ אהוי‬consonants are obligatory, including the definite article ha-, the coordinating conjunction ve-, or any of the pattern prefixes. Thus, for example, A ‫ א‬as future-tense 1st person singular and y as 3rd person designator (e.g., elmad ‘I will learn’ spelled ALMD ‫אלמד‬, yitmale ‘will fill up’ YTMLA ‫ )יתמלא‬are not omitted in the spelling. Another note in this juncture is that A ‫ א‬never signifies vowels as a function letter – in this respect, it only fulfills root roles, as in nifla ‘fantastic’ spelled NPLA ‫נפלא‬, root PLA ‫פלא‬ ‘marvel’. A major role in Hebrew is assigned to HWY ‫ הוי‬standing for morphemic vowels at the end of the word – verb, preposition and optional inflections (e.g., plural –u, 3rd person masculine –o), as well as derivational suffixes such as –i, in addition to participating in larger morphemes such as nominal plural –im, ot, or derivational –it, -ut, -on. On the whole, final open syllables in Hebrew are obligatorily marked by HWY ‫ הוי‬letters, almost always with a function role such as gender, number, person or a derivational suffix. This great frequency of word-final AHWY ‫ אהוי‬is what makes their absence notable in the few but consistent contexts where their appearance is considered a spelling error: pasttense 2nd person masculine singular verbs ending with –ta forbid the addition of a final H ‫ה‬, e.g., hifxa´dta ‘you frightened’, spelled HPĦDT ‫ הפחדת‬rather than the expected, but erroneous, HPĦDTH ‫ ;הפחדתה‬and in the same way 2nd person masculine singular suffixes on prepositions and optional bound nouns and verbs disallow the final H spelling, e.g., be-xa ‘in-you’ is spelled BK ‫בך‬ despite the final open vowel, and she’eloteyxa ‘your questions’ is spelled SˇALWTYK ‫שאלותיך‬. All the noted frequencies and detected patterns go against these exceptions, and though they are systematically restricted to 2nd person masculine singular, they are nonetheless expected to be especially problematic to gradeschool children who have mastered gross spelling patterns but still have a long way to go in acquiring a large and diverse enough lexicon of lexemes and wordforms to account for more fine-grained spelling patterns such as this. The general obligatoriness and systematic location of function AHWY ‫אהוי‬ implies a great token frequency in written Hebrew and therefore predictability and relative ease of spelling despite homophony. However, the consonantal function-letter AHWY ‫ אהוי‬set generates a serious spelling challenge. Recall that most homophonous function letters are not homomorphic, that is, they have no spelling competitor. However A ‫א‬, H ‫ ה‬and Y ‫ י‬do compete as function letters in the same domain: not only do they all neutralize to the same ? Ø alternation, they all serve as verb prefixes – A ‫ א‬and Y ‫ י‬as future tense/person prefixes, and H ‫ ה‬as the Hif’il and Hitpa’el past tense prefix. This is most apparent when verb morphology is similar across all tense forms, as in Hitpa’el. For example, what sounds as itnagev may in fact denote future-tense yitnagev ‘he will towel himself’, but may also be interpreted as 1st person ‘I will towel myself’ or else past tense hitnagev ‘he toweled himself’. Thus, consonantal

138


AHY ‫ אהי‬are deprived in such contexts of their greatest asset, the direct link to morphology and meaning, with consequent predicted difficulties in spelling them despite the function classification. Finally, as discussed above in the context of written representations, only Y ‫י‬ and W ‫ו‬, two slim slashes of short ‫ י‬and longer ‫ו‬, are allowed to represent vowels in mid-position and intervene between root letters. I have already presented the argumentation as to why I do not regard their function as morphological, as they stand for pattern vowels, but also for all kinds of vowels which may or may not be assigned to patterns (e.g., in xultsa ‘shirt’ spelled ĦWLCH ‫ חולצה‬or goral ‘destiny’ spelled GWRL ‫)גורל‬, or which probably do not belong to patterns (e.g., bira ‘capital city’ spelled BYRH ‫בירה‬, like bı´ra ‘beer’). The problem with internal vowels is that they are sometimes completely obligatory, as in goral GWRL ‫ גורל‬or tsamid ‘bracelet’ spelled CMYD ‫ ;צמיד‬and in other cases they are dispensable, as in kita ‘class’ which spellers assess as correct with and without the Y ‫י‬, or yishmor ‘he will guard’, which may drop its W ‫ ו‬with impunity YSˇMR ‫ישמר‬. The only way to know is to work category by category, stem and pattern type one by one – but the evidence is contradictory by definition, so that internal W and Y lead the way in least predictability and optionality, to the extent that literate Hebrew users do not consider their omission (and in the case of Y – their introduction before clusters) as spelling errors (Ravid & Schiff, 2004; Schiff & Ravid, 2004).

Summary We can now see the motivation for the differential distributions of AHWY ‫אהוי‬ we found in children’s books. W ‫ ו‬has the highest frequency, since it is virtually unrestricted as a vowel letter (although in vocalized texts its occurrence should be lower than in ‘normal’ nonvoweled texts), and in addition it marks the coordinating conjunction and prepositional and optional suffixes. Y ‫ י‬is very close to it, with restricted appearance before clusters (especially in vocalized texts), but then, in addition to the internal vowel Y ‫י‬, there are the future-tense prefixes and participation in suffixes. H ‫ ה‬has the same frequency, given the various feminine suffixes, the definite article, and the past-tense binyan prefixes. Finally, it is no wonder A ‫ א‬has a lower frequency, given the restrictions on its appearance within the word and its much lesser role as a function letter. AHWY ‫ אהוי‬matres lectiones ‘mothers of reading’ are the most complex and inconsistent spelling category in Hebrew. They designate vowels and consonants which are often interchangeable, they mutate towards each other, they have non-equal distributions in various spelling sites, and all of this complexity is conditioned by morpho-phonological considerations. Many factors work together to generate an inconsistent, quasi-optional representation of this class. Thus, the expectation regarding AHWY ‫( אהוי‬which are all homophonous consonants) is that they should not only be subject to regular

References

139

substitution errors, but they should also be prone to omission and reduplication. Moreover, since AHWY appear all over the word as root, function or internal elements, they might be harder to classify morphologically than the strictly consonantal letters.

Notes 1. I am deliberately ignoring here the issue of ‘‘double’’ W ‫ ו‬and Y ‫ י‬. 2. One more piece of information to note is the tendency by speakers of Ashkenazi Hebrew at the initial stages of Hebrew’s revival as a spoken tongue to drag some e’s into ey’s (Neuman, 2010). 3. Consonantal -h is also attributed to the optional feminine inflection (e.g., beyta ‘her house’, which should be pronounced with a final h according to traditional grammar).

References Blau, Y. (1981). Weakening of the gutturals. Leshonenu, 45, 32–39 [in Hebrew]. Bolozky, S. (1997). Israeli Hebrew phonology. In A. S. Kaye & P. Daniels (Eds.), Phonologies of Asia and Africa (pp. 287–311). Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns. Bolozky, S. (1999). Measuring productivity in word formation: The case of Israeli Hebrew. Leiden: Brill. Neuman, Y. (2010). L’influence de l’ećriture sur la langue. Unpublished PhD dissertation. Universite´ de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris. Ravid, D. (1990). Internal structure constraints on new-word formation devices in Modern Hebrew. Folia Linguistica, 24, 289–346. Ravid, D., & Schiff, R. (2004). Learning to represent vowels in written Hebrew: Different factors across development. First Language, 24, 185–208. Schiff, R., & Ravid, D. (2004). Vowel representation in written Hebrew: Phonological, orthographic and morphological contexts. Reading and Writing, 17, 245–265.

Chapter 10

Spelling Cues in Nominals

Having laid the ground in the previous chapters regarding the roles of root and function letters and their phonological expressions, we now turn to the structures that organize them into coherent morphological systems. My claim in this book is that identifying the morphological role of letters can help Hebrew spellers in overcoming homophony, the main source of spelling errors. This involves following Hebrew morpho-orthographic structure to demarcate the root core from the function envelope. My aim in the current chapter and the ones following it is to uncover the systematic cues in Hebrew words which guide reader/writers in constructing morpho-orthographic representations. Previous chapters illustrated the structure of transparent Hebrew words – those in which it is relatively easy to determine the function of each letter. But while transparent morphological form is the canonical source for the extraction of spelling regularities in Hebrew, total transparency – that is, the one-to-one expression of function or meaning by form – is rare in any language. Hebrew readers often encounter morphologically opaque stems, such as noun axbar ‘mouse’, verb ba ‘arrived’, or adjective xum ‘brown’, where neither root nor peripheral function letters can be discerned.1 In addition, Hebrew has borrowed words such as nouns radyo ‘radio’ and kef ‘fun’, or adjective fata´li, and has words which might or might not have internal structure, such as mazleg ‘fork’, agala ‘wagon’, or tmuna ‘picture’. What do such ‘‘irregular’’ words have to contribute to categorial spelling knowledge? The reading literature on Hebrew has long followed the Anglocentric tradition in classifying words as either ‘‘regular’’ or ‘‘irregular’’. Morphology has been recruited into this classification, designating bi-morphemic words as regular (say, mavreg ‘screwdriver’ spelled MBRG ‫מברג‬, based on root b-r-g ‘screw’ and the instrument pattern maCCeC), and words with no or with opaque morphological structure as irregular (say function word hu ‘he’ spelled HWA ‫)הוא‬. But what is the meaning of regularity in this context? In this dualroute view of Hebrew spelling, reader/writers would then either follow morphoorthographic regularities, or else would require learning the specific spelling of each individual word – RDYW ‫‘ רדיו‬radio’, BA ‫‘ בא‬arrived’, ĦWM ‫‘ חום‬brown’. However, internal morphological composition is not a binary but rather a continuous and uneven property: that is, it is not the case that Hebrew words D.D. Ravid, Spelling Morphology, Literacy Studies 3, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-0588-8_10, Ó Springer ScienceþBusiness Media, LLC 2012

141

142

10 Spelling Cues in Nominals

either do or do not have morphological structure, but rather that morphological composition runs from transparent to opaque, with continuous variation between these two poles (McClelland & Patterson, 2002). This issue has to date been largely ignored in the new psychological literature on reading Hebrew, which has only recently discovered morphology. It generally assumes that Hebrew words are equally morphologically complex, and until very recently has ignored those which are not (Velan & Frost, 2011). In contrast, linguists working on general and Hebrew morphology have long been familiar with problems of ‘partial motivation’ in morphology, degree of productivity and transparency or opacity of form and meaning (Aronoff, 1976; Berman, 1978; Ravid, 1990). For as long as I can remember as a Hebrew researcher, the composition of Hebrew words such as xalon ‘window’, shulxan ‘table’ or yom ‘day’ has challenged Hebrew morphologists, especially those with a psycholinguistic bent: Are they composed of morphemes? Do they contain roots, patterns, and/or suffixes? What are these morphemes, then? If a noun such as kaýits ‘summer’ can be said in historical terms (often associated with patterns of nikud diacritics) to be composed of a root (q-y-c) and pattern (CeĆeC), how can we reconcile historical with current, psychologically real structure (Berman, 1975; Bolozky, 1999; Schwarzwald, 1974, 1975 – and see the collection of papers in Shimron, 2003)? These questions have always been raised in terms of what was considered the default, i.e., spoken structure. I was explicitly taught to steer away from written structure since it would only serve to obscure what was regarded as the ‘real’ morphological issue. I propose to approach this well-known problem of gradient morphological structure, extremely relevant to spelling representation, from the new perspective of pattern detection, that is, assuming that Hebrew reader/writers extract morphological regularities from every possible source and apply it in the construction of an orthographic lexicon. Differing degrees of transparency in the data, coupled with frequency, consistency, degree of resemblance and competition with other items, will result in the emergence of morpho-orthographic categories linking speech and writing. Three chapters are devoted to analyzing the links between spoken and written morphology, two on nominal structure – the first on the lexical derivation of nominal stems, the second on nomianl inflectional morphology – and one on verb derivation and inflection. All analyses are geared towards constructing a detailed picture of how spelling cues originate in the morphoorthographic structure of Hebrew content words.

Data Mining in the Nominal Lexicon I start with spelling cues in the derivational morphology of nominals, for a number of reasons. In general linguistic terms, much of the frequent gender, number, and person morphology in Hebrew discourse consists of

Data Mining in the Nominal Lexicon

143

agreement features originating in noun heads, with impact on other lexical/ syntactic classes. In distributional terms, the Hebrew lexicon is highly nominal, even in relation to other Western languages, and thus most of the content words encountered in spoken and written Hebrew are nouns. This important distributional fact should impact on how noun morphology is learned and applied to spelling. Moreover, ‘nominals’ is an umbrella term in Hebrew, traditionally covering both nouns and adjectives, as well present-tense beynoni verbs, a classification which is useful and applicable to the current analysis. Furthermore, of the three content-word classes, Hebrew nominals are the most structurally diverse, spanning the whole structural range in Hebrew. Many nominal forms have non-linear, root-and-pattern structure as in noun mastem ‘valve’, based on root s-t-m ‘shut’ and instrument pattern maCCeC, or adjective mesukan ‘dangerous’, from root s-k-n ‘(en)danger’, and passive resultative beynoni pattern meCuCaC. Other nominals have linear stem-and-suffix composition, as in noun iriya ‘city hall’, from stem ir ‘city’ suffixed by place –iya, or adjective dati religious from stem dat ‘religion’ and denominal suffix –i; or reduplicated structure, e.g., noun dagig ‘little fish’ based on dag ‘fish’, or adjective kxalxal ‘bluish’, based on kaxol ‘blue’. In addition, nouns can blend together, as in maxaze´mer ‘musical show’, from maxaze ‘play’ and ze´mer ‘singing’, or form acronyms, as in mankal ‘CEO’, from the initial consonants of menahel klali ‘general director’. And nominals enter compound structure to express complex subcategorization, e.g., noun maxshirey^xashmal ‘electrical appliances’ or adjective dal^shuman ‘sparse (of) fat’. Finally, nouns are the only open-class native lexical items in Hebrew which might be morphologically simplex, that is, totally devoid of internal morphological structure (e.g., em ‘mother’, tarnegol ‘rooster’), (Berman, 1978; Schwarzwald, 2002). Hebrew adjectives, which I analyze under the umbrella of ‘nominals’, are constructed by three major derivational mechanisms. One is beynoni presenttense participle patterns, e.g., madhim ‘amazing’ (cf. madrix ‘instructor’ in the same Hif’il present participle verb pattern) or bolet ‘conspicuous’ (cf. shoter ‘policeman’ in the same Qal pattern). The second device is using noun patterns as in shakran ‘liar’ (cf. saxkan ‘player’ in the same agentive pattern CaCCan) or savir ‘plausible’ (cf. pakid ‘clerk’ in the same pattern CaCiC). A third major adjectival source is –i denominal suffixation, as in klali ‘general’ or miloni ‘lexical’ (from klal ‘whole’ and milon ‘lexicon’ respectively). But adjectives can also be basic and simplex, as in the case of xum ‘brown’, or use borrowed stems suffixed with non-stressed i, as in universa´li ‘universal’ or milita´risti ‘militarist’. The derivation of nominal stems thus provides an appropriate framework for introducing the impact of morphology on the construal of Hebrew orthographic patterns.

