Article published In:
New Questions for the Next DecadeEdited by Gonia Jarema, Gary Libben and Victor Kuperman
[The Mental Lexicon 11:3] 2016
► pp. 401–428
Edited by Gonia Jarema, Gary Libben and Victor Kuperman
[The Mental Lexicon 11:3] 2016
► pp. 401–428
Hebrew adjective lexicons in developmental perspective
Subjective register and morphology
Objective frequency does not always provide reliable information about lexical distributions across individuals’ development. We propose the subjective ranking by experts of lexical items’ register in the sense of ‘levels of linguistic usage’, which has been independently linked to AoA, as an alternative. This proposal was tested in Hebrew, a language showing marked distinctions between the everyday colloquial style and more formal, historically-related types of expression. A list of over 3,500 Hebrew adjectives in 19 morphological categories was compiled from dictionary sources. All adjectives on the list were ranked on a 1–5 linguistic register scale by 329 language expert judges. A Model Based Latent Class Analysis yielded five high-agreement groups of adjectives with mean register scores from 1.44 to 4.51, taken to represent five developmentally consecutive adjective lexicons. Semantic and morphological analyses indicated a rise in the abstractness and specificity of adjectives in the five lexicons, with concurrent changes in their morphological makeup. Two morphological categories emerged as the major components of the Modern Hebrew adjective lexicon: Resultative patterns, expressing states, and i-suffixed denominals, expressing nominal attributes. The study showed that subjective register classification may constitute a yardstick in development, with implications for other languages where register judgements can apply.
Keywords: adjectives, morphology, register, Hebrew, AoA, subjective ranking
References
Alderson, J.C
(2007) Judging the frequency of English words. Applied Linguistics, 28(3), 383–409. 
Andersen, E.S
(1992) Speaking with style: The sociolinguistic skills of children. London: Routledge.
Auer, E.T., Bernstein, L.E., & Tucker, P.E
(2000) Is subjective word familiarity a meter of ambient language? A natural experiment on effects of perceptual experience. Memory & Cognition, 281, 789–797.
Avneyon, E
(2007) The Sapir Hebrew-Hebrew dictionary. Or Yehuda: Hed Artzi. [in Hebrew]
Baayen, R.H., Feldman, L.B., & Schreuder, R
(2006) Morphological influences on the recognition of monosyllabic monomorphemic words. Journal of Memory and Language, 551, 290–313.
Balota, D.A., Pilotti, M., & Cortese, M.J
(2001) Subjective frequency estimates for 2,938 monosyllabic words. Memory & Cognition, 291, 639–647.
Balota, D., Cortese, M., Sergent-Marshall, S., Spieler, D., & Yap, M
(2004) Visual word recognition for single-syllable words. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 133(2), 283–316.
Bar-Ilan, L. & Berman, R.A
(2007) Developing register differentiation: The Latinate-Germanic divide in English. Linguistics, 451, 1–36.
Bar-On, A., & Ravid, D
(2011) Morphological decoding in Hebrew pseudowords: A developmental study. Applied Psycholinguistics, 321, 553–581.
Bar-On, A., Dattner, E., & Ravid, D
Submitted). Resolving homography in reading Hebrew garden-path sentences: A developmental perspective.
Benelli, N., & Grinboim, Y
(2015) Between familiarity and frequency: A psycholinguistic study of Hebrew adjectives. Tel Aviv University ms. [in Hebrew]
Berman, R.A
(1978) Modern Hebrew structure. Tel Aviv: University Publishing Projects.
(1985) Acquisition of Hebrew. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
(1993) Marking of verb transitivity by Hebrew-speaking children. Journal of Child Language, 201, 641–669.
(1994) Formal, lexical, and semantic factors in acquisition of Hebrew resultative participles. Berkeley Linguistic Society, 201, 82–92.
