1.0 Language usage and Language awareness



Awareness of linear and nonlinear morphology in Hebrew:

A developmental study

Running head: Morphological awareness

Dorit Ravid

School of Education and the Department of Communications Disorders,

Tel Aviv University

Adina Malenky

School of Education, Tel Aviv University

Address for correspondence:

Dorit Ravid

School of Education, Tel Aviv University

Tel Aviv 69978, ISRAEL

Telefax: 972 3 5360394

email: doritr@ccsg.tau.ac.il

Ravid, D. & D. Malenky. Awareness of linear and nonlinear morphology in Hebrew: A developmental study. First Language, 21, 25-56, 2001.

Abstract

The study explores the interface of language typology, universal predispositions, language awareness, and school instruction through the examination of two morphological domains in Hebrew: linear formation of stem-and-suffix words, and nonlinear Semitic formation of root-and-pattern affixation. 100 children, adolescents and adults were administered five tasks testing awareness of roots, morphological patterns, stems, and suffixes in inflection and in derivation. Two major findings are reported and analyzed: awareness of linear constructions emerges earlier than awareness of nonlinear forms; and stems (roots and word stems) are easier to construe than affixes (morphological patterns and suffixes). The paper discusses the interaction of language acquisition and use with linguistic awareness, and the effect of tasks on different degrees of morphological awareness in .

1.0 Introduction

This paper investigates the development of morphological awareness in Hebrew from preschool to adulthood in two morphological domains, aiming to shed light on a number of developmental and linguistic issues, focusing on the role of typological constraints in developing sensitivity to language-specific morphological structures.

1.1 Language use and language awareness

Learning a first language is a long and complex route that extends over close to two decades (Nippold, 1998). There appear to be two modes in which language knowledge is negotiated by children and adults. One is language use, which employs language as a means towards carrying out cognitive and communicative goals, and is involved in holistic, automatic and fast processing of speech and writing. Language use requires the synthesis of separate systems of linguistic knowledge in order to map meaning onto structure in the conventional, context-appropriate language-specific form - spoken, written, or thought (Chafe, 1994).

Throughout the course of linguistic development, language users of different ages and literacy backgrounds sometimes also consciously access, discuss and verbalize their language knowledge. In such cases, children and adults evidence metalanguage or language awareness, the ability to think about language as an object from without (Chaudron, 1983; Gombert, 1992; Karmiloff-Smith 1986, 1992). This alternative mode treats language as a formal problem space, focusing analytically on its components as a cognitive goal in its own right. Metalanguage requires the ability to introspect on the linguistic components that blend together naturally in language usage - phonemes, morphemes, words, syntactic structures, and discourse types. Thus it involves an analytical perception of units of language, the ability to represent on each unit separately, disassociating form from semantic content, and conscious monitoring of one’s own linguistic knowledge (Bialystok, 1986; Valtin, 1984).

The emergence of a self-reflective, “aware” language mode that involves conscious thought about linguistic units and processes has been noted at various stages of language development and for various systems (Clark, 1978; Karmiloff-Smith, Grant, Sims, Jones & Cuckle, 1996; Van Kleeck, 1982). Its role in first language learners is controversial: Marshall & Morton (1978), for example, take a Piagetian view of language as a system with a monitoring component necessary for error detection and for self-correction that will lead to behavioral mastery. But instead of diminishing when the number of errors decreases, as would be expected of such a system, metalinguistic capacities increase with age and the growth of linguistic knowledge (Gombert, 1992); and since behavioral mastery of a language is achieved quite early on, it seems that metalanguage has functions that constitute part of natural language development (Karmiloff-Smith, 1986, 1992).

Young children display emergent metalinguistic awareness in natural interaction through spontaneous self-repairs, “practice” sessions, questions and observations about language (Clark, 1978). Children’s ability to perform structured linguistic tasks such as inflectional changes in non-natural, experimental contexts implies a rudimentary metalinguistic capacity (Ravid, 1995a). However, tasks requiring controlled, analytical, explicit verbalization of linguistic processes and constructs are beyond the capacities of young children, and may not be fully performed adequately before adolescence (Ashkenazi & Ravid, 1998; Menn & Stoel-Gammon, 1995). Moreover, metalinguistic insights reflect different perceptions of language at different ages (Nippold, Uhden & Schwarz, 1997; Tunmer & Herriman, 1984; Van Kleeck, 1982).