144


Spelling Cues in Nominal Morphology Nominal patterns systematically group together words on the basis of form and meaning, marking ontological categories. We have seen above that the semantic generalizations that can be drawn from exposure to nominal patterns are neither automatic nor exceptionless, however their forms constitute systematic and consistent cues to spelling. All transparent members of a pattern category share the same shape, a generalization which applies to the whole word, since prefixes and suffixes constitute part of the pattern as a whole template. This means that command of morphological patterns involves knowledge of the four pattern prefixes m- (e.g., patterns miCCaC, miCCaCa, maCCeC, miCCeĆet, mitCaCeC) – spelled M ‫מ‬, t- (e.g., patterns taCCiC, taCCeCa, taCCuCa, tiCCeĆet) – spelled T ‫ת‬, n- (verb participle niCCaC) – spelled N ‫נ‬, and h- (action nominal patterns haCCaCa, heCCeC) – spelled H ‫ה‬. The same goes for suffixes -n (CaCCan) and -t (e.g., patterns miCCeĆet, tiCCeĆet, CiCoĆet). Knowledge of these peripheral pattern affixes includes their type and token frequencies – for example, m and t are much more frequent than n and h as pattern prefixes, and pattern prefixes occur more frequently than pattern suffixes. Pattern knowledge translates into statistical probabilities in yet another sense of predicting which pattern components go together. This includes the nature of the vowel following the pattern prefix (usually i or a as in miCCaC, taCCiC), the entailment of a root radical cluster (e.g., maCCeC, miCCeĆet), and prosodic properties such as the fact that penultimate stress in feminine nouns typically involves trisyllabic nouns with –eĆet, while penultimate stress in masculine nouns relates to bisyllabic nouns only. In addition, more general morphological knowledge generates expectations regarding systematic changes in patterns when crossed with roots of different phonological kinds, e.g., vowel lowering in the vicinity of ‘low’ root radicals. Stochastic knowledge about patterns goes further than predicting phonological associations: several patterns permit the duplication of the middle root radical slot (historical geminates), thus enabling the insertion of a quadrilateral root into the pattern (Avineri, 1976). For example, agent pattern CaCaC (e.g., tabax ‘cook’, tayas ‘pilot’, dayal ‘air steward’) is extendable into CaCCaC, thereby enabling kalkal ‘chief steward’. The statistical probabilities which can be elicited regarding the phonological shape of the pattern constitute a powerful shortcut to word identification and retrieval. Relating pattern form with some degree of semantically consistency, i.e., with the ontological classes associated with specific patterns, enhances the power of the pattern shortcut to word recognition. This heuristic is carried over to the orthographic lexicon, observing word-internal constraints on the representation of vowels by the AHWY ‫ אהוי‬set. Thus, patterns, which are strongly vocalic, are mostly represented in writing by their peripheral (and mostly consonantal) affixes: the letters MTNH ‫( מתנה‬again a mnemonic, this time

Beyond Transparent Nouns

145

indicating a ‘gift’) at word-initial position, and ‫ תנה‬TNH at word-final position. Of these, affixes with the highest type frequency are initial M and T ‫מ & ת‬, final T ‫ ת‬in penultimately-stressed feminine segolate structures, and final opensyllable vocalic H ‫ה‬, which serves to mark feminine patterns ending in -a such as miCCaCa, taCCeCa, or CCaCa. A large class of abstract nominals in the two highly similar structures CiCaCon and CiCCon (e.g., ikaron 9YQRWN ‫עיקרון‬ ‘principle’ and dimyon DMYWN ‫‘ דמיון‬imagination’) end with final N ‫ן‬. The three pattern suffixes ‫ תנה‬TNH accumulate further frequency in linear derivational structure. As noted elsewhere, linear suffixes carry the same (and even more elaborated) semantics as patterns, and in addition they are cued by similar phonological and orthographic markers. T ‫ ת‬is extremely prevalent in the feminine derivational suffixes -it (ma’alit M9LYT ‫‘ מעלית‬elevator’, iturit ATWRYT ‫‘ איתורית‬beeper’), -ut (mehirut MHYRWT ‫‘ מהירות‬speed’, kalut QLWT ‫‘ קלות‬ease’), and –ot (xamot ĦMWT ‫‘ חמות‬mother in law’). N ‫ ן‬is found in the masculine suffixes –an (lahatutan LHŦWŦN ‫‘ להטוטן‬juggler’, ganan GNN ‫‘ גנן‬gardener’) and –on (kdimon QDYMWN ‫(‘ קדימון‬movie) trailer’, halixon HLYKWN ‫‘ הליכון‬Zimmer’. Linear suffixes make use of vowel letters either on their own or as part of larger morphemes: H ‫ ה‬as part of the place/collective suffix –iya as in ma’afiya MAPYH ‫‘ מאפיה‬bakery’, ma’adaniya M9DNYH ‫‘ מעדניה‬delicatessen’; W as part of the suffixes –on and –ut; AY ‫ אי‬in the agentive noun suffix –ay (e.g., xaklay ĦQLAY ‫‘ חקלאי‬farmer’), and Y ‫ י‬in the denominal adjective suffix –i as in sodi SWDY ‫‘ סודי‬secret’. The distribution of pattern and linear markers on transparent Hebrew nouns teaches reader/writers to watch out for the derivational MTNH ‫ מתנה‬and AHWY ‫ אהוי‬envelope at the beginnings and ends of words, serving as ‘‘orthographic classifiers’’ of morphological meanings and shortcuts to word identification.

Beyond Transparent Nouns While I have no statistics on type or token frequencies of transparent nouns in the current Hebrew lexicon, any glance at transcriptions of actual discourse will indicate that they do not constitute the majority of Hebrew noun tokens in child directed speech, children’s conversations, adult interactions, radio and television news, or written materials such as textbooks or newspapers. Nominal structure actually spans a continuum with various degrees of semantic and structural transparency or opacity. There are nouns with structurally and semantically appropriate patterns, affixed to structurally identifiable yet currently meaningless roots, such as agent noun ravak ‘bachelor’ (cf. zamar ‘singer’), collective/place nouns mishpaxa ‘family’ and meltaxa ‘wardrobe’ (cf. mixlala ‘college’ or memshala ‘government’). There are nouns which can be structurally analyzed into identifiable root and pattern, such as marpek ‘elbow’ and mazleg ‘fork’ (cf. masmer ‘nail’), simla ‘dress’ and pisga ‘peak’

146


(cf. yir’a ‘awe’), xultsa ‘shirt’ (cf. xulsha ‘weakness’), or tsame´ret ‘treetop’ (cf. tsane´ret ‘pipe system’), where no appropriate meaning can be assigned to either root or pattern. A large number of nouns take the highly frequent, structurally transparent and semantically opaque CeĆeC pattern – e.g., she´mesh ‘sun’, le´xem ‘bread’, ge´shem ‘rain’, ge´rev ‘sock’, me´tsax ‘forehead’, le´xi ‘cheek’, na´’al ‘shoe’. These structurally transparent yet semantically irregular nouns constitute no obstacle to learning about spelling cues, since they contribute to the same distribution of derivational prefixes and suffixes and their orthographic correspondents, strengthening the link between phonological and orthographic forms.

Cues in Compound Structures Hebrew nouns enter into compound structures of three types, illustrated here by the partitive relationship between ets ‘tree’ and anafim ‘branches’. The most ancient, typically Semitic compound structure is the Biblical adjacency smixut construction anfey ha-ets ‘branches (of) the tree’, where the two nouns enter into a semi-morphological compound with the head bound to the modifier noun. Two more compounding structures are Mishnaic – the free or analytical/periphrastic ha-anafim shel ha-ets ‘the-branches of the-tree’ and the socalled ‘double’ compound as in anafav shel ha-ets, where the head is morphologically marked in agreement in number and gender with the modifying noun in addition to the explicit marking of the genitive relation by shel. The morphologically marked adjacency and double compounds make their own contributions to spelling cues in two ways which are not strictly derivational but nicely fit into the current context of nominal cue markers. Feminine singular and masculine plural adjacency heads are respectively marked by the final bound feminine –t (e.g., sfat ha-a´rets (the) language (of) the-country, from safa ‘language’) and plural –ey (as in anfey ha-ets above). These two frequently occurring suffixes spelled T ‫ ת‬and Y ‫ י‬respectively contribute to enhancing the written representation of function letters. Double compounds too participate in the spelling of function suffixes via their agreement markers, which will be discussed in the next chapter. Systematic opacity. Moving away from the structurally transparent pole towards more opaque structures, we next consider the issue of nominal forms based on irregular or defective roots, with missing and semi-consonantal radicals (many of them containing AHWY ‫ אהוי‬components), which consequently result in less transparent allomorphs of canonical structures. For example, patterns such as miCCaC and maCCeC yield forms such as moshav ‘seat’ (spelled MWSˇB ‫ )מושב‬and morad ‘slope’ (spelled MWRD ‫ )מורד‬from y-initial roots, malon ‘hotel’ (spelled MLWN ‫ )מלון‬and matos ‘airplane’ (spelled MŦWS ‫ )מטוס‬from w-medial roots, or matsav ‘situation’ (MCB ‫ )מצב‬and matsag ‘display’ (MCG ‫ )מצג‬from another class of y-initial defective roots. In the

Cues in Compound Structures

147

same way, pattern taCCeCa combines with all kinds of defective roots to yield forms such as torasha ‘inheritance’ (TWRSˇH ‫תורשה‬, root y-r-sˇ), tluna ‘complaint’ (TLWNH ‫תלונה‬, root l-w-n), tikva ‘hope’ (TQWH ‫תקוה‬, root q-w-y), tora ‘theory’ (TWRH ‫תורה‬, root y-r-y), or tehila ‘fame’ (THYLH ‫תהילה‬, root h-l-l). And pattern miCCeĆet in combination with defective roots results in forms such as mole´det ‘homeland’ (MWLDT ‫ )מולדת‬or matse´get ‘presentation’ (MCGT ‫)מצגת‬. Such opaque allomorphs are not random exceptions – rather, they are both numerous and systematic in the forms they yield. For example, y-initial roots usually show up as W following the pattern prefix. The wide distribution of defective pattern allomorphs makes an important contribution to the consolidation of morpho-orthographic consistencies, since the opaque internal structure of words such as mevuxa ‘embarrassment’ (MBWKH ‫מבוכה‬, root b-w-k) or toxe´let ‘expectancy’ (TWĦLT ‫תוחלת‬, root y-h-l) does not interfere with identifying the pattern envelope letters MTNH ‫מתנה‬, but rather enhances their position and role. Less systematic opacity. Apart from pattern allomorphs, much formal opacity in nouns is non-systematic, historical in origin, with formerly transparent structure and semantics losing discernible features as in KYSA ‫ כיסא‬kise ‘chair’, whose nikud diacritics indicate an affinity to KWRSH ‫ כורסה‬kursa ‘armchair’. The ‘irregular’ nominal lexicon runs the whole gamut from partially transparent to fully opaque nouns. There are nouns with historically transparent and meaningful structure, which has coalesced into semi-opacity for modern Hebrew speakers, such as kise above, ĦLWN ‫ חלון‬xalon ‘window’, based on root h-l-l related to xalal ‘space’, or tikra ‘ceiling’, TQRH ‫תקרה‬, related to kora ‘log’. Oftentimes nouns contain bits and pieces of familiar morphemes, such as suffix –(i)ya in oniya ‘ship’ ANYH ‫אניה‬, sha’aruriya ‘scandal’ Sˇ9RWRYH ‫שערוריה‬, and knunya ‘conspiracy’ QNWNYH ‫ ;קנוניה‬prefix t- in tapu´’ax ‘apple’ TPWĦ ‫ תפוח‬and tanur ‘oven’ TNWR ‫ ;תנור‬prefix t- and feminine ending –a in tmuna ‘picture’ TMWNH ‫ ;תמונה‬prefix m- and suffix –a in mahamura ‘pothole’ MHMWRH ‫ ;מהמורה‬suffix –e in sade ‘field’ SˇDH ‫שדה‬, suffix –on in aron ‘closet’ ARWN ‫ארון‬, armon ‘palace’ ARMWN ‫ארמון‬, and mukyon ‘clown’ MWQYWN ‫מוקיון‬, or suffix –it in zgugit ‘glass’ ZGWGYT ‫ זגוגית‬or xoxit ‘canary’ ĦWĦYT ‫( חוחית‬and many other bird and plant names). These forms, too, make their contribution to the construction of morphoorthographic representations, since what is often retained is the prefix (e.g., T ‫ ת‬in tmuna ‘picture’ and tikra ‘ceiling’) or the suffix – most especially the feminine suffix –a marked by H ‫ה‬. And there are also nouns with what looks like would-be morphological structure – if we could only find currently comparable forms in current Hebrew, e.g., tsipo´ren ‘fingernail’ CPWRN ‫ציפורן‬, kluv ‘cage’ KLWB ‫כלוב‬, or pile´gesh ‘mistress’ PYLGSˇ ‫פילגש‬. One type of nouns which is ambivalent regarding the classification into morphologically complex or simplex is monosyllabic nouns marked internally by W or Y, such as yom ‘day’ (YWM ‫)יום‬, xof ‘beach’ (ĦWP ‫)חוף‬, gil ‘age’ (GYL ‫)גיל‬, or kir ‘wall’ (QYR ‫)קיר‬. The question whether these words do or not have roots (and patterns?) is not the focus here – as we have already seen in Chapter 9

148


that such nouns can generate new roots. Their relevance here is in contributing to the consistent spelling representation of i, o, and u by the two internal vowel designators Y ‫ י‬and W ‫ ו‬which easily mutate into consonantal values.

Cues in Opaque Nominals Finally, there are nouns with no discernible morphological structure, often, but not always, monosyllabic ‘primitive nouns’ such as Biblical em ‘mother’ AM ‫אם‬, yad ‘hand’ YD ‫ יד‬or ets ‘tree’ 9C ‫עץ‬, or borrowed nouns such as Mishnaic Greek-origin kartis ‘card’ KRŦYS ‫ כרטיס‬or recently borrowed sidi ‘CD’ spelled SYDY .‫די‬.‫סי‬. Nominals devoid of internal morphology can be roughly classified into two categories by their origin, core lexicon and borrowing. Primitive nouns. The core nominal lexicon of Hebrew consists of short basic nouns (e.g., em or ets above) denoting kinship terms, parts of the body, basic objects or animal names – classical terminology which is still highly frequent in spoken everyday language. In his analysis of Biblical Hebrew, Gesenius terms items such as av ‘father’, axbar ‘mouse’, or tsfardeá ‘frog’ primitive nouns, in the sense that they ‘‘cannot be referred to any verbal stem at present extant’’ (Kautzsch, 1910, p. 225). For the purposes of the current psycholinguistic analysis, I also include in this category semantically basic, mono-morphemic adjectives such as tov ‘good’, ra ‘bad’, or xum ‘brown’ – although I am well aware that most of these are historically beynoni forms of Qal defective verbs. Masculine primitive nouns do not contain any morphological components; in many cases, mono-morphemic and other feminine primitives also end with a consonant, as in em ‘mother’, yad ‘hand’, katef ‘shoulder’, or ez ‘she-goat’. Primitive nominals do not contribute much to spelling knowledge in terms of extracting spelling regularities, beyond cases of core feminines such as para ‘cow’ or kivsa ‘sheep’ ending in –a, spelled as final H ‫ה‬. In fact, if they have any contribution it is by constituting the exception to the morphological case, lacking any cue to internal structure. Borrowed nouns. A second source of mono-morphemic nouns is foreign borrowing, which has introduced into Hebrew numerous loan nouns such as a´mbulans, glok, ma´rker, mazu´rka, so´da, bı´ra, or the afore-mentioned kartis and sidi. Unlike primitive nouns, which largely characterize the vernacular of everyday, informal Hebrew, most foreign borrowing (beyond those designating familiar objects) is typical of written, often specialized Hebrew, and thus constitutes a marker of high-register discourse status. Borrowed forms usually retain their foreign stress pattern – as illustrated by trisyllabic a´mbulans or te´lefon, which violate the native constraint on ultimate and penultimate stress assignment. Moreover, they do not shift stress to the final syllable under linear operations, as indicated by the comparison of plural tikı´m (from native tik ‘bag’ spelled TYQ ‫ )תיק‬and borrowed tı´kim (from tik ‘tic’, spelled ŦYQ ‫)טיק‬. As they