(2004) Between emergence and mastery: The long developmental route of language acquisition. In R.A. Berman (Ed.), Language development across childhood and adolescence: Psycholinguistic and crosslinguistic perspectives (pp. 9–34). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Berman, R.A., & Ravid, D
(2009) 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.
Biber, D., & Conrad, S
(2009) Register, genre, and style. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Blackwell, A.A
(2005) Acquiring the English adjective lexicon: Relationships with input properties and semantic typology. Journal of Child Language, 321, 535–562.
Blodgett, E.G., & Cooper, E.B
(1988) Talking about it and doing it: Metalinguistic capacity and prosodic control in three to seven year olds. Journal of Fluency Disorders, 131, 283–290.
Brysbaert, M., & Cortese, M
(2011) Do the effects of subjective frequency and age of acquisition survive better word frequency norms? The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 64(3), 545–559.
Brysbaert, M., & Ghyselinck, M
(2006) The effect of age of acquisition: Partly frequency related, partly frequency independent. Visual Cognition, 131, 992–1011.
Carroll, J.B
(1970) An alternative to Juilland’s usage coefficient for lexical frequencies. ETS Research Bulletin Series, 1970(2), i–15.
Caselli, M.C., Bates E., Casadio, P., Fenson, J., Fenson, L., Sanderl, L., & Weir, J
(1995) A cross-linguistic study of early lexical development. Cognitive Development, 101, 159–199.
Clark, E.V
(2003) First language acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Diessel, H
(2007) Frequency effects in language acquisition, language use, and diachronic change. New Ideas in Psychology, 251, 108–127.
Dixon, R.M.W., & Aikhenvald, A.Y
(2014) Adjective classes: A cross-linguistic typology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dockrell, J.E., & Messer, D
(2004) Later vocabulary acquisition. In R.A. Berman (Ed.), Language development across childhood and adolescence: Psycholinguistic and crosslinguistic perspectives (pp. 35–52). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Douglas, F.M
(2003) The Scottish corpus of texts and speech: Problems of corpus design. Literary and linguistic computing, 18(1), 23–37.
Ferguson, C.A
(1994) Dialect, register, and genre: Working assumptions about conventionalization. In D. Biber & E. Finegan (Eds.), Sociolinguistic perspectives on register (pp. 15–30). New York: Oxford University Press.
Gai, A
(1995) The category ‘adjective’ in Semitic languages. Journal of Semitic Studies, 11, 1–9.
Gadet, F
(2009) Stylistic and syntactic variation: Introduction. In K. Beeching, N. Armstrong, & F. Gadet (Eds.) Sociolinguistic variation in contemporary French (pp. 115–120). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Gries, S.T. & Divjak, D
(Eds.) (2012) Frequency effects in language learning and processing. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
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.
Itai, A., & Wintner, S
(2008) Language resources for Hebrew. Language Resources and Evaluation, 421, 75–98.
Juhasz, B.J
(2005) Age-of-acquisition effects in word and picture identification. Psychological Bulletin, 1311, 684–712.
Jurafsky, D
(2003) Probabilistic modeling in psycholinguistics: Linguistic comprehension and production. In R. Bod, J. Hay, & S. Jannedy (Eds.), Probability theory in linguistics (pp. 39–96). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Kennedy, G
(2014) An introduction to corpus linguistics. London & New York: Routledge.
Kuperman, V., & Van Dyke, J.A
(2013) Reassessing word frequency as a determinant of word recognition for skilled and unskilled readers. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Performance and Perception, 391, 802–823.
Levin, I., Ravid, D., & Rappaport, S
(2001) Morphology and spelling among Hebrew-speaking children: From kindergarten to first grade. Journal of Child Language, 281, 741–769.
Lo, Y., Mendell, N., & Rubin, D
(2001) Testing the number of components in a normal mixture. Biometrika, 881, 767–778.
MacWhinney, B
(2000) The CHILDES Project: Tools for analyzing talk. Vol. 2: The database (3rd ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Nippold, M.A
(2016) Later language development: School-age children, adolescents, and young adults (4th ed.). Austin, TX: Pro-Ed.
