The joint enterprise between research in theoretical linguistics and the acquisition of phonology and morphology is the focus of this volume, which provides fresh data from Hebrew, evaluates old issues and addresses new ones. The volume includes articles on segmental phonology (vowel harmony and consonant harmony), prosodic phonology (the prosodic word, onsets and codas), and phonological errors in spelling. It attempts to bridge the gap between phonology and morphology with articles on the development of filler syllables and the effect of phonology on the development of verb inflection. It also addresses morphology, as well as the development of morphological specification and the assignment of gender in L2 Hebrew. The data are drawn from typically and atypically developing children, using longitudinal and cross-sectional experimental methods.

"More than 80 years have passed since Bauer and Leander's historical grammar of Biblical Hebrew was published, and many advances in comparative historical grammar have been made during the interim. Blau's recognized preeminence as a Hebraist and Arabist as well as his understanding of language change make this volume a valuable contribution to the comparative and historical explanation of Biblical Hebrew phonology and morphology. This book is an extensive revision and translation of Blau's original work, which was first published in Hebrew."--Back cover

Modern Hebrew is a highly synthetic Semitic language—its lexicon is rich in morphemes. This volume supplies the first in-depth psycholinguistic analysis of the interaction between morphological knowledge and spelling in Hebrew. It also examines how far this model can be applied to other languages. Anchored to a connectionist, cognitive, cross-linguistic and typological framework, the study accords with today’s perception of spelling as being much more than a mere technical skill. Contemporary psycholinguistic literature views spelling as a window on what people know about words and their structure. The strong correlation between orthographies and morphological units makes linking consistent grammatical and lexical representation and spelling units in speaker-writers a key research goal. Hebrew’s wealth of morphological structures, reflected in its written form, promotes morphological perception and strategies in those who speak and write it, adding vitality and relevance to this work.

The volume addresses developing knowledge and use of Hebrew from the dual perspective of typologically specific factors and of shared cross-linguistic trends, aimed at providing an overview of acquisition in a single language from infancy to adolescence while also shedding light on key issues in the field as a whole. Essentially non-partisan in approach, the collection includes distinct approaches to language and language acquisition (formal-universalist, pragmatic-usage based, cognitive-constructivist) and deals with a range of topics not often addressed within a single volume (phonological perception and production, inflectional and derivational morphology, simple-clause structure and complex syntax, early and later literacy, writing systems), with data deriving from varied research methodologies (interactive conversations and extended discourse, adult input and child output, longitudinal and cross-sectional corpora, structured elicitations). Each chapter provides background information on Hebrew-specific facets of the topic of concern, but typically avoids ethno-centricity by relating to more general issues in the domain. The book should thus prove interesting and instructive for linguists, psychologists, and educators, and for members of the child language research community both within and beyond the confines of Hebrew-language expertise.

The essays in this volume arose out of the Society of Biblical Literature section on linguistics and Biblical Hebrew and have been selected to provide a summary and statement of the state of the question with regard to a number of areas of investigation. The sixteen articles are organized into sections on phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, discourse analysis, historical/comparative linguistics, and graphemics.

This book puts together contributions of linguists and psycholinguists whose main interest here is the representation of Semitic words in the mental lexicon of Semitic language speakers. The central topic of the book confronts two views about the morphology of Semitic words. The point of the argument is: Should we see Semitic words’ morphology as “root-based” or “word-based?” The proponents of the root-based approach, present empirical evidence demonstrating that Semitic language speakers are sensitive to the root and the template as the two basic elements (bound morphemes) of Semitic words. Those supporting the word-based approach, present arguments to the effect that Semitic word formation is not based on the merging of roots and templates, but that Semitic words are comprised of word stems and affixes like we find in Indo-European languages. The variety of evidence and arguments for each claim should force the interested readers to reconsider their views on Semitic morphology.

This book is simultaneously a theoretical study in morphosyntax and an in-depth empirical study of Hebrew. Based on Hebrew data, the book defends the status of the root as a lexical and phonological unit and argues that roots, rather than verbs or nouns, are the primitives of word formation. A central claim made throughout the book is the role of locality in word formation, teasing apart word formation from roots and word formation from existing words syntactically, semantically and phonologically. The book focuses on Hebrew, a language with rich verb morphology, where both roots and noun- and verb-creating morphology are morphologically transparent. The study of Hebrew verbs is based on a corpus of all Hebrew verb-creating roots, offering, for the first time, a survey of the full array of morpho-syntactic forms seen in the Hebrew verb. While the focus of this study is on how roots function in word-formation, a central chapter studies the information encoded by the Hebrew root, arguing for a special kind of open-ended value, bounded within the classes of meaning analyzed by lexical semanticists. The book is of wide interest to students of many branches of linguistics, including morphology, syntax and lexical semantics, as well as of to students Semitic languages.

In The Development of the Biblical Hebrew Vowels, Benjamin Suchard establishes phonetically regular sound laws comprehensively describing the Tiberian Biblical Hebrew reflexes of the Proto-Northwest-Semitic vowels.

This impressive study analyzes the form of biblical Hebrew that was canonized by the Masoretes, Jewish religious and language scholars who were centered in Tiberias in the late first millennium C.E. The grammatical system of the Masoretes is the key to understanding the Hebrew Bible, and yet because of its tremendous complexity, the system has often been neglected. This study of Tiberian Hebrew phonology is a valuable contribution toward a fuller understanding of Masoretic grammar. The sound system of biblical Hebrew is quite distinct from that of modern Hebrew and is the most elaborate of all the attested Semitic languages. Dr. Malone's thorough analysis describes this sound system in light of both recent linguistic study (generative phonology) and his own far-ranging work on other Semitic languages. The results of his work are stated in the form of phonological rules that will assist the biblical Hebrew scholar in understanding phonology and its impact on Hebrew grammar. The reader will find much value in the elaborate charts and diagrams throughout the book, especially chapter 10, which illustrates the derivations of the first twenty verses of the Book of Genesis, and chapter 12, which presents an inventory of Tiberian Hebrew words and phrases of particular interest. A glossary and bibliography complete the book.

A unique study of the Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls In Qumran Hebrew, Reymond examines the orthography, phonology, and morphology of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Short sections treat specific linguistic phenomena and present a synopsis and critique of previous research. Reymond’s approach emphasizes problems posed by scribal errors and argues that guttural letters had not all “weakened” but instead were “weak” in specific linguistic environments, texts, or dialects. Reymond illustrates that certain phonetic shifts (such as the shift of yodh > aleph and the opposite shift of aleph > yodh) occur in discernible linguistic contexts that suggest this was a real phonetic phenomenon. Features: Summary and critique of previous research Discussion of the most recently published scrolls Examination of scribal errors, guttural letters, and phonetic shifts