Cues in Opaque Nominals

149

integrate into Hebrew, borrowed nominals gradually undergo nativization and shift stress to the final syllable of the plural form, as indicated by plural pardesı´m and safsalı´m from historical loans Persian pardes ‘orchard’ and Greek safsal ‘bench’ respectively. In contrast, new borrowings do not shift stress, e.g., mo´demim ‘modems’ or da´xkot ‘practical jokes’. Recent borrowings which resemble Hebrew structure such as balon ‘balloon’ (cf. xalon ‘window’) or salat ‘salad’ (cf. shalat ‘(remote) control’) serve as test cases in current Hebrew: Older speakers such as myself treat them as loan nouns (hence plural balońim, sala´tim), while most of my (younger) students have already incorporated them into Hebrew, hence native plural balonı´m, salatı´m. These differing stress patterns have no written correspondences, but there are other ways in which opaque nouns stand out orthographically. One is their irregular length – they are typically either shorter or longer than canonical, transparent stems in both number of letters and syllables – with monosyllabic words such as MR ‫ מר‬mar ‘bitter’, QN ‫ קן‬ken ‘nest’, ASˇ ‫ אש‬esh ‘fire’, or SKY ‫סקי‬ ski ‘ski’ at one pole, and inordinately long words such as AGRŦL ‫ אגרטל‬agartal ‘vase’, CPRD9 ‫ צפרדע‬tsfardeá ‘frog’, ŦLPWN ‫ טלפון‬telefon ‘telephone’ or ANDRLMWSYH ‫ אנדרלמוסיה‬andralamusya ‘havoc’ at the other pole. This is of course another way of saying that these words have no morphological structure, which would typically entail a length of three to four letters standing for the typical bi-syllabic structure that results from the combination of a root and a pattern (Segall, Nir-Sagiv, Kishon-Rabin, & Ravid, 2008). In addition, there will be more consonant clusters than is typical of native morphologically constructed words – e.g., PSNTR ‫ פסנתר‬psanter ‘piano’ or NPŦ ‫ נפט‬neft ‘(industrial) oil’. Most important, non-native words are freer from the orthographic restriction on A ‫ א‬as an internal vowel designator, as demonstrated by the spellings of PAB ‫ פאב‬pab ‘pub’, SYŦAR ‫ סיטאר‬sitar, or MLAWWĦ ‫ מלאווח‬malawax ‘Yemenite bread’. Therefore texts with foreign words would have many more A’s ‫ א‬than would texts with native words only. A ‫ א‬does not, however, follow a free-for-all distribution, and its occurrence seems to be guided by some (laxer) Hebrew restrictions. It is associated only with a rather than with e – so that modem is spelled MWDM ‫ מודם‬while madam is spelled MDAM ‫ מדאם‬or MADAM ‫מאדאם‬. Moreover, in longer words A ‫ א‬tends to be ignored, e.g., semantika is most often spelled SMNŦYQH ‫ סמנטיקה‬rather than SMANŦYQH ‫סמאנטיקה‬.2 More assimilated words such as marker MRQR ‫ מרקר‬or radio RDYW ‫ רדיו‬are never spelled with A ‫א‬, and the degree to which a word is assimilated is associated with more and more variable spellings with and without A ‫ – א‬e.g., bar being spelled more and more as BR ‫ בר‬and much less as BAR ‫באר‬. Thus, even non-native words do not fully transliterate their vowels into Hebrew, with e not showing up at all, A ‫ א‬being lost as soon as words become part of the lexicon, and Y ‫ י‬and W ‫ ו‬having the usual mid-word distribution. This means that the phono-orthographic relationship of AHWY ‫ אהוי‬with Hebrew vowels is quite consistent, a spelling pattern affecting much more than native words and thus hugely influential.

150


Gender as cue on borrowed nouns. The most opaque loans, with complete absence of morphological structure, are those ending with a consonant, such as glok, ma´rker, te´lefon, or with a non-a vowel (e.g., kafe´, ra´dyo, tı´shu, fı´ji). In accordance with the phonological expression of Hebrew gender (see exposition in next chapter), these are classified as masculine. Loan nouns ending with –a (mazu´rka, bı´ra, polı´tika, ho´ra) are classified as feminine, although unlike native feminines, this final –a is usually unstressed (compare bı´ra ‘beer’ with native bira´ ‘capital city’). Borrowed nouns ending with open-syllable contribute to the construction of final vowel representation as all final open syllables are represented by the four AHWY ‫ אהוי‬letters, e.g., radyo RDYW ‫רדיו‬, tı´shyu ŦYSˇYW ‫טישיו‬, and fı´ji PYGY ‫פיג’י‬. Most important, written a-final loans all end with the ubiquitous feminine H ‫ה‬, e.g. mazu´rka MZWRKH ‫מזורקה‬, polı´tika PWLYŦYQH ‫פוליטיקה‬, or ho´ra HWRH ‫ – הורה‬like native feminines. Thus, in writing, foreign bı´ra ‘beer’ is indistinguishable from native bira´ ‘capital city’ – both are spelled as BYRH ‫בירה‬. And the few loan nouns ending with –e such as kafe´ QPH ‫ קפה‬or makrame´ MQRMH ‫ מקרמה‬are spelled with the same final H ‫ה‬, like native masculine y-final forms – compare ofe ‘baker’ spelled AWPH ‫אופה‬. Taken together, core and borrowed nouns make a large contribution to final vowel representation – which was, if you recall, the first historical step in Mishnaic times towards the transformation of AHWY ‫ אהוי‬into vowel letters, still remaining the most productive site of vowel representation. Borrowed adjectives. A similar, though not identical, process of morphoorthographic assimilation with a native suffix applies to those adjectives based on loan nominals such as muzika´li, konseptua´li, aku´sti, bomba´sti or telefońi. Loan adjectives, unlike loan nouns, are morphologically derived: While their nominal stems remain entirely opaque, they receive the denominal adjectival suffix –i like native denominals such as shulxanı´ ‘desktop’ (from shulxan ‘desk’), ma’aravı´ ‘western’ (from ma’arav ‘west’), or ishı´ ‘personal’ (from ish ‘person’). As a final syllable, denominal adjectival i is spelled Y ‫י‬, e.g., M9RBY ‫ מערבי‬for ma’aravı´ ‘western’. One important difference is that unlike native denominal adjectives, loan adjective stems retain their stress, leaving the suffix –i unstressed. To illustrate this point, compare, for example, native galı´ ‘wavy’ (from gal ‘wave’), with borrowed ga´li ‘Gallic’. As spelling does not reflect stress, this means a massive addition of borrowed final Y ‫ י‬adjectives to the written Hebrew lexicon such as muzika´li MWZYQLY ‫ מוזיקלי‬or aku´sti AQWSŦY ‫אקוסטי‬, reinforcing Y ‫ י‬as a morphological suffix in particular and the status of final open-syllable marking by HWY ‫ הוי‬in general. Thus, as spelling disregards stress, even opaque nominals platform the learning of two of the most widespread and deeply entrenched morphological markers designated by two vowel letters at the end of the word: H ‫ה‬, marking feminine –a final (and masculine –e final) nouns, and final adjectival Y ‫י‬. At a specific level, we are already drawing a clear connection between the homophonous vowel a (which can be spelled by either H ‫ ה‬or A ‫)א‬, the singular feminine function, and H ‫ ה‬at final word position. At a phono-orthographic level, the preponderance of vowel letters at the right-edge margin of opaque

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nominals would lead to establishing a connection between final open syllable and the regular and consistent occurrence of vowel letters. And at morphoorthographic level, marking final open syllables by AHWY ‫ אהוי‬serves to draw Hebrew users’ attention to the morphological functions they serve.

Summary The derivational structure of nouns, though often semi- or fully opaque, systematically marks prefixes and suffixes in the written modality. MTNH ‫מתנה‬ pattern prefixes, TNH ‫ תנה‬and AHWY ‫ אהוי‬pattern and linear suffixes, are all uniquely spelled by the function alternants of homophonous segments. Thus, when a literate Hebrew reader/writer encounters an initial or final t on a nominal, she would expect it to be spelled with T ‫ ת‬rather than Ŧ ‫ט‬, and she would most often be right, given the high frequency of T ‫ ת‬as an affix – whether the nominal structure is transparent or opaque. From another perspective, even borrowed nouns promote vowel under-representation, so that Hebrew users would not expect to see A ‫ א‬and H ‫ ה‬word-medially. A large and wellestablished vocabulary would enable reader/writers elicit statistical patterns regarding different derivational structures and make use of them in establishing spelling patterns.

Notes 1. In addition, Hebrew, like other languages, has grammatical words such as MH ‫ מה‬standing for grammatical ma ‘what’ or AM ‫ אם‬for im ‘if’. The spelling of these words is generally outside the scope of this book. 2. As required by the Hebrew Academy, stipulating that A should be marked in stressed syllables of borrowed words.

References Aronoff, M. (1976). Word formation in generative grammar. Linguistic inquiry monograph 1. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Avineri, I. (1976). The palace of patterns. Tel Aviv: Izre’el [in Hebrew]. Berman, R. A. (1975). Lexical entries for verbs, roots, and conjugations. In U. Ornan & B.-Z. Fischler (Eds.), Sefer Roseń (pp. 25–36). Jerusalem: Council on the Teaching of Hebrew [in Hebrew]. Berman, R. A. (1978). Modern Hebrew structure. Tel Aviv: University Publishing Projects. Bolozky, S. (1999). Measuring productivity in word formation: The case of Israeli Hebrew. Leiden: Brill. Kautzsch, E. (1910). Gesenius’ Hebrew grammar. Revised by A. E. Cowley. Oxford: The Clarendon Press. McClelland, J. L., & Patterson, K. (2002). Rules or connections in past-tense inflections: What does the evidence rule out? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6, 465–472.

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Ravid, D. (1990). Internal structure constraints on new-word formation devices in Modern Hebrew. Folia Linguistica, 24, 289–346. Schwarzwald, O. R. (1974). Roots, patterns, and the morpheme structure. Leshonenu, 38, 131–136 [in Hebrew]. Schwarzwald, O. R. (1975). Comments on root-patterns relations in the Hebrew lexicon. Hebrew Computational Linguistics, 9, 47–59 [in Hebrew]. Schwarzwald, O. R. (2002). Modern Hebrew morphology. Tel Aviv: The Open University. Segall, O., Nir-Sagiv, B., Kishon-Rabin, L., & Ravid, D. (2008). Prosodic patterns in Hebrew child directed speech. Journal of Child Language, 35, 1–28. Shimron, J. (Ed.). (2003). Language processing and language acquisition in languages of Semitic, root-based morphology. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Velan, H., & Frost, R. (2011). Words with and without internal structure: What determines the nature of orthographic and morphological processing? Cognition, 118, 141–156.

Chapter 11

Spelling Cues in Nominal Inflection

Four grammatical notions are encoded in the morphological structure of Hebrew words: Gender, number, person, and tense. This chapter analyzes the contribution of the three inflectional notions associated with nominals – gender, number, and person – to spelling patterns (tense will be picked up in Chapter 12). Gender/number inflection is the most widespread feature marked on all content-word classes, and is also incorporated in the morphological structure of the closed class of prepositions and in optional bound morphology. It thus has an extremely frequent presence in Hebrew morphology, with subsequent early emergence and consolidation in oral acquisition – and critical importance in the acquisition of morphological spelling. Person is marked on non-present tense verbs in agreement with the grammatical subject, and is also incorporated along with number and gender in obligatory and optional bound morphology. Most of the 11 function letters are associated with inflectional nominal marking – the four AHWY letters, and, in addition, consonantal K ‫כ‬, M ‫מ‬, N ‫נ‬, L ‫ל‬, and T ‫ת‬.

Gender The classification into masculine or feminine gender is an inherent grammatical property of all Hebrew nouns,1 mostly expressed by overt phonological marking on stems. Masculine nouns end with a consonant (e.g., daf ‘page’), or else, when based on –y final roots, with a stressed e (e.g., mixse´ ‘lid’, from root k-s-y); whereas feminine nouns end with a stressed a – as in simla ‘dress’, or with –t, as in zxut ‘right’, rake´vet ‘train’, or mapit ‘napkin’. Gender marking clearly interacts with spelling, with feminine t always spelled as T ‫( ת‬rather than homophonous Ŧ ‫)ט‬, and with open-syllable gender-marked nouns, either feminine or masculine, spelled with final H ‫( ה‬rather than other possible homophonous spellings such as A ‫ א‬or 9 ‫)ע‬. Analyses of Hebrew corpora such as spoken mother-child and peer-group interactions as well as children’s books indicate that about 2/3 of Hebrew nouns are masculine or have masculine phonology. D.D. Ravid, Spelling Morphology, Literacy Studies 3, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-0588-8_11, Ó Springer ScienceþBusiness Media, LLC 2012

153

154

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In what can be termed ‘regular’ inanimate nouns – both concrete, such as masculine baýit ‘house’, and abstract, such as feminine simxa ‘joy’ – inherent gender will coincide with stem gender phonology (and morpho-orthographic representation); so that masculine nouns such as dir ‘pen’, sak ‘sack’, or mivne ‘construction’ will have the final-consonant or e (H ‫ )ה‬masculine phonology, whereas feminine dira ‘apartment’, sakit ‘plastic bag’ and bniya ‘(act of) construction’ will have the final feminine markings of a and t (H ‫ ה‬and T ‫)ת‬. Like most structural elements in the Hebrew lexicon, gender phonological marking originates in morphological and morpho-phonological categories. For one thing, virtually all nominal patterns and suffixes are gender-specific, that is, they are classified as either masculine or feminine in accordance with their final phonology. This seems a bit circular yet captures the relevant facts succinctly. Thus, the masculine instrument pattern maCCeC (e.g., masrek ‘comb’) ends with a root consonant, that is, no gender suffix, whereas the corresponding feminine instrument pattern maCCeCa (e.g., mavxena ‘test tube’) ends with a stressed a. In the same way the linear masculine instrument suffix –on (as in gagon ‘roofrack’) ends with a consonant (hence, no gender suffix), while the corresponding feminine –it (mexonit ‘car’) sharing the same semantics ends with the feminine -t. This means that all nouns sharing the same pattern or suffix also share the same gender, leading to generalizations which sweep across the entire Hebrew lexicon – such that most Hebrew derived nominals are feminine – e.g., CCiCa (brixa ‘escape’), CCeCa (gneva ‘theft’), haCCaCa (hatslaxa ‘success’), tiCCoĆet (titsro´xet ‘consumption’). The view that gender marking on inanimate Hebrew nouns is not inflectional but rather part of the inherent morphological structure of the noun seems reasonable in view of this analysis. In inanimate nouns, gender marking is not added to the stem – it is an integral part of the stem by virtue of the phonological structure of the pattern or derivational linear suffix.2 The implication is that in inanimate nouns, Hebrew speakers would perceive gender as reflected by the morphological structure of the noun – much in the same way that speakers of languages such as French or German would focus on articles as indicators of inherent nominal gender. The internally opaque and semi-opaque nominals discussed in Chapter 10 are just as consistently systematic in gender marking. What counts here is the ending, so that gil is phonologically marked as masculine by virtue of having the morpho-phonological CVC structure, and galut ‘exile’ is a feminine noun by virtue of ending with derivational –ut, despite stem opacity. Consistent morpho-orthgraphic marking of feminine morphological patterns and linear suffixes by T ‫ ת‬and H ‫ ה‬is extremely helpful in focusing Hebrew users’ attention on word-final positions and their spelling. However singular stem phonology in inanimate nouns may also clash with inherent gender (Ravid & Schiff, 2012). Many core-lexicon, everyday, feminine nouns do not carry overt feminine –a and –t marking, e.g., kos ‘glass’, ir ‘city’, kaf ‘spoon’, yad ‘hand’, katef ‘shoulder’, as well as segolate aýin ‘eye’ and o´zen ‘ear’. Clashing gender phonology even invades morphological patterns. For example, the CaCeC pattern denotes, on the one hand, masculine adjectives