Nippold, M.A., & Duthie, J.K
(2003) Mental imagery and idiom comprehension: A comparison of school-age children and adults. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 461, 788–799.
Nylund, K.L., Asparouhov, T. & Muthen, B
(2007) Deciding on the number of classes in latent class analysis and growth mixture modeling: A Monte Carlo simulation. Structural Equation Modeling, 141, 535–569.
Pitchford, N.J. & Mullen, K.T
(2001) Conceptualization of perceptual attributes: A special case for color? Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 801, 289–314.
Ravid, D
(1990) Internal structure constraints on new-word formation devices in Modern Hebrew. Folia Linguistica, 241, 289–346.
(1995) Language change in child and adult Hebrew: A psycholinguistic perspective. New York: Oxford University Press.
(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: John Benjamins.
(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: John Benjamins.
(2006) Word-level morphology: A psycholinguistic perspective on linear formation in Hebrew nominals. Morphology, 161, 127–148.
(2012) Spelling morphology: The psycholinguistics of Hebrew spelling. New York: Springer.
Ravid, D., & Berman, R.A
(2009) Developing linguistic register across text types: The case of Modern Hebrew. Pragmatics & Cognition, 171, 108–145.
Ravid, D. & R. Berman
(2010) Developing noun phrase complexity at school-age: A text-embedded cross-linguistic analysis. First Language, 301, 3–26.
Ravid, D., & Levie, R
(2010) Hebrew adjectives in later language text production. First Language, 301, 27–55.
Ravid, D., & Nir, M
(2000) On the development of the category of adjective in Hebrew. In M. Beers, B. van den Bogaerde, G. Bol, J. de Jong, & C. Rooijmans (Eds.), From sound to sentence: Studies on first language acquisition (pp. 113–124). Groningen: Center for Language and Cognition.
Ravid, D., & Schiff, R
(2006) Roots and patterns in Hebrew language development: Evidence from written morphological analogies. Reading and Writing, 191, 789–818.
Ravid, D. & R. Schiff
(2012) From dichotomy to divergence: Number/gender marking on Hebrew nouns and adjectives across schoolage. Language Learning, 621, 133–169.
Ravid, D., & Shlesinger, Y
(1987) On the classification and structure of -i suffixed adjectives. Hebrew Linguistics, 251, 59–70. [in Hebrew]
Ravid, D., & Vered, L
In press). Learning passive forms as lexical items: Later language development in Hebrew. Journal of Child Language.
Ravid, D., & Zilberbuch, S
(2003) The development of complex nominals in expert and non-expert writing: A comparative study. Pragmatics and Cognition, 111, 267–297.
Ravid, D., Levie, R., & Avivi-Ben Zvi, G
(2003) Morphological disorders. In L. Verhoeven & H. van Balkom (Eds.), Classification of developmental language disorders: Theoretical issues and clinical implications (pp. 235–260). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Ravid, D., Ashkenazi, O., Levie, R., Ben Zadok, G., Grunwald, T., Bratslavsky, R., & Gillis, S
(2016) Foundations of the root category: Analyses of linguistic input to Hebrew-speaking children. In R.A. Berman (Ed.), Acquisition and development of Hebrew: From infancy to adolescence (pp. 95–134). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Saiegh-Haddad, E. & Spolsky, B
(2014) Acquiring literacy in a diglossic context: Problems and prospects. In Saiegh-Haddad, E. & Joshi, M. (Eds.) Handbook of Arabic literacy: Insights and perspectives (pp. 225–240). Dordrecht: Springer.
Salerni, N., Assanelli, A., D’Odorico, L., & Rossi, G
(2007) Qualitative aspects of productive vocabulary at the 200- and 500-word stages: A comparison between spontaneous speech and parental report data. First Language, 271, 75–87.