Literacy and schooling have a central role in metalinguistic development. There is evidence that specific aspects of language awareness, especially phonological and morphological awareness, both promote and are promoted by learning to read and write through the establishment of links between phonemes, syllables and morphemes and their written representations (Bentin, 1992; Gillis & de Schutter, 1996; Fowler & Liberman, 1995; Levin, Ravid & Rappaport, 1999, in press; Rubin, 1988). Abilities requiring more integrated knowledge such as reading comprehension are also related to analytic metalinguistic skills (Demont & Gombert, 1996; Yuill, 1998). Sensitivity to more specific language domains, such as derivational morphology, has been shown to play a role in reading ability in higher school grades and among college students (Henry, 1993; Mahony, 1994; Smith, 1998). Metalinguistic development is thus clearly related to the acquisition of literacy and school-based knowledge.

1.2 Morphological awareness

Morphology is closely related to other linguistic domains. Its phonological facet is expressed in the structural components of words and the types of formal changes they undergo in morphophonological operations. Its semantic facet is expressed in the meanings of words and morphemes, and morphological relations play an important role in the organization of the mental lexicon (de Jong, Schreuder & Baayen, 2000). Morphology is also related to syntax through derivational processes expressed in the argument structure of the sentence and through inflectional marking (Spencer, 1991). Testing morphological awareness may thus provide a window on other structural and semantic aspects of language and their interaction (Anglin, 1993).

A number of studies have shown that the ability to judge, segment and extract morphological units emerges early on, but that explicit explanations using relevant terminology occur later on. For example, kindergartners are already able to segment bi-morphemic agentive nouns such as writer and to correct grammatical mistakes such as He likes to watched movies. However, they find it hard to explain their morphological corrections (Jones, 1991; Smith-Lock & Rubin, 1993). Ashkenazi & Ravid (1998) show that explicitation in the explanation of morphological riddles and jokes is not fully achieved before adolescence.

Studies indicate that morphological awareness contributes to success in the beginning phases of literacy instruction since morphology links together phonological and semantic facets of language (Brittain, 1970; Carlisle, 1995; Carlisle and Nomanbhoy, 1993; Levin et al., in press). This is especially evident in studies comparing learning- and reading-disabled children with normally achieving readers (Webster, 1994). Anglin (1993) provides evidence that vocabulary growth in gradeschool years increases together with children’s ability to perform morphological problem solving. In subsequent stages of becoming an efficient reader, the most important morphological aptitude is the growing ability to segment, extract and discuss stems and affixes from the multimorphemic vocabulary of the “literate” English lexicon (Derwing & Baker, 1986; Freyd & Baron, 1982; Lewis & Windsor, 1996; Nagy & Scott, 1990; Wysocki & Jenkins, 1987). Nippold (1998) shows that during the 9-through-19 age range English speakers’ understanding and use of various word classes increases together with their ability to define words and their awareness of the lexical network which facilitates the acquisition of new words.

1.3 Nonlinear and linear structures in Hebrew morphology

Studying the development of morphological awareness in Hebrew presents a unique challenge of metalinguistic analysis. Hebrew morphology makes use of two major types of word formation devices: root-and-pattern Semitic forms alongside with concatenated, linear structures, and thus permits testing contrasts which are not found in non-Semitic languages (Blau, 1971; Bolozky, 1997).