Gender

155

such as ayef ‘tired’, ra’ev ‘hungry’ or male ‘full’, while on the other hand it contains inherently feminine nouns with the same masculine morphophonology, such as gader ‘fence’ and xatser ‘yard’. And the penultimately marked CeĆeC, which is inherently and phonologically masculine (be´rez ‘tap’), contains a number of feminine nouns sharing the same construction (e.g., re´gel ‘leg’, de´rex ‘way’, ne´fesh ‘soul’, e´rets ‘country’). Spelling does not shed light on the inherent gender of such nouns, and the only way to know is overt agreement with verbs and adjectives (e.g., ha-ir ha-gdola xoge´get ‘thecity the-big,Fm is-celebrating,Fm’, where agreement would be marked by H ‫ה‬ and T ‫)ת‬. But then, spelling comes in very handy in resolving cases of masculine nouns with apparent feminine phonology. This is, for example, the case of nouns ending with t as root or stem radical, e.g., mashot ‘oar’ (root sˇ-w-t ̣), shalat ‘remote control’ (root sˇ-l-t ̣), yalkut ‘school bag’, or loan salat ‘salad’. In all of these cases, the final radical is spelled Ŧ ‫( ט‬rather than T ‫)ת‬, a sure indication that the noun is not feminine in gender. In the same way, nouns may end with an open syllable –a due to final glottal/pharyngeal neutralization, which would sound exactly like final-a feminines, but with very different spelling. Thus tsava ‘army’ (spelled CBA ‫ )צבא‬and masa ‘burden’ (MSˇA ‫ )משא‬end with the radical? spelled A ‫ ;א‬while masa ‘journey’ (spelled MS9 ‫ )מסע‬and meyda ‘information’ (spelled MYD9 ‫ ) מידע‬end with the voiced pharyngeal, as do ko´va ‘hat’ (spelled KWB9 ‫ )כובע‬and tse´va ‘color’ (CB9 ‫)צבע‬, where the final a is unstressed. In all of these cases, accessing the written form of these masculine nouns is one stable indication of the gender status of the noun (which extends to adjectives and verbs), and knowledge about the possible spelling alternants for final H ‫ ה‬is an extra asset. Phonological marking also governs how loan nouns are classified by gender. In line with native phonology, non-native nouns ending with a consonant or with a non-a vowel are generally assigned masculine gender, as in the cases of ra´dio, se´gwey, patent, ma´rker, ji-pi-es, mo´dem, minivan, pezˇo, and kafe´. Nonnative nouns which end with -a (from a variety of foreign sources) are tagged as feminine, e.g., mazu´rka, ma´zda, pica, sociyolo´gya, politika, histe´rya, unive´rsita – and although this final –a may not be stressed, it is always spelled by the ubiquitous feminine H ‫ה‬. In animate nouns, gender is an inflectional property in the classical sense of systematically conveying extra grammatical information. Animate nouns, referring to biological animal species, on the one hand, and to human role nouns, on the other, usually default as masculine in Hebrew, as in pil ‘elephant’, namer ‘tiger’, zamar ‘singer’, or kone ‘buyer’, with the feminine form taken to designate the female of the species (e.g., nemera ‘tigress’ or kona ‘female buyer’).3 Beyond animal names, which are usually ‘noun primitives’, human role nouns take inherently masculine patterns and suffixes – e.g., patterns CaCCan (e.g., saxkan ‘player/actor’) and CaCiC (nasix ‘prince’); or suffixes –an (mada’an ‘scientist’, from mada ‘science’) and –ay (itonay ‘journalist’ from iton ’newspaper’). A productive source of masculine human role nouns is the beynoni present

156

11


participle form of verbs, historically considered nominal, e.g., Qal shofet ‘judge’, Nif’al ne’eman ‘trustee’, Pi’el mehandes ‘engineer’, Hif’il madrix ‘guide, instructor’, or Hitpa’el mitlamed ‘apprentice’. Feminine gender marking is added to all of these masculine stems in the form of the inflectional suffixes –a (e.g., nasix/ nesixa ‘prince/ess’; xatul/xatula ‘cat/female cat’), -it (sapar/saparit ‘hairdresser/ Fm’; saxkan/saxkanit ‘actor/actress’), and by various –eĆet alternants of masculine stems, such as moxer/moxe´ret ‘vendor’ or zamar/zame´ret ‘singer’. Unlike inanimate nouns, animate nouns are virtually all ‘regular’ in the sense that their singular form matches inherent gender to external phonological marking – with very few exceptions such as em ‘mother’ and ez ‘goat’. Adjectives and present-tense beynoni verbs obligatorily agree with nominal gender marking with nouns, e.g., ha-tisa ha-beyn-le’umit ‘the-flight,Fm theinternational,Fm ¼ the international flight’ – where tisa ‘flight’ ends with feminine –a (spelled H ‫ )ה‬as an allomorph of Qal action nominal CCiCa, and beyn-le’umit ‘international’ agrees with it in gender, marked by final t (spelled T ‫)ת‬. Adjectives are thus inflected by the same gender markers as nouns, as shown by feminine shakranit ‘liar’, madhima ‘amazing’, klalit ‘general’ and metulte´let ‘curly’ – all ending with -a and -t. In cases of masculine nouns with pseudo-feminine phonology such as maga ‘touch’ (spelled MG9 ‫)מגע‬, orthographic knowledge would help in determining true noun gender. In cases of feminine nouns with masculine phonology such as gader ‘fence’ (spelled GDR ‫)גדר‬, only lexical information about inherent stem gender would help in assigning correct agreement (Ravid & Schiff, 2012). Nominal gender inflection occurs in great numbers on noun and adjective tokens in speech and writing, assigning huge prominence to the function letters marking it – H ‫ה‬ and T ‫ת‬.

Number Number is marked on count nouns, such as isha ‘woman’ or maxshava ‘thought’, but not on mass nouns such as sukar ‘sugar’ and meyda ‘information’.4 Quantification of count nouns takes two paths in Hebrew: dual (-aýim) and plural (-im/-ot). Dual marking. A small number of noun types with large token frequency in everyday discourse are marked for dual number by –aýim spelled YM ‫ים‬ (Schwarzwald, 1996). Of these, a tiny but very useful set of nouns deriving from Classical Hebrew carry pure dual markings distinguishing two from one (singular), on the one hand, and from many (plural), on the other. These mostly refer to temporal and counting units, such as masculine yom ‘day’ or e´lef ‘thousand’, feminine sha’a ‘hour’ or me’a ‘hundred’. Nouns in this set have three distinct markings – singular, dual, and plural, as in yom/yomaýim/yamim ‘day/Dual/Plural’; me’a/mataýim/me’ot ’a hundred/Dual/Plural’. A larger set of pseudo dual nouns designate body parts and related artifacts which naturally

Number

157

occur in pairs,5 where the prototypical division is between one and two in a naturally occurring pair, as in aýin/eynaýim ‘eye/s’, ke´ren/karnaýim ‘horn/s’, or na´’al/na’alaýim ‘shoe/s’. In this category, the dual suffix designates both two and many of the same entity, as evidenced by xamesh na’alaýim ‘five shoes’. The –aýim suffix is gender-neutral, attaching to both masculine (e.g., e´lef/ alpaýim ‘thousand/Dual’) and feminine stems (me’a/mataýim ‘a hundred/ Dual’). However adjectives modifying dual nouns carry plural marking, which obligatorily agrees with the inherent gender of the stem, e.g., eynaýim kxulot ‘eyes,Dual blue,Fm,Pl ¼ blue eyes’, or yomaýim dxusim ‘days,Dual dense,Masc,Pl’ ¼ two dense days’. Dual spelling does not challenge Hebrew writers, since it is essentially identical to masculine plural –im (also spelled YM ‫)ים‬, given the absence of internal a representation in non-voweled words. However agreement phenomena increase the number of plural marking on adjectives and verbs, especially –ot (WT ‫)ות‬, which is more tightly associated with duals given that most of them are perceived as feminine. Plural marking. Number is widely marked in Hebrew in close morphological proximity to gender. Masculine stems take suffix –im (spelled YM ‫)ים‬, as in sir/ sirim ‘pot/s’, axbar/axbarim ‘mouse/mice’, while feminine stems take suffix -ot (spelled WT ‫ )ות‬as in sira/sirot ‘boat/s’ and axbara/axbarot ‘mouse/mice’. About 50 irregular masculine stems (frequently ending with a voiced segment) take the feminine suffix (as in kir QYR ‫קיר‬/kirot QYRWT ‫‘ קירות‬wall/s’), while about a dozen irregular feminine nouns take the masculine suffix (e.g., mila MYLH ‫מילה‬/mila MYLYM ‫‘ מילים‬word/s’). The plural marker attaches directly to the bare stem ending in a consonant, so that open-syllable stems such as masculine kone or feminine kona ‘buyer’ (both spelled QWNH ‫ )קונה‬delete the final vowel as in masculine konim and feminine konot. The spelled form would replace the final H ‫ ה‬with the plural suffix to yield masculine QWNYM ‫קונים‬ and feminine QWNWT ‫ קונות‬respectively. This process distinguishes between genuine open-syllable stems as above and the neutralization of a historical glottal (e.g., tsava ‘army’ CBA ‫ )צבא‬or pharyngeal (e.g., tse´va ‘color’ CB9 ‫)צבע‬. In such cases, the written plural marker is preceded by the original A ‫א‬, as in CBAWT ‫( צבאות‬signifying the final root radical in tsva’ot ‘armies’), or by the 9, as in CB9YM ‫( צבעים‬tsva’im ‘colors’). The singular feminine suffix –t (rashut ‘authority’ RSˇWT ‫ רשות‬, sakit ‘bag’ SˇQYT ‫ )שקית‬usually deletes before the plural marker, with the glide y serving as the final stem consonant to which the suffix attaches, as in rashuyot ‘authorities’ RSˇWYWT ‫רשויות‬, sakiyot ‘bags’ SˇQYWT ‫שקיות‬. Adjectives and present-tense verbs agree in number and gender with head nouns. For example, for masculine sir ‘pot’ and adjective gadol ‘white’, the plural NP ‘big pots’ would be sirim gdolim ‘pots big,Pl’; for feminine sira ‘boat’ the plural phrase would be sirot gdolot ‘boats,Fm big,Pl,Fm’. As agreement is always with inherent noun gender, irregular plural noun suffixes will clash with the external plural marker on adjective and present-tense verb, as in kirot gdolim ‘big walls’ spelled QYRWT GDWLYM ‫( קירות גדולים‬Ravid & Schiff, 2009).

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Inflectional marking on nouns, adjectives and present-tense verbs enhances the spelling representation of the function envelope. Thinking for a moment about the big picture regarding the spelling of nominals, the function envelope of a nominal stem may start with MTNH ‫ מתנה‬pattern prefixes and end with similar pattern and linear suffixes bearing gender information such as H ‫ ה‬or T ‫ ת‬if the noun is inanimate. If the noun is animate, the stem might be followed by gender H ‫ ה‬or T ‫ ת‬inflectional suffixation. In both cases, stems may take plural suffixation of YM ‫ ים‬or WT ‫ות‬. It is easy to see where the consistent and systematic morpho-orthographic patterning of Hebrew nouns comes from in general, and to what extent written gender-number marking stands to represent morphological constructs.

Incorporation I now turn to another major source of the constant presence of suffixed function letters in Hebrew spelling. In addition to primary gender-number marking on nominals, incorporated pronominal suffixes provide information on the gender, number and person characteristics of nouns bearing syntactic case relationships to other words – nouns, verbs, preposition, and a plethora of between-class elements. In general, incorporated pronoun inflections are added at the very end of the written stem. Due to the under-specification of vowels and blurred boundaries between consonants and vowels, a small set of function letters (and their combinations) represents clusters of distinct suffixes in various morpho-phonological environments. Thus, Y represent 1st singular suffixes –i (on singular stems) and ay (on plural stems); K ‫ כ‬marks 2nd person, preceded by Y ‫ י‬when attached to plural stems and followed by M ‫ מ‬when standing for plural incorporations; W ‫ ו‬stands for 3rd person masculine –o, -u, -iv and –av, again depending on stem number and on incorporated suffix information; H ‫ה‬ denotes 3rd person feminine suffixes –a and –eýha; and N ‫ נ‬is the marker for incorporated 1st person plural suffixation, as well as for the negligibly used feminine plural. These are the function letters represented at the very edge of the function envelope. Prepositions. The closed-class category of prepositions takes obligatory pronominal marking as in l-ańu ‘to-us’. This class includes both independent prepositions such as al ‘on’, betox ‘inside’, or im ‘with’, as well as the seven prefixal MSˇH WKLB ‫ משה וכלב‬attached prepositions. Pronominal incorporation in prepositions does not mark agreement with a head noun, but rather inflectional information about a pronoun syntactically governed by the preposition. Thus, both preposition types occur in their uninflected or bare form before NPs with full lexical noun heads, e.g., al shulxan ‘on table’, be-kufsa’ot ‘in-boxes’, but in the case of a pronominal NP, the pronoun is obligatorily incorporated as an inflectional ending on the preposition, including the gender, number and person properties of the lexical noun. For example, alav

Incorporation

159

‘on-it’ for the table, bahen ‘inside-them’ for feminine plural kufsa’ot ‘boxes’. This means that pronouns appear as free units (ani ‘I’, hi ‘she’, atem ‘you,Pl’) only in subject positions. In all other governed positions, pronouns are bound to prepositions, including the accusative marker et (e.g., otam ‘Acc-them). Given the reference and cohesion roles of pronouns in discourse and the obligatory nature of pronominal incorporation in prepositions, incorporated pronominal suffixes such as -i, -ax, -xa, -o, -nu or -hem are numerous in Hebrew texts. This is a major origin of the frequency of Y ‫י‬, K ‫כ‬, W ‫ו‬, H ‫ה‬, N ‫ נ‬and M ‫מ‬ function letters as pronominal suffix markers and an important link to the uniquely function roles of homophonous K ‫( כ‬signifying x), W ‫( ו‬signifying v), and H ‫ה‬. K ‫( כ‬homophonous with Ħ ‫ )ח‬is of specific interest here as the least frequent function letter, given its restriction to final position and unique role signifying 2nd person incorporation (feminine –ax, -ex and aýix, masculine –xa, and plural –xem). This low type frequency, coupled with the low token frequency of 2nd person in texts, should render K ‫ כ‬a later acquisition in correct spelling among the other function letters despite the direct link to person marking. In addition, K ‫ כ‬also poses the problem of violating one of the most consistent generalizations in Hebrew spelling – marking final open syllables, including a and e, by AHWY ‫ אהוי‬letters. In sharp contrast, H ‫ ה‬is absent in the spelling of 2nd person masculine singular –xa, as in otxa ‘Acc-you’, mimxa ‘from-you’, or bexa ‘in-you’, generating expectations for spelling violations in younger and less literate reader/writers. Optional pronominal incorporation. Recall that Hebrew optional morphology incorporates pronominal gender, number, and person information as inflectional endings on nouns and verbs (e.g., maxshevotav ‘thoughts-his’), side by side with the option of expressing the same notions in periphrastic structure (ha-maxshavot shelo ‘the-thoughts of-him’). Optional bound structures constitute an important source of rich morphology by incorporating secondary, non-head, pronominal features on top of primary inflections. Thus the inflectional suffix –av incorporates the number-gender-person features of the noun’s possessor on top of the primary feminine plural features of the head of the syntactic unit. A comparison of bound armona ‘her palace’ and dirata ‘her apartment’ provides an interesting case in point, with implications for spelling. The feminine possessor -a is denoted by the final H ‫ ה‬on both armona (spelled ARMWNH ‫ )ארמונה‬and dirata (DYRTH ‫)דירתה‬. However, armon ‘palace’ is a masculine noun, while dira ‘apartment’ is a feminine noun, and it thus carries two feminine markers – the pre-final t marking inherent feminine gender T ‫ת‬, and the final –a marking possessor gender H ‫ה‬. Despite its transparent and predictable semantics, gaining command of optional possessive morphology is a challenging task, given that the syntactic option is always more accessible as the default possessive construction in Hebrew, so that optional possessives are relatively infrequent in everyday Hebrew. Moreover, bound possessives are opaque in form by incorporating all information – the stem, the inflection, and the possessive relation – into a single word; and since many stems undergo changes under linear operations, the