Sandhofer, C., Smith, L.B., & Luo, J
(2000) Counting nouns and verbs in the input: Differential frequencies, different kinds of learning? Journal of Child Language, 271, 561–585.
Schachter, P., & Shopen, T
(2007) Parts-of-speech systems. In T. Shopen (Ed.), Language typology and syntactic description: Clause structure (2nd ed., vol. 11, pp. 1–60). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Shlesinger, Y
(2000) Journalistic Hebrew: Stylistic aspects of Israeli newspaper sections. Beer-Sheva: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Press. [in Hebrew]
Spencer, A
(1991) Morphological theory. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
Thompson, G.L., & Desrochers, A
(2009) Corroborating biased indicators: Global and local agreement among objective and subjective estimates of printed word frequency. Behavior Research Methods, 411, 452–471.
Tribushinina, E., Van den Bergh, H., Ravid, D., Aksu-Koç, A., Kilani-Schoch, M., Korecky-Kröll, K., Leibovitch-Cohen, I., Laaha, S., Nir, B., Dressler W.U., & Gillis, S
(2014) The first year of adjectives: A growth curve analysis of child speech and parental input. Language, Interaction and Acquisition, 51, 185–226.
Vichner, A
(2016) Adjectives in young children’s storybooks. Tel Aviv University ms. [in Hebrew]
Cited by
Cited by 11 other publications
Berman, Ruth A.
2020. Chapter 14. Genitive (smixut) constructions in Modern Hebrew. In Usage-Based Studies in Modern Hebrew [Studies in Language Companion Series, 210], ► pp. 507 ff. 
Berman, Ruth A.
2020. Chapter 11. Nominalizations. In Usage-Based Studies in Modern Hebrew [Studies in Language Companion Series, 210], ► pp. 375 ff.
Bolozky, Shmuel
2022. On the Role of Suffixes in the Formation of Hebrew Nouns and Adjectives. In Developing Language and Literacy [Literacy Studies, 23], ► pp. 657 ff.
Bolozky, Shmuel & Ruth A. Berman
2020. Chapter 9. Parts of speech categories in the lexicon of Modern Hebrew. In Usage-Based Studies in Modern Hebrew [Studies in Language Companion Series, 210], ► pp. 265 ff.
Levie, Ronit, Galit Ben-Zvi & Dorit Ravid
2017. Morpho-lexical development in language impaired and typically developing Hebrew-speaking children from two SES backgrounds. Reading and Writing 30:5 ► pp. 1035 ff.
Ravid, Dorit
2020. Chapter 8. Derivation. In Usage-Based Studies in Modern Hebrew [Studies in Language Companion Series, 210], ► pp. 203 ff.
Ravid, Dorit & Rachel Schiff
2021. Judging Hebrew adjective agreement across development: syntactic and morpho-syntactic awareness. Reading and Writing 34:1 ► pp. 1 ff.
Savaldi-Harussi, Gat & Sigal Uziel
2023. Frequency of word usage by Hebrew preschoolers: implications for AAC core vocabulary. Augmentative and Alternative Communication 39:2 ► pp. 123 ff.
Schwarzwald, Ora R.
2020. Chapter 7. Inflection. In Usage-Based Studies in Modern Hebrew [Studies in Language Companion Series, 210], ► pp. 147 ff.
Seroussi, Batia, Anat Stavans & Sara Zadunaisky-Ehrlich
2021. Relations between literacy-related abilities and the lexical quality of expository texts of Hebrew-speaking children (Relaciones entre habilidades relacionadas con el aprendizaje de la lengua escrita y la calidad léxica de los textos expositivos de niños hebreo-parlantes). Journal for the Study of Education and Development 44:1 ► pp. 47 ff.
Tribushinina, Elena, Marinka Willemsen, Esmee Kramer & Pim Mak
2022. Incremental Processing of Prenominal Modifiers by Three-Year-Olds: Effects of Prototypicality and Contrast. In Developing Language and Literacy [Literacy Studies, 23], ► pp. 81 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.