160

11


result is less transparent and morpho-phonologically distant from the loose syntactic construction. Compare, for instance, the syntactic construction hama´vet shelo ‘the-death his ¼ his death’ with all components spelled out with the bound form moto ‘his death’ expressing the same information in a single word. In addition, the bound stem forms of possessive nouns are determined by the differential effect of linear morpho-phonological operations. For example, singular CeĆeC nouns such as se´ret ‘movie’ change in one way in plural formation (e.g., se´ret/sratim ‘movie/s’), and in another way under possessive formation (e.g., se´ret/sirta ‘movie/her movie’). Suffixes take different forms on singular and plural stems, as in sirto ‘his movie’ vs. sratav ‘his movies’. In this way, possessive noun inflection generates a vast number of forms (18–20 wordforms per noun lemma6) to be classified, categorized and interconnected. Thus a complex knowledge network has to be constructed of interrelated noun forms with possessive gender-number-person paradigms. Spelling has a critical role in platforming this knowledge, which is simplified and generalized in voweldeficient written representation in the more formal, school- and literary-based registers. Changes in stem and suffix are generally suppressed while the frequency of Y ‫י‬, K ‫כ‬, W ‫ו‬, H ‫ה‬, N ‫נ‬, M ‫ מ‬function letters is enhanced. Double compounding. Incorporated inflections occur on another, and related, optional morphology category which makes use of the same possessive structure – the so-called ’double’ compound construction. Double compounding expresses possessive meaning twice – on the head noun, and by the possessive particle shel, e.g., da’ata shel Michal ‘the-opinion,Fm of Michal ¼ Michal’s dress’. Like possessive nouns, double compounds are typical of more formal, mainly written Hebrew: The basic construction used across the board is the free or analytic compound with two free nouns loosely and transparently connected by possessive shel, e.g., ha-de’a shel Michal ’the-opinion of Michal’, involving no stem changes and no morphological inflection. In contrast, the opaque and semantically dense double compound contains a head noun inflected for possession, constrained by gender and number agreement with the modifying possessor noun – as illustrated by sfato shel ha-ish ‘the man’s language’, sfatam shel ha-anashim ‘the people’s language’, and sfoteyhem shel ha-anashim ‘the people’s languages’. Again, with all its complexity, double compounding bootstraps the representation of incorporated syntax by the same means of final possessive morphology. More structures. Optional bound morphology extends beyond marking possession on nouns, but is much less systematic. Hebrew also optionally marks gender, number and person on several other function (or betweenclass) constructions, such as negatives (eyni ani lo ‘I am not’) and various manner adverbials (e.g., odeńu od hu ‘he still is’ or hineńi hine ani ‘here I am’). All optionally marked structures share the feature of being of higher register than their syntactic alternants – which makes them highly relevant to our main topic, morphological aspects of written Hebrew. Incorporated morphology, whether obligatory or optional, extends the volume of number/gender/person marking in spoken and written discourse, increasing the frequency of

Spelling Inflectional Morphology

161

encounters with the different forms they take in different lexical classes and categories, and strengthening their interconnected morpho-orthographic patterns.

Spelling Inflectional Morphology One distributional lesson learned from this chapter is that much of Hebrew nominal morphology resides at the end of the stem. Gender (-a, -e, -t) and number marking (-im, -ot, -ey) on free and bound stems occurs in word-final position, as do incorporating gender/number/person inflection on prepositions, possessive nouns, double compounds, and a myriad of function elements. Much of stem-final inflection is expressed by the five Hebrew vowels: -a and -e denoting gender (bita shel ha-mexashefa ‘her-daughter of the witch’, kone ‘buyer’), and -i, -o, -u marking gender/number/person incorporation as in mimeńi ‘from-me’, yomano ‘his-diary’, odeńu ‘he still is’. The prevalence and the final position of inflectional vowels render them highly salient, and this combines with the fact that orthographic vowel marking of morphological inflection is almost always obligatory at word-final position. Thus, despite the double phonological role of the four AHWY ‫ אהוי‬letters as consonant and vowel graphemes, the specific word-final site is privileged in marking inflectional gender/number/person roles. Three consonants – all homophonous due to historical neutralizations – emerge from the presentation of word-final inflectional morphology: t, x, and v. A second distributional lesson derived from this chapter is the link forged between phonology, morphology, and orthography at word-final position between t, x, v and their graphemic correspondences. In all three cases, the problem is homophony – the fact that Ŧ ‫ ט‬competes with T ‫ ת‬in the representation of t, Ħ ‫ח‬ competes with K ‫ כ‬in representing x, and B ‫ ב‬competes with W ‫ ו‬on v. However t, x, v in these roles are uniquely linked to one set of graphemic options – T ‫ת‬, K ‫כ‬, and W ‫ו‬. The great frequency of inflectional suffixes is consistently reflected in the spelling in a torrent of word-final T ‫ת‬, Ħ ‫ח‬, and W ‫ו‬, firmly establishing this set of function letters as a coherent category. Of the three, the most frequent is T ‫ת‬, reflecting feminine gender in a variety of ways: as the singular –t on inanimate and animate nouns (axot ‘sister’, xavit ‘barrel’, tsala´xat ‘plate’, ta’ut ‘error’ etc.); replacing feminine –a in compounds and incorporated morphology (sfat^maxshev ‘language^computer ¼ computer language’, sfato ‘his language’); and as part of the plural feminine marker –ot on nouns and on adjectives and beynoni verbs agreeing with them. The competitor Ŧ ‫ ט‬has almost no chance of interference, since it only participates in roots and therefore infrequently appears in word-final position. In nominals, these could be stem-final forms with Ŧ ‫ ט‬as the root-final radical such as SRŦ ‫‘ סרט‬film’ or MQLŦ ‫‘ מקלט‬shelter’, and these are not numerous in Hebrew.

162

11


K ‫ כ‬and W ‫ ו‬are less frequent, consistent and transparent representatives of word-final nominal inflectional roles, and therefore are likely to form less consistent written categories. K ‫ כ‬is a person marker, and therefore has no role in primary gender-number morphology on nouns and adjectives. As a marker of second person, K ‫ כ‬participates in incorporating-morphology suffixes on prepositions and optional possessives, e.g., feminine bax spelled BK ‫בך‬, masculine kamo´xa spelled KMWK ‫כמוך‬, and second-person plurals such as inyanxem 9NYYNKM ‫עניינכם‬. As before, the competitor Ħ ‫ ח‬stands only for root letters, and thus cannot represent an inflectional segment. But as discussed above, x represented by K ‫ כ‬as a final function letter is less coherent than that of T ‫ת‬. Frequency-wise, there is no comparison between the frequency of a gender marker and a specifically second-person marker, and moreover, there are many more words ending with Ħ ‫ ח‬than words ending in Ŧ ‫ט‬. In other words, both from the point of view of morphological and orthographic frequency, the competition between final K ‫ כ‬and Ħ ‫ ח‬is fiercer than between T ‫ ת‬and Ŧ ‫ט‬. Moreover, the link between x and K ‫ כ‬is less transparent than the one between t and T ‫ת‬: as a spirant alternant of k, K ‫כ‬-derived x is in a complex relationship with Ħ ‫ח‬, which sounds the same, on the one hand, and with Q ‫ק‬-derived k, which sounds the same as its stop alternant, on the other. Therefore, the prediction is that the spelling of secondperson –x, despite being a word-final inflectional marker, should be harder to learn than that of feminine T ‫ת‬. Finally, one more letter – W ‫ – ו‬marks the inflectional suffix –v as in piv ‘his mouth’ or alav ‘on-him’. First, as with T ‫ ת‬and K ‫כ‬, final inflectional –v can only be written by W ‫ו‬, rather than by the competitor B ‫ב‬. However the phonologymorphology-orthography configuration here is different than in the two previous cases. On the one hand, W ‫ ו‬frequently appears in word-final position as a vowel letter denoting person markers o and u – as discussed above. This will foster the construal of final W ‫ ו‬as an inflectional marker. But on the other hand, consonantal v is a relatively infrequent marker, given that it designates masculine third-person, in itself not part of primary inflectional morphology (except on verb agreement); and moreover, -v has robust morphological competitors for the representation of singular masculine third person (-o – compare bno ‘his son’ with aviv ‘his father’) and plural masculine third person (-eyhem, as in aleyhem ‘on-them’ versus alav ‘on-him’). A final note is a reminder to all of us that phono-morpho-orthographic categories are not construed in isolation. That is, if AHWY ‫ אהוי‬letters designate final vowels which constitute (full or part of) inflectional markers, each vowel category interacts with the others. If T ‫ת‬, K ‫ כ‬and W ‫ ו‬represent final consonants which constitute (full or part of) inflectional markers, again, each subcategory is not only constructed from within, but also interacts with the others, and also with vowel categories. Together, what emerges is the construal of word-final Hebrew morphology as denoted by specific letters, therefore serving as a powerful tool in overcoming homophony in spelling.

References

163

Notes 1. A negligible number of nouns, like ruáx ‘wind’ or sakin ‘knife’, can be viewed as both masculine and feminine. 2. The gender marking of linear derivational suffixes, which determines the gender of the stem, should not be confused here with inflectional marking. 3. A limited number of animate nouns, where the feminine form is the basic and frequent one, default as feminine, e.g., para ‘cow’ (rather than par ‘bull’), kivsa ‘sheep’, and insects such as nemala ‘ant’ or dvora ‘bee’, which have no masculine correlate. 4. Unless these refer to different kinds of the non-count entity, e.g., sukarim ‘sugars’. 5. A few of these artifacts could be termed dualia tantum since they refer to an inseparable, basic entity composed of two equal parts, e.g., mixnasaýim ‘pants’, mishkafaýim ‘spectacles’, moznaýim ‘scales’, and misparaýim ‘scissors’ (as evidenced in the English gloss by the plural suffix –s). 6. Depending if we count plural feminine forms.

References Ravid, D., & Schiff, R. (2009). Morpho-phonological categories of noun plurals in Hebrew: A developmental study. Linguistics, 47, 45–63. Ravid, D., & Schiff, R. (2012). From dichotomy to divergence: Number/gender marking on Hebrew nouns and adjectives across schoolage. Language Learning, 62(1). Schwarzwald, O. R. (1996). Words with þayim endings in Hebrew. In M. Bar-Asher (Ed.), Studies in Hebrew and Jewish languages presented to Shelomo Morag (pp. 341–358). Jerusalem: The Bialik Institute, [in Hebrew].

Chapter 12

Spelling Cues in Verb Formation

The last chapter delineating the impact of Hebrew content-word morphology on morpho-orthographic spelling patterns revolves around verb structure, a system sharing several features with nominals, on the one hand, yet with its own, independent properties in both derivation and inflection – and a unique contribution to spelling morphology. All verbs are constructed of a root and one of seven binyan patterns – Qal (Pa’al), Nif’al, Hif’il, Huf’al, Pi’el, Pu’al and Hitpa’el. While the root contributes basic lexical reference, binyan patterns provide verbal classification such as transitivity (valence) values, active, middle and passive voice, and specific syntactic-semantic functions such as causativity, incohativity, reflexivity and reciprocity. For example, root b-l-t ̣ yields basic balat ‘be conspicuous/prominent’ (Qal), causative hivlit ‘make prominent’ (Hif’il) and passive huvlat ‘be made prominent’ (Huf’al), as well as middle hitbalet ‘make oneself prominent’ in Hitpa’el. Despite its deceptively small size, the Hebrew verb system is extremely flexible, accommodating subtle and idiosyncratic shades of meaning while retaining an overall consistency in expressing transitivity values. Our concern here, however, is not with verb semantics but rather with verb structure and its reflection in spelling. Verbs are the most complex entities in Hebrew morphology, for several reasons. First, Hebrew verbs have no basic, or default, ‘free’, canonical or uninflected form comparable to masculine singular nouns. There is no Hebrew equivalent to English sleep, talk, see, administer or contemplate, since all Hebrew verbforms are inflected in some way or another, given that each verb lemma produces between 24 and 28 verbforms.1 Traditional Hebraist analysis takes the past-tense 3rd person masculine singular as the default form, since it is identical to the designation of the binyan, but there is no psycholinguistic evidence whatsoever to support this view. The least inflected verbform is the infinitive form (e.g., la-sim ‘to put’, le-hitnadned ‘to-swing’), which has no person-number-gender marking, but is obligatorily preceded by infinitive marker l-. Secondly, verbs make the most use of root-and-pattern non-linear structure: Not only do they employ it exclusively in their lexical morphology, it also serves to designate grammatical temporality. A unique feature of Hebrew verbs is a D.D. Ravid, Spelling Morphology, Literacy Studies 3, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-0588-8_12, Ó Springer ScienceþBusiness Media, LLC 2012

165

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12


loose, flexible composite of inflectional prefixation and root-pattern structure in the shift across the temporal domains of tense and modality. This composite structure accounts for much of the multiplicity of forms and blurring of derivational and inflectional marking in verb structure. A third, and related, feature of verb complexity is the fact that inflection is often distributed over several markers in verb form. For example, past tense may be expressed in both the vowel pattern of the verb (e.g., CaCaC vs. CoCeC in Qal), but also by the set of past-tense person-number-gender suffixes depicted in Table 12.4. And in future-tense verbs, person/tense markers prefix the verb, while the number/gender markers are suffixed to it. Verb complexity is encoded in a small set of morpho-phonological units, and an even smaller set of spelling units. While the semantics and grammar of Hebrew verbs may be complex, the small number of function constructs, their sheer token frequency, and their consistent morpho-orthographic sites render them salient entities whose spelling is expected to be learned quite easily in most verb arenas.

Composite Verb Structure So far we have treated nominal and verbal structures as similar – that is, presenting mishkal noun patterns and binyan verb patterns as parallel constructions applied to different lexical categories. This is because we adhered to the traditional practice of designating the past-tense 3rd person singular pattern of each binyan as its canonic or default form. For example, Hif’il is named after the past-tense 3rd person singular template hiCCiC, as in hisbir ‘explained’ or himshix ‘went on’. However, binyan patterns are not entirely analogous to noun patterns, and are in fact more abstract and more complex, since verb temporality interacts with both derivational and inflectional structures in two ways. First, rather than a single entity, each so-called binyan consists of a set of related phonological templates specifying binyan-specific temporal configurations. Second, binyan, temporal and person marking often occupy the same phonological and spelling site. For the purpose of this analysis I take an ecologically relevant, Hebrewtargeted, perspective focusing on the structure of three temporal configurations, while disregarding the specific semantic notions each of them incorporates. The three temporal structures are each associated with an inflectional tense prefix (or set of prefixes), as follows: (1) Past-tense forms (designating telic, narrative, and perfective aspects) are associated with the binyan/past tense prefix h- (spelled H ‫)ה‬. (2) Present-tense forms (designating both general/habitual and progressive aspects) are often associated with the binyan/present tense prefix m- (spelled M ‫)מ‬. (3) The modal cluster is always associated with the set of modal prefixes l- (L ‫)ל‬, marking the infinitive) and ?,y,t,n- (AYTN ‫)איתן‬, marking both modal temporality and person.

Temporal Binyan Configurations

167

While inflectional prefixes do not occur on each and every verbform, their frequency across most binyanim and obligatoriness in the modal cluster motivate my psycholinguistic analysis of Hebrew verb structure as a loose composite of flexible prefix and stem. The binyan structure Hebrew users frequently encounter is a stem consisting of a root and a specific temporal binyan template, often prefixed by a combined binyan/temporal/person marker as in Hif’il pasttense hidrix ‘guided’ (spelled HDRYK ‫ )הדריך‬or Hitpa’el present-tense mitpater ‘is resigning’ (spelled MTPŦR ‫)מתפטר‬. Verbs with modal temporality (infinitives, future and imperative frorms), which are extremely frequent in both speech and writing, greatly enhance this perception of Hebrew verb structure, as they are always prefixed – e.g., Nif’al lehikanes ‘to come in’ (spelled LHYKNS ‫ )להיכנס‬or Qal taxshov ‘she will think’ (alternatively: ‘you will think’) spelled TĦSˇWB ‫תחשוב‬.

Temporal Binyan Configurations Below I analyze the seven binyanim in three groups with differing temporal configurations, focusing on those features which statistical learning will pick up and use for forming generalizations. In Tables 12.1 to 12.3 below, I use the symbol P to refer to the loosely attached temporal/person prefixes m- M ‫ מ‬and L-AYTN ‫איתן‬-‫ ל‬described below. I do adhere to tradition in treating past-tense h- (H ‫ )ה‬differently, as a binyan (rather than temporal) prefix, for two reasons. First, based on its lower type frequency, as it occurs in only three out of seven binyanim; as opposed to m- M ‫מ‬, which prefixes five out of seven binyanim in present tense, and AYTN ‫ איתן‬modal prefixes, which are obligatory across all binyanim. Second, h- is more integrated into binyan morpho-phonology than the other prefixes, as it also participates in both past-tense and infinitive structure, e.g., Hitpa’el le-hitkabel ‘to-be accepted’ and Hif’il le-haxlif ‘to-exchange’. Phonologically diverse binyanim. Two binyanim rely mostly on distinct vowel changes to express temporal shift: Qal and Nif’al (see summary in Table 12.1). Qal (Pa’al) consists of the most varied temporal set, with three phonologically distinct patterns – CaCaC for the past tense (e.g., sagar ‘closed’, lamad ‘learned’), CoCeC in present tense (soger, lomed), and two modal stems – CCoC (e.g., li-sgor ‘to close’) and CCaC (e.g., imperative lemad). Qal has no binyan-specific prefixes and is thus canonically represented in writing by (often homographic) root-words in past tense (SGR ‫סגר‬, LMD ‫)למד‬, whereas presenttense is uniquely specified by the obligatory W (SWGR ‫סוגר‬, LWMD ‫)לומד‬. Modal CCaC stems (e.g., yilmad ‘(he) will learn’ YLMD ‫ )ילמד‬are often homographic with CCoC forms, which exhibit the erratic behavior of internal vowels (e.g., yisgor ‘(he) will close’ is sometimes spelled YSGWR ‫יסגור‬, and at other times YSGR ‫)יסגר‬.

168

12


Nif’al too is phonologically diverse, with two distinct temporal forms. Past and present tense forms take the identical form of niCCaC (e.g., nisgar ‘be closed’, nirdam ‘fall asleep’), while the modal stem (P)iCaCeC is completely different, as in tisager ‘she/you will be closed’ and le-heradem ‘to fall asleep’). In spelling terms, transparent past/present tense forms are marked by the highly distinctive derivational prefix N ‫( נ‬e.g., nisgar NSGR ‫נסגר‬, nirdam NRDM ‫ )נרדם‬which uniquely attaches to Nif’al forms. However futuretense spelling of Nif’al, lacking prefixal N ‫נ‬, is often homographic2 with Qal (compare yilamed ‘will be learned’ YLMD ‫ ילמד‬with yilmad ‘he will learn’ YLMD ‫ )ילמד‬as well as with Pi’el (see below). This is not a problem for spellers, who are perfectly satisfied with their skeletal renderings of Hebrew words, however readers might need robust contextual embedding to make sure these written forms are interpreted as Nif’al, especially when more than one binyan reading is possible. Table 12.1 Binyanim relying on internal changes to express temporality

Binyan

Past tense

Example

Qal (Pa’al) CaCaC lamad ‘learned’ LMD ‫למד‬ Nif’al niCCaC nilmad ‘was learned’ NLMD ‫נלמד‬

Examples (with different person prefixes)

Present tense Example

Modal form

lomed ‘learns’ LWMD ‫לומד‬ niCCaC nilmad ‘is learned’ NLMD ‫נלמד‬

Pi-CCoC/ nilmad ‘we will learn’ Pi-CCaC NLMD ‫נלמד‬ P-iCaCeC yilamed ‘will be learned’ YLMD ‫ילמד‬

CoCeC

Beyond Qal and Nif’al, the remaining five binyanim offer more regular and consistent structures from which generalizations can easily be drawn. Three of these binyanim (Pi’el, Pu’al and Hif’il) each consists of two temporal variations, one for past tense, and one for present tense and modal form, as illustrated by Table 12.2 below. For each of these binyanim, past tense takes a different form than present tense and modal forms. In Pi’el the difference is expressed in stem vowel change (i à a) as well as by the fact that present-tense/modal forms are prefixed. The Pu’al stem is invariable, but present-tense/modal forms are prefixed. Hif’il forms are prefixed throughout (see below), and the difference between the two temporal forms is expressed only in prefix vowel change (i à a). Table 12.2 Binyanim with past vs. present/modal temporal clusters Binyan

Past tense form

Pi’el

CiCeC

Pu’al

CuCaC

Hif’il

HiCCiC

Example limed ‘taught’ LYMD ‫לימד‬ sudar ‘was arranged’ SWDR ‫סודר‬ hidlik ‘lighted’ HDLYQ ‫הדליק‬

Present tense/ Modal form

Examples (with different person prefixes)

Pe-CaCeC

melamed/yelamed ‘teach’ MLMD ‫ מלמד‬/YLMD ‫ילמד‬ mesudar/tesudar ‘be arranged’ MSWDR ‫מסודר‬/TSWDR ‫תסודר‬

Pe-CuCaC

Pa-CCiC

madlik/?adlik ‘light’ MDLYQ ‫מדליק‬/ ADLYQ ‫אדליק‬

Modal Stems

169

Two more binyanim, Huf’al and Hitpa’el, have each a single phonological variant, with only the prefix changing to designate the three temporal configurations (Table 12.3).

Binyan

Table 12.3 Binyanim with one temporal cluster General form Example

Huf’al

Pu-CCaC

Hitpa’el

Pit-CaCeC

huklat/muklat/yuklat ‘be recorded’ HWQLŦ ‫הוקלט‬/MWQLŦ ‫מוקלט‬/YWQLŦ ‫יוקלט‬ hitlaxesh/mitlaxesh/nitlaxesh HTLĦSˇ ‫התלחש‬/MTLĦSˇ ‫מתלחש‬/NTLĦSˇ ‫נתלחש‬

Modal Stems Again, for the purposes of the current analysis, I am going to focus on structure and general modal function and disregard the many semantic and pragmatic notions expressed by infinitive, future and imperative forms. Moreover, I am deliberately pooling together imperative and future forms under ‘future-tense’, although I am very well aware of the different ways they interact in different binyanim. Modal (that is, imperative and future-tense) stems are more complex than present-tense and past-tense stems. For one thing, while past-tense and present-tense forms may or may not take prefixes in different binyanim, all modal stems across all binyanim are prefixed. Moreover, past-tense and presenttense each have a single prefix, while modal verbs take four different prefixes. Finally, h- and m- each has a dual binyan and temporal designation, while modal verbs carry a triple function, adding person designation to binyan and temporality. AYTN ‫ איתן‬prefixes. All future-tense verbs are marked by one of four temporal-person prefixes: ?- (whose consonantal value is often reduced to zero, spelled A ‫)א‬, marking 1st person singular, as in Qal eftax ‘I will open’ or Pu’al afutar ‘I will be fired’; t- (spelled T ‫ )ת‬marking 2nd person, as in Pi’el tedabru ‘you,Pl will talk’ or Huf’al tukleti ‘you,Fm will be recorded’, and 3rd person feminine, as in Nif’al tibahel ‘she will panic’; y- (spelled Y ‫ )י‬marking 3rd person masculine, as in Hitpa’el yitragezs ‘he will get annoyed’; and n- (spelled N ‫ )נ‬marking 1st person plural, as in Pi’el netaken ‘we will fix’. Number and gender marking is suffixed to the modal verb, as discussed below. Of the four AYTN ‫ איתן‬prefixes (creating the Hebrew acronymic mnemonic of eytan ‘robust’), three are homophonous. Of these, t- holds a transparent link with function T ‫ת‬, with no competition from the root. Its favored position at the salient edge of the function envelope (e.g., TDBRW ‫ תדברו‬tedabru, TWQLŦY ‫ תוקלטי‬tukleti) makes it a candidate for early and easy learning. In contrast, despite their great frequency in speech and writing, A ‫ א‬and Y ‫ י‬share an unfortunate phonological and morpho-orthographic affinity to each other and to another AHWY ‫ איתן‬construct, past-tense H ‫ה‬, which render them among the most difficult function letters in learning to spell Hebrew.

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12


The challenge posed by the spelling of AY ‫ אי‬prefixes demonstrates why homophony is by no means the sole factor in spelling errors. Consonantal Y ‫י‬ appears in many words as a root letter (e.g., yafe ‘nice’ spelled YPH ‫יפה‬, pniya ‘turning’ spelled PNYH ‫ )פניה‬or as a function letter (e.g., axray ‘person in charge’ spelled AĦRAY ‫ )אחראי‬and, beyond the very beginning stages of learning to read and write, does not incur spelling errors. Apart from this future tense role, consonantal A ‫ א‬is almost always a root letter (e.g., in emet ‘truth’ spelled AMT ‫)אמת‬, and is usually confused with 9 ‫ ע‬or H ‫ה‬, its natural phonological competitors. But in the modal context, ? and y become interchangeable in more than one way. First, a morpho-phonological change (described in detail in Ravid, 1995), which probably started out as an assimilation process, reduces and merges ? with y in casual speech, resulting in three rather than four prefixes – the two consonants t- and n- and the semi-vowel ?/y. So now A ‫ א‬and Y ‫ י‬not only compete as two weak onsets of an unstressed, often reduced syllable, but also serve in the exactly same function role as temporal-person designators on future-tense verbs. Moreover, h- comes in as a third weak consonantal contestant with a similar function role in past-tense Hif’il and Hitpa’el and in the infinitive forms of these binyanim. The three AHY ‫ אהי‬letters now compete in the same phonological and morphoorthographic space, rendering correct spelling choice difficult indeed. This situation is exacerbated in Hitpa’el, which has the longest and most uniform structure of all binyanim and thus makes the least distinction among the three temporal configurations: past-tense hitpa’el future-tense (reduced) etpa’el and yitpa’el, as well as infinitival le-hitpa’el are phonologically and morpho-orthographically similar. Thus the usual morphological and morpho-phonological support is absent in this function context, yielding a prediction for a long and arduous learning curve to distinguish the spellings of verb prefixes A ‫א‬, Y ‫ י‬and H ‫ה‬.

Interim Summary So far, we have seen how verb structure makes a huge contribution to the promotion of verb function prefixes. Derivational structure is constantly and consistently marked by the binyan prefixes H- (Hif’il, Huf’al and Hitpa’el) and N- (Nif’al), while temporal prefixation yields a large amount of M- ‫ מ‬and AYTN ‫ איתן‬function elements. These temporal prefixes construct unstressed, often reduced syllables, whose vowels depend on the binyan in question (e.g., yisgor ‘will close’ in Qal, yamshix ‘will continue’ in Hif’il, yuskam ‘will be agreed’ in Huf’al), and are thus sometimes susceptible to internal competition. But beyond the composite shifting prefix-stem verb structure, inflectional suffixes are more distinctly demarcated and have a more stable orthographic representation at the other edge of the function envelope.

Agreement Suffixes

171

Agreement Suffixes The clearest and most transparently demarcated verbal morphemes are the inflectional markers obligatorily suffixed to verbs. Unlike verb prefixes, which might be derivational of inflectional (or both), all verb suffixes are always grammatical, expressing agreement with the head noun. They are invariable across all seven binyanim, and bear no phonological relationship to the stem they suffix, except for consistent re-syllabification (sometimes preceded by vowel deletion), e.g., mitrage´sh/mitragshı´m ‘is/are excited’. Apart from pasttense 2nd person feminine singular –t, inflectional verb suffixes constitute full final syllables. These may be completely independent of the stem, as in the case of past-tense suffixes starting with a consonants such as –ti, -nu or –tem. If the suffix starts with a vowel, the full syllable is formed by the attachment of this vowel to the end of the stem, as in hevin/hevıńa ‘understood/Fm’. Present-tense verbs are not inflected for person, and their gender-number inflection is similar to that of nouns and adjectives. Past-tense and future verbs take person-number-gender agreement with head nouns. Past tense inflections. Past tense inflectional suffixes constitute a hugely frequent and a sound source for spelling generalizations of two kinds. First, the function roles of the extremely robust T ‫( ת‬for 1st and 2nd person) and H ‫ה‬ (for feminine 3rd person) promote the direct link between spelling and morphology. Secondly, the occurrence of Y ‫י‬, W ‫ ו‬and H ‫ ה‬at word-final position reinforce the link between final open syllable and AHWY ‫ אהוי‬designation of morphological role. These regularities would add to our predictions about early mastery of homophonous function T ‫ ת‬and H ‫ ה‬and early designation of final open vowels by AHWY ‫ אהוי‬letters. There is one glaring violation, namely 2nd person singular masculine –ta, which is obligatorily spelled without H ‫ה‬. Given the consistency and frequency of final open-syllable AHWY ‫ אהוי‬placement, the prediction is for numerous violations. Table 12.4 details the phonological and morpho-orthographic characteristics of past-tense verbs.

Suffix

Table 12.4 Person-number-gender suffixes on past tense verbs Spelling Function Example

-ti -ta -t – -a -nu -tem -ten -u

-TY ‫תי‬-T ‫–ת‬ -T ‫ת‬– -H ‫ה‬-NW ‫נו‬-TM ‫תם‬-TN ‫תן‬-W ‫ו‬-

1st person singular 2nd person singular masculine 2nd person singular feminine 3rd person singular masculine 3rd person singular feminine 1st person plural 2nd person plural masculine 2nd person plural feminine 3rd person plural

nixashti ‘I guessed’ hit’ama´lta ‘you exercised’ hustart ‘you were hidden’ nixnas ‘he entered’ lakxa ‘she took’ hivtaxnu ‘we promised’ kudamtem ‘you were promoted’ kudamten ‘you, Fm were promoted’ azvu ‘they left’

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Modal inflections. Recall that the ‘modal cluster’ in verb paradigms consists of infinitive forms (e.g., le-hikanes ‘to enter, Nif’al), imperatives (e.g., ku´mu ‘get up,Pl’, and future tense verbs (e.g., nitkadem ‘we will advance’). Future tense verbs agree with grammatical subjects in person, number and gender, while imperatives are marked for number and gender agreement with the 2nd person subject. In current psycholinguistic perspective, number-gender agreement is marked in the form of just two vowel suffixes – i for feminine (e.g., tartı´xi ‘you will boil’) and –u for plural (yedabru ‘they will talk’). This is because 1st person verbs are gender-neutral, 3rd person feminine has no suffix (tirkod ‘she will dance’), and 2nd and 3rd person plural feminines (e.g., tithalexna ‘you/they will stroll’) are practically absent from everyday speech and is considered very highregister. Thus, the – i suffixed to modal 2nd person feminine verbs (stressed and unstressed) is now associated with feminine gender alone, and as a result Y ‫ י‬has gained an additional function as designating feminine gender on imperative and future tense verbs. The high frequency of modal verb tokens in conversation supports the association of i with feminine gender in verbs, despite the strong link between –a and feminine gender, on the one hand, and between i and 1st person singular, on the other, in other contexts. Plural –u (spelled W ‫ )ו‬in contrast, is in line with past-tense 3rd person plural and plural marking of incorporated morphology. Taken together, the frequency of Y ‫ י‬and W ‫ ו‬as final open-syllable markers with morphological roles is greatly enhanced by the gender and number endings on modal verbs.

Spelling Verb Structure Against this background, we are now going to analyze the spelling of verb structure. We start by considering the spelling of root/word verbs. Given the extremely type and token frequency of Qal wordforms, this is one source of much of Hebrew spelling taken up with such meager ‘boxes’. Root words. When devoid of external affixes and voweled by a and/or e, especially in basic Qal and Pi’el contexts, spelling represents verbs as root-word stems. For example 12-1, imperative kapel ‘fold’ (root q-p-l, Pi’el) (homographic with noun ke´fel ‘fold’): QPL

‫ק פל‬

Or 12-2, past-tense daras ‘drove over’ (root d-r-s, Qal): DRS

‫דרס‬

Imperative brax ‘run away’ (12-3) (b-r- h, Qal) will also be a root-word, homographic with past-tense barax ‘ran away’, so that writers need to supply a supportive context to disambiguate the two:

Spelling Verb Structure

173

BRĦ ‫ברח‬ Quadriliteral roots in Pi’el also yield root-words, e.g., 12-4 bilbel ‘confuse’ (homographic with imperative balbel): BLBL

‫בל בל‬

In a slightly extended context, when the affixless stem is voweled by i and/or u or o – that is, in Pi’el and Pual past tense and Qal modal forms, Hebrew writers will either spell it as a root-word, or else split the root with internal Y ‫ י‬and/or W ‫ו‬. I have seen both versions and my impression is that children tend to overrepresent Y and W and adults under-represent them. For example, pihek ‘yawned’ (root p-h-q, Pi’el) will either be spelled as 12-5.a PHQ

‫פהק‬

or 12-5.b PYHQ

‫פיהק‬

And in the same way, sudar (root s-d-r, Pu’al) ‘was arranged’ may be spelled as either a root-word in 12-6.a – which, as an isolated ‘box’, might also be interpreted also as sader ‘arrange,Imp’, or noun se´der ‘order’ SDR

‫סדר‬

Or, including the internal vowel designator W in 12-6.b, homographic with soder ‘ordinal’. SWDR

‫סודר‬

Spelling such classical tri- and quadriliteral root ¼ words – mainly Qal or Pi’el masculine singular past tense (or imperative) Hebrew verbs – contributes to blurring speech/writing boundaries, as predicted in Olson’s script-as-model. On the other hand, opaque verb morphology based on defective roots in Qal creates less ‘Semitic’ monosyllabic 2-letter words such as 12-7 rats ‘runs/ran’ (root r-w-c): RC

‫רץ‬

174

12


12-8 af ‘flies/flew’ (root ’-w-p): 9P

‫עף‬

Here too, spelling, as we saw above for nouns, provides reader/writers with much more information than speech, as exemplified in monosyllabic bo ‘come, Imp’ (12-9), where all three root radicals b-w-? have clear graphemic correspondents: BWA

‫בוא‬

The spelling generalizations Hebrew reader/writers construct from written affixless root/word verbs are phono-morpho-orthographic in nature. They support the under-representation of internal –a and –e and of A ‫ א‬and H ‫ה‬, and allow only Y ‫ י‬and W ‫ ו‬to interfere with written root continuity. Prefixed verbs. Apart from Qal and past-tense forms of Pi’el/Pu’al root/ words, verb stems are preceded by prefixes, e.g., nimtsa ‘was found’ (12-10) (root m-c-?, Nif’al): NMCA

‫נמ צ א‬

Or 12-11, hisbir ‘explained’ (root s-b-r, Hif’il): HSBYR

‫הסביר‬

12-12, hushka ‘was watered’, (root sˇ-q-y, Huf’al): HWSˇKH

‫הושקה‬

And 12-13, hitbakesh ‘was asked’ (root b-q-sˇ, Hitpa’el): HTBQSˇ

‫התבקש‬

Pattern (temporal) prefixes N ‫ נ‬or versions of H ‫( ה‬H- ‫ ה‬for Hif’ı´l, HW- ‫הו‬ for Huf’al, and HT- ‫ הת‬for Hitpa’el) are followed by the continuous orthographic root stem, with only Y ‫ י‬or W ‫ ו‬allowed to break continuity as in 12-11 above. Hitpa’el metathesis. Unlike nouns, however, root and verb pattern do intermingle in the single well-known morpho-phonological context of Hitpa’el

Spelling Verb Structure

175

metathesis. Hitpa’el roots starting with a sibilant radical – s, c, z, sˇ, cˇ or zˇ – obligatorily interchange with the t in the Hitpa’el prefix, so that roots such as s-d-r or sˇ-t-q yield the verbs histader ‘be arranged’ (12-14) HSTDR

‫הסתדר‬

and hisˇtatek ‘grow silent’ (12-15), where the function T ‫ ת‬is inserted between root letters. This violation of orthographic site yields the prediction that in such cases, the T ‫ ת‬would be more difficult to identify as a function letter, and thus homophony would be more difficult to overcome than for T ‫ ת‬in its regular place. HSˇTTQ

‫השתתק‬

Metathesis has further structural consequences for both phonology and spelling. When the sibilant is voiced as in root z-n-v, voicing assimilation renders tàd as in hizdanev ‘lag behind’, root z-n-b ‘tail’, which is spelled accordingly (12-16): HZDNB

‫ה זד נ ב‬

Here, not only are the boundaries of root and function elements blurred, T ‫ ת‬is camouflaged as D ‫ד‬, which is not a function letter – and that would constitute a challenge to spelling. Fortunately, D ‫ ד‬is not homophonous. Spelling is challenged, however, in another case of sibilant roots in Hitpa’el combining metathesis and historical assimilation. Recall Hebrew used to have a class of emphatic consonants, of which s¸ spelled C ‫ צ‬was one – now pronounced as the non-emphatic affricate root radical c (ts). Hebrew spelling still faithfully records the historical emphatic assimilation of t to emphatic t ̣ in the context of Hitpa’el metathesis with root radical c. While phonology represents solely metathesis in Hitpa’el verbs such as hitstayer ‘be pictured’ (root c-y-r) or hitsta’er ‘be sorry’ (root c-‘-r), the spelling requires a change from T ‫ ת‬to Ŧ ‫ט‬, as in 12-17 HCŦYR

‫הצטיר‬

HCŦ9R

‫הצטער‬

And 12-18

The dissolution of function-root orthographic boundaries and the representation of function T ‫ ת‬as a canonical root letter Ŧ ‫ ט‬together predict great

176

12


difficulty for identifying homophonous T ‫ ת‬as a function element and spelling it correctly. Suffixed verbs. As we saw above, all verb suffixes are inflectional, carrying (person) number-gender information. The distinction between verb prefixes and suffixes establishes a consistent morpho-orthographic map for spellers. For example, future-tense titbakshu ‘you,Pl will be asked’ (12-19): TTBQSˇW

‫תתבקשו‬

The first T ‫ ת‬is the future tense-2nd person marker, followed by the second T ‫ת‬ indicating the Hitpa’el prefix. This sequence of function letters is followed by the root core, and finally the open syllable is marked by W, indicating plural number. Example 12-20 illustrates the structure of an inflected past-tense verb nixasht ‘you,Fm guessed’: NYĦŠT

‫ניחשת‬

Since this is a past-tense Pi’el verb, there is no prefix. The root letters are split by the internal vowel Y ‫י‬, and given non-voweled spelling, the suffix T ‫ ת‬is ambiguous between masculine –ta (which is not marked by final H) and feminine –t. In the same way, future-tense tavońa ‘they/you, Fm will come’ (12-21) shows the following structure: TBWANH

‫תבואנה‬

This modal Qal verb starts with function T ‫ת‬, which, in addition to modality, is ambiguous between 2nd person masculine and 3rd person feminine. The three root letters appear fully and transparently at the verb core despite the fact that only one of them stands for a consonant. Finally, the high-register suffix NH ‫נה‬ combines with the prefix to indicate plural feminine structure. The linear morpho-orthographic structure of verbs is a good indicator of their morphology. Verbs might be prefixed by H ‫ה‬, M ‫מ‬, A ‫א‬, Y ‫י‬, T ‫ת‬, N ‫ – נ‬function letters standing for binyan and/or temporal/person markers, followed by the continuous core of root letters, which may be split only by internal Y ‫ י‬or W ‫;ו‬ and if inflected for number and gender, the verb would be suffixed by T ‫ת‬, N ‫נ‬, M ‫מ‬, Y ‫י‬, H ‫ה‬, W ‫ו‬, or their combinations. One lesson that verbs teach spellers is that H ‫ה‬ might be directly associated with final –a even when gender is masculine, as is the case with –y final roots which show up in 3rd person as H, e.g., kana KNH ‫קנה‬ ‘bought’, bana BNH ‫‘ בנה‬built’ in Qal, nika NYQH ‫‘ ניקה‬cleaned’ in Pi’el, or hitmana HTMNH ‫‘ התמנה‬was appointed’ in Hitpa’el. In such cases, feminine is marked by an extra function T ‫ ת‬preceding the final –a, e.g., kanta KNTH ‫קנתה‬ ‘she bought’, banta BNTH ‫‘ בנתה‬she built’ in Qal, nikta NYQTH ‫‘ ניקתה‬she cleaned’ in Pi’el, or hitmanta HTMNTH ‫‘ התמנתה‬she was appointed’ in Hitpa’el.

Summary

177

Optional Accusative Inflection Like nouns, verbs may carry optional inflection at the end of the function envelope, signifying the incorporation of accusative (direct object) information. The incorporated material appears at the end of the verb, and is similar in structure to incorporated suffixes of prepositions and nouns. This is illustrated in re’itiv ‘I saw him’ in 12-22: RAYTYW

‫ראיתיו‬

The verb starts with the three root letters RAY ‫ראי‬, followed by the first person singular inflection TY ‫תי‬, with the final W signifying the incorporated 3rd person masculine singular accusative pronoun. However, unlike optional inflection on possessive nouns, knowledge of accusative verb paradigms is partial and deficient in literate Hebrew speaker/ writers. A root-and-pattern temporal configuration that carries not only agreement with a head noun but also incorporates pronominal information of an accusative object is too complex semantically and morpho-phonologically when optional. The form of the stem would change with binyan, root, tense, person-number-gender and pronoun person-number-gender, as in RAYTYNY

‫ר א י תי ני‬

re’itini ‘you,Fm saw me’, as opposed to re’itani ‘you, Masc saw me’. RAYTNY

‫ראיתני‬

The opportunities for learning the specific form of each such configuration are small indeed, given that not all verbs take accusative objects and that few of these are incorporated (Cahana-Amitay & Ravid, 2000). At any rate, such verbs would make use of the same set of 11 function letters in the same morpho-orthographic sites, with additional, though marginal contribution to spelling.

Summary The complexity of derivational and inflectional components of Hebrew verbs – roots, patterns, composite tense/pattern prefixes, person-number-gender agreement markers, as well as incorporated accusative pronouns – is clearly spelled out by a small number of function letters. The prediction is that several factors participate in facilitating learning the spelling of function letters in verbs (as in

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other classes): a clearly demarcated orthographic site, a transparent grammatical role, a direct path from homophonous segment to morphological function, a high token and a low type frequency, and few or no same-role competitors.

Notes 1. Depending on the inclusion of past tense –ten and modal –na feminine plural forms, which rarely occur in neutral register, and on the complex relationship between imperative and future tense forms, which is beyond the scope of this book. 2. The Academy for the Hebrew Language stipulates double YY in Nif’al future forms in order to disambiguate them from possible homographs, however double Y’s and W’s are spelled just as erratically as AHWY are in general, and WY in particular.

References Cahana-Amitay, D., & Ravid, D. (2000). Optional bound morphology in the development of text production. In S. C. Howell, S. A. Fish, & T. Keith-Lucas (Eds.), Proceedings of the 24th annual Boston University conference on language development (Vol. I, pp. 176–184). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press. Ravid, D. (1995). Language change in child and adult Hebrew: A psycholinguistic perspective. New York: Oxford University Press.

Chapter 13

Conclusion: The Psycholinguistics of Hebrew Spelling

In the last decades, linguistic science has accepted written discourse as a natural and essential component of language knowledge and analysis both in developmental terms and as an independent domain of inquiry. This book provides a motivated approach to including the notational system of a language – its orthography – in current linguistic thought. Spelling Morphology charts the psycholinguistics of Hebrew spelling by laying out the complex relationship between phonology, morphology and orthography, which constitutes the Hebrew spelling arena. Two major assumptions about the nature of spelling underlie this analysis. First, spelling is viewed in this book as a linguistic domain requiring the reciprocal mapping of structural onto semantic and functional information, and as such its acquisition and processing are governed by psycholinguistic maxims and constraints. Second, spelling is a critical component of written communication, so that the goal of correct or conventional spelling is the designation of written words which participate in discourse production. Given these assumptions, I recruited theoretical models and insights from several independent realms to motivate my analysis of spelling knowledge in Hebrew. I have shown in detail that Hebrew orthography fulfills the conditions for constituting a linguistic system – it consists of a small set of symbols, which can be combined systematically in the representation of linguistic units – syllables, morphemes, words, and phrases. Orthography is not a mirror for phonology – rather, it is an autonomous linguistic system with its own rules and patterns of behavior, motivated by the internal categories it consists of and their properties, such as root vs. function letters. The specific quality of spelling as a language domain is not only in the nature of the symbols it relies on, but also in specific constraints on their occurrence and on the ways they are distributed within orthographic space. As a linguistic domain, spelling requires an explanatory model to account for the formation and processing of abstract knowledge in the mind. I have found current connectionist models helpful and instructive in capturing the gradual progression from a seemingly chaotic landscape to the formation of stable and coherent spelling categories. The spelling knowledge network grows out of the process of data mining, whereby patterns and interconnections are extracted D.D. Ravid, Spelling Morphology, Literacy Studies 3, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-0588-8_13, Ó Springer ScienceþBusiness Media, LLC 2012

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from vast and complex data bases. By ‘connectionist’ I refer to the loose set of learning and processing models1 which explain linguistic acquisition, development and knowledge as based on general cognitive principles and constraints in interaction with constant feedback pressure from frequencies in the input. Especially enlightening in this respect is the connectionist insight that the sum of a network is larger than its parts, so that the full architecture of the phonology-morphology-orthography interface cannot be found when each of them is analyzed as an independent domain. It is only as a network that critical categories that are not represented in subsets of the data are revealed or ‘‘emerge’’, as in the case of the AHWY ‫ אהוי‬domain. Annette Karmiloff-Smith’s RR model of cognitive development (1992, 2009) points the way to how compelling spelling sense might be gained from what seems on the outset to be a collection of non-related areas in different modalities. Children start out with implicit, behavior-appropriate representations of separate systems, which grow denser, more interconnected, more explicit and more manipulable with development and the constant pressure of new and more sophisticated information pouring in, so that previously stable representations at one point of development are subject to re-description and formulation in more abstract terms. Applied to the study of spelling, the abstract patterns of Hebrew spelling emerge from the interface of spoken phonology and written orthography, with morphology supplying the hidden links between them. Knowledge of morphology is re-shaped in its turn by new insights from the orthographic domain. The result is the complex and dense spelling architecture which blurs the boundaries between speech and writing, phonology and orthography, words and roots, and makes it possible to talk about spelling in ambiguous yet efficient terms. Incoming speech provides children – in fact, all of us – with the rich world of language from which we draw our fundamental knowledge about our mother tongue. It’s no wonder the basic relationships between people are conducted orally, with the chance to review, reject and revise information online, and to watch out for ancillary information conveyed extra-linguistically to support or contradict what is being said. But at the same time a deluge of written language is all around us in various forms and formats, a further vast source of verbal information which focuses our minds on linguistic constructs. Paradoxically, the more we hear about the so-called ‘‘defection’’ of the younger generations to electronic media and the mass shift from book reading to other modes for obtaining information and entertainment, the larger and more diffuse the part of written language in our world. Before the advent of the electronic media in the last two decades, reading and writing were mostly confined to academic and literary contexts, while nowadays any communication virtually relies on the written mode, often side by side with oral interlocution, as in text and voice formats of many communication vehicles. Whereas literate language users were supposed in the past to produce ‘proper’ writing, current usage from the construction of CVs to Hi-Tech parlance requires adherence to modalityappropriate format but much less attention to stylistic niceties.

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But the spread of written language has not altered spelling principles, especially given the central role of informal written language requiring ‘spelling on the run’ such as text messaging and chat boxes, including the constraints of the newest Facebook and Twitter formats. It is true that frequently occurring function and between-class words can and do deviate from standard spelling, but efficient recruitment of content words – beyond a few with extremely high frequency – continues to require orthographic spelling in the majority of cases even in less formal contexts. This is because orthographic spelling designates specific words, providing morphological information that transcends the information provided by phonology alone. As a written domain, spelling knowledge needs to be explained in the framework of a theory that would systematically relate spoken to written language. I find David Olson’s 1994 perspective on language and literacy extremely useful in this context. Rather than dwell on the relative importance or superiority of the spoken and written modalities, Olson highlights their different strengths and functions. While spoken language has critical illocutionary strength in online interpersonal communication, written language serves as a major vehicle of metalinguistic thought in presenting abstract categories in visual form. Hebrew morphology gains strength and coherence from the visual organization of the root core and function envelope in written words. Moreover, Olson’s insight about the basic inadequacy of all forms of scripts in conveying the fullness of language is a crucial explanatory factor in the spelling puzzle. Olson shows that each script falls short of expressing some aspect of language, and in the case of Hebrew (and Arabic) orthography, it is the vocalic information that is under-represented. Therefore, reading and spelling Hebrew is hugely dependent on knowledge of contextual morphological and morpho-syntactic patterns. Learning to spell Hebrew is an example of how linguistic thinking is shaped by the script-as-model. Exposure to the vowel-deficient Hebrew orthography ensures thinking in terms of word families and morphological relationships becomes a second nature in literate adults. The specific arraignment of morphological materials in the written word supports the representation of lexical roots and specific grammatical categories such as attached clitics, derivational and inflectional affixes. Spelling constitutes part of a linguistic network, implying a systematic relationship with structural domains – phonology and morpho-phonology – on the one hand, and with meaning and function – morpho-syntax, derivational and inflectional morphology – on the other. While an alphabetical orthography certainly holds an intimate relationship with phonology, it is not simply an extended reflection of phonology in graphic form, a role restricted to transcription systems. Structure by itself is immensely important linguistic function, as I state several times in this book, but it is inadequate in the use of spelling to express natural language in discourse. As a cognitive domain, correct spelling does not take place at the level of letter or grapheme, phoneme or syllable, but rather at the lexical level. Correct spelling strives to achieve ‘lexical quality’, a term abducted from Perfetti’s (1997) original setting of extracting meaning from

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text and applied here to the production of written words. Lexical quality relates to knowledge of the full range of a word’s meanings and pragmatic uses, its phonological and orthographic structures, its grammatical make up and category membership. High-quality representation of all of these aspects is critical as the foundation of discourse comprehension. Spelling words is part of the mirror-image (yet not necessarily parallel) process of creating written discourse. The goal of spelling is achieving a high-quality fit with correct and conventional spelling in order to correspond to their orthographic representation, which by definition expresses lexical and morphological information. Therefore, spelling involves the implementation of morphological and morpho-phonological knowledge within the boundaries of a word. This is certainly true of a morphologically rich language such as Hebrew. Viewed as a linguistic system, Hebrew spelling is subject to the typological impact, a concept proposed and developed by Berman (1986) and Slobin (2001), whereby systematic language-specific constructs are imposed on the linguistic thinking of language users, generating expectations, categorization and conceptualization of language. Morphology is demonstrated in this book as a major linguistic factor in Hebrew, exerting its impact through the expression of diverse semantic notions in word structure, the organization of the Hebrew lexicon via large morphological systems, and complex morpho-phonological phenomena expressed in words and categories. It is also the critical cue to correct spelling in Hebrew. Phonological changes wrought in Hebrew over its long history have resulted in the merging and neutralization of classes such as emphatics or guttural/ pharyngeals, extending the distance between the orthographic system and the phonological constructs it expresses. This is one major source of spelling errors in Hebrew. A second source of errors is the series of amendments to the problem of vowel under-representation in the Hebrew orthography, first the addition of vowel designation to the consonantal roles of the four AHWY ‫ אהוי‬letters, and later on the introduction of the ancillary nikud diacritic system. While facilitating reading to some extent, these two orthographic categories have formed a new spelling complex designating vowels in written Israeli Hebrew, requiring special spelling resources to resolve partial and contradictory cues. Throughout this book, morpho(phono)logical knowledge and morphoorthographic construal have been shown as the major routes to correct spelling. Phonological neutralization and double consonant-vowel designation constitute the major causes of spelling errors, but are offset by the powerful impact of the morphological roles of letters. The Hebrew-specific features of its spelling system are used in dissolving ambiguity and opacity. One critical morphoorthographic spelling pointer is the fact that letters have differing root and function roles and, as such, occupy different sites in the written word. Thus, for most homophonous segments, clear participation in the function envelope is a shortcut to correct spelling which supports only one possible path between sound and letter.

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The underrepresentation of vowels, most specifically the restriction of a and e and their written representatives A ‫ א‬and H ‫ ה‬to the end of the word,2 is another critical feature of the Hebrew orthography. As a result, written, unlike spoken, roots, show up as continuous strings constituting the word’s core, with only Y ‫י‬ and W ‫ ו‬allowed to break the continuity on a non-systematic basis as in ikar ‘main part’ spelled 9YQR ‫ עיקר‬or 9QR ‫( עקר‬where the latter, as it would be in Hebrew, is homographic with akar ‘barren’). This, in turn, leads to a merger in the written representation of roots, stems and words by a series of (mostly) consonantal letters, which is responsible for creating the abstract entity ‘root words’.

Final Word Language users constantly take in spoken and written words as they occur in context, paying attention not only to their content and usage but also to their internal morpho(phono)logical make up, and the ways in which they interact with other words within the same syntactic unit. The task of Hebrew reader/ writers, like all language users, is psycholinguistic in nature. They have to rely on general cognitive and linguistic abilities filtered through Hebrew-specific lenses to data-mine patterns of frequencies, regularities and consistencies in written Hebrew. Their goal is to construe an explanatory system of the morphoorthographic constructs that underlie their spelling system. I thank those readers who have made it to the end of this maze, and I hope they found it as endlessly fascinating as I do.

Notes 1. I am well aware of the wide array of connectionist, constructivist, item-based, dynamic systems and statistical-learning models which I loosely designate ‘connectionist’ in this context. I deliberately ignore differences among the different theories in the service of gaining a broad understanding of what it means to learn a linguistic domain without having recourse to specific innate knowledge. 2. Unless belonging to the stem as in mahut ‘essence’ spelled MHWT ‫ מהות‬or karańu ‘we read’ spelled QRANW ‫קראנו‬.

References Berman, R. A. (1986). The acquisition of morphology/syntax: A crosslinguistic perspective. In P. Fletcher & M. Garman (Eds.), Language acquisition (2nd ed., pp. 429–477). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Karmiloff-Smith, A. (1992). Beyond modularity: A developmental approach to cognitive science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Karmiloff-Smith, A. (2009). Preaching to the converted? From Constructivism to Neuroconstructivism. Child Development Perspectives, 3, 99–102.

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Olson, D. (1994). The world on paper. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Perfetti, C. A. (1997). Reading ability: Lexical quality to comprehension. Scientific Studies of Reading, 11, 1–27. Slobin, D. I. (2001). Form-function relations: How do children find out what they are? In M. Bowerman & S. C. Levinson (Eds.), Language acquisition and conceptual development (pp. 406–449). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Index

A Acquisition later language development, 3, 111 C Compound double compound, 61–62, 146, 160–161 Connectionism, 25–26, 78, 179–180 H Hebrew Biblical, 73–74, 85, 148 Medieval, 74, 82 Mishnaic, 73–74, 85, 91, 130 Modern/Israeli, 12–13, 73–78, 81–82, 84–85, 87, 89–92, 130, 133, 147, 182 I Israel Arabic, 28–30, 33, 74, 76–77, 87, 91, 181 Immigration, 76 Yiddish, 74–75, 77 L Lexicon, lexical adjective, 6, 23, 31, 43–45, 50, 61–64, 66, 73–74, 97–98, 101, 106, 125–126, 128, 143, 148, 150, 154–158, 161–162, 171 noun, nominal, 6–7, 31, 43, 63–65, 67, 74, 97, 101–102, 120, 134, 141–151, 154, 158, 161, 165 verb, verbal, 4–7, 9, 13, 24, 26, 31, 44–46, 48–50, 61–68, 73–74, 82–83, 87, 97–98, 106–108, 110, 115,

119–120, 123, 125–128, 132–135, 137, 141–144, 148, 153, 155–162, 165–177, 180 temporality, 165–169 Literacy/literate, 2–9, 24, 26, 28, 30–31, 41, 48, 70, 73, 75–77, 86, 97, 101–102, 107–113, 117, 121–122, 129, 133, 135–136, 138, 151, 159, 177, 180–181 M Metalanguage/metalinguistic, 101, 122, 127, 181 Mnemonic, 21, 30, 110, 123, 132, 144–145, 169 Morphology affix, 25, 107, 113, 115–116, 118, 122–125, 151 allomorphy, 42–43, 60, 67–69, 121 derivational morphology, derivation, 43, 46–47, 49, 51, 62–64, 66, 105, 135, 142–143, 165 incorporation, 61, 158–161 inflectional morphology, inflection, 43, 49–50, 61–62, 142, 161–162, 181 linear structure/affixation, 63, 66, 105, 108 morphological family, 24, 63, 99 morpho-phonology, 58, 67–69, 75, 85, 89, 98, 103, 105, 111, 122, 167, 181 non-linear structure/affixation (root and pattern), 165–166 agreement, 13, 23–24, 61, 66, 78, 110, 123, 143, 146, 153, 155–158, 160, 162, 171–172, 177 Binyan patterns Hif’il, 165–166 Hitpa’el, 165 Huf’al, 165 Nif’al, 165

D.D. Ravid, Spelling Morphology, Literacy Studies 3, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-0588-8, Ó Springer ScienceþBusiness Media, LLC 2012

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186 Morphology (cont.) Pi’el, 165 Pu’al, 165 Qal, 165 gender animate/inanimate, 61, 154–156, 158, 161 feminine, 24, 153, 156, 159, 161, 172 masculine, 68, 125, 155 Mishkal patterns, 63–64, 123 number dual, 156–157 plural, 157 singular, 156–157 root quadriliteral, 173 tense future, 61, 68, 70, 76, 87, 107, 115, 120, 123, 125–127, 136–138, 166, 169–170, 172, 176 modal cluster, modal stems and inflections, 166–167, 169, 172 past, 32, 42–43, 45, 48, 61, 76–77, 83, 103, 107, 120, 126, 135, 137–138, 165–174, 176 present, beynoni, 61, 64, 67, 77, 89, 97, 103, 108, 120, 126, 143, 148, 153, 155–158, 166–169, 171 optional bound morphology, 109–110, 115, 123, 153, 160 accusative, 110, 159 possessive, 109–110, 115, 160 regular/irregular, 141 O Orthography AHWY doubling, 87–88 matres lectiones, 129–130, 138 alphabet, 10, 14, 16, 29, 86, 94 AYTN, 123, 166–167, 169–170 capitalization, capital letters, 8, 31 demarcation, word boundaries, 30, 109, 111, 116, 128 direction, 29, 88 emphatics, 87, 89–91, 182 function/affix letters ANY SˇLMH KWTB, 123 function/affix envelope, 115–116 morphological roles, 15, 24, 70, 122, 125, 127, 129, 135–136, 172, 182 glottals/pharyngeals, 11, 90–91, 111, 182 vowel lowering, 121–122, 124, 144

Index grapheme, 12, 15–16, 22–23, 28, 30, 32–34, 43, 57–58, 87–89, 181 MSˇH WKLB, 30, 109–112, 123, 158 clitics, 109–112, 115, 129, 181 Nikud/diacritics/vocalization, 14, 82–86, 88, 90, 129, 135–136, 139, 142, 147, 182 palatalization, 87 phoneme consonant, 130–134 semi-vowel/glide, 13, 75, 81–82, 84–85, 87, 89, 92, 103, 107, 110, 130, 132, 134, 157, 170 vowel, 134–138 phonology, 10–12, 21–34, 57–58, 67–69, 81–94 prosody, 98 root letters lexical core, 113, 115–116 stop/spirant alternation, spirantization, 14, 68–69, 82, 85–86, 88–90, 105, 111, 121–122, 124 stress, 12, 65, 67, 101, 105, 144, 148–150 syllable, 4, 11–12, 29–30, 45, 58, 65, 67, 92, 98–99, 148–149, 170–171, 179, 181 open, 137, 150–151, 153, 155, 157, 159, 171–172, 176 vowelled/nonvoweled (unvoweled) orthography, 81–83, 86, 88, 97, 129, 136, 138 P Phonology-morphology-orthography juncture morpho(logy)-orthography, 98, 101 phono(logy)-orthography, 22–23, 29, 32, 81–94, 103, 117, 124, 130 phonological neutralizations, 89 under-specification, 88–89, 103, 115, 158 Psycholinguistic(s), 2–3, 5, 9–11, 17, 21–34, 41, 76, 78, 82, 84–85, 90–91, 94, 112, 119, 128, 136, 142, 148, 165, 172, 179–183

R Reading, 2, 22, 25–26, 28–29, 31, 33, 43, 46–51, 57–58, 81, 83–87, 91, 103–105, 111–112, 118, 130, 138, 141–142, 168, 180–182 Representation, 10–16, 83–86

Index S Script-as-model, 7–10, 28, 70, 109, 173, 181 Semantics, 7–8, 58, 60–64, 98, 119, 121, 145, 147, 154, 159, 165–166 Semitic, 13, 29–30, 44, 63, 65, 73–74, 78, 83–85, 89–90, 92, 99, 105, 128, 134, 146, 173–174 Spelling errors homophony, homophonous letters, 23, 32–34, 49, 70, 88–90, 92, 97, 111, 116–119, 121, 123–125, 137, 141, 161–162, 170, 175 Spoken language, 1, 3–4, 7–8, 11, 26–27, 41, 57–58, 74–76, 86, 181 Statistical learning data mining, 27, 57, 97, 142–143, 179–180 frequency, distribution, 58, 68, 76, 119, 122, 129, 138

187 T Transcription, 1, 10–11, 13–15, 17, 31–32, 118, 132, 145, 181 Transparent/opaque (transparency/ opacity), 11, 21, 23, 26, 29, 31–35, 46–47, 50–51, 60–61, 69, 73, 75, 78, 81–82, 84–86, 89, 99, 102–105, 108, 117, 123, 128, 131, 133–134, 141–142, 144–151, 154, 159–160, 162, 168–169, 171, 173, 176, 178, 182 Typology/typological imperative, 25–27, 29, 31, 49, 51, 59–61, 182

W Written language, 1–17, 21–23, 26–28, 32, 41, 74–75, 86, 109, 180–181

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