INSERT TABLE 1 ABOUT HERE

1.3.1 Nonlinear formation

The Hebrew lexicon is root-based. All verbs and most nouns and adjectives contain a tri- or quadri-consonantal core, the Semitic root, which carries the main lexical substance of the word (Ravid, 1990), shared by other words with the same core meaning (Table 1). This structural core appears discontinuously in the word, since it is interdigitated by vowels provided by the complementary structure of the pattern. The combination of root and pattern into a word is termed nonlinear affixation (Berman, 1987a), and is illustrated in Table 1 in a set of words related by the root k-l-t ‘take in, absorb’. A number of studies have looked at readers’ perception of the Hebrew root. Ephratt (1997) tested 4th to 6th graders and adults on root awareness by having them color letters within the word. She found that they consistently colored root letters inside the words rather than using other strategies such as coloring initial or final letter sequences. Berent & Shimron (1997) also found sensitivity to roots in two experiments on adult Hebrew readers. No developmental study has so far explored speakers’ awareness of the Semitic root in a structured elicitation from kindergarten to adulthood.

While all the words in Table 1 share the consonantal skeleton k-l-t, they differ in the other component of their structure, the pattern. A pattern is a phonological template associating a stress pattern with a set of vowels, sometimes with additional affixes (e.g., the prefix hi- in the verbal pattern hiCCiC, the suffix -an in the nominal agentive pattern CoCCan). Each pattern is mapped onto a set of root consonants in a different way. For example, in miklat ‘shelter’ the first two root consonants are preceded by prefix mi- and followed by the infixed vowel a; whereas in kélet ‘input’ root consonants are separated by the vowel set é-e with a penultimate stress pattern. The combination of root and pattern is thus nonlinear and gives the surface form of a Semitic word (McCarthy, 1982). Each of the components of this template occurs at a different representational tier or plane (McCarthy, 1981), and only their combination results in a possible word. Neither root nor pattern is pronounceable, nor do they have lexical status as words. This makes them less accessible to speakers than linear segments, which are pronounceable, with stems almost always extant words.

The syntax and semantics of patterns is comparable to that of linear derivational suffixes (Lieber, 1981). They have classificatory functions indicating syntactico-semantic verbal and nominal classes. The seven verbal patterns are termed binyanim (literally, buildings), and they indicate transitivity values (Berman, 1993). For example, kalat ‘absorbed’ is a transitive verb, while hiklit ‘recorded’ is causative and huklat ‘was recorded’ is its passive counterpart. Nominal patterns, a few dozen in number, indicate ontological categories (Clark, 1993) such as agent, instrument, place, abstract nominal. For example, CoCCan is an agent pattern, while maCCeC indicates instruments.

There is evidence that the extraction of patterns may be more difficult and require even more explicit awareness than roots: Wile the former carry the main lexical substance of the word and are represented by salient consonants, patterns classify words and are mostly vocalic. Word-internal vowels, which constitute the major part of the pattern, have been shown to be less important to Hebrew speakers than consonants (Ravid, 1995a) and may thus be less linguistically salient. Moreover, being mostly vocalic, patterns are under-represented in the spelling system (Shimron, 1993). For example, pattern miCCaC is represented only by the letter M in the written word MQLT miklat ‘shelter’. Hebrew speakers, including teachers, often claim that they do not “hear vowels” when asked to segment words. Frost, Forster & Deutsch (1997) studied the lexical representation of Hebrew words by testing adults on reading non-vowelled Hebrew words. They found that previous exposure to the root letters (but not to the morphological pattern) facilitated lexical access and naming of targets that were derivations of the root, that is, evidence for the primacy of root representations over pattern representations in gaining access to words. Frost et al. conclude that primary morphological analysis in Hebrew entails the extraction of the root and not of the word pattern. To date, no study has examined roots versus patterns in development.

1.3.2 Linear formation

In addition to root-and-pattern structures, the Hebrew lexicon contains linearly concatenated stem-and-suffix forms, e.g., mal’ax-i ‘angel-ic’. Table 2 illustrates linear structures in inflection and derivation.

INSERT TABLE 2 ABOUT HERE

The major difference between linear and nonlinear operations is formal. Linear structure consists of a pronounceable stem containing vowels, which is in most cases a word in its own right (e.g., mada ‘science’, kos ‘glass’). Unlike the Semitic root, which is interdigitated by the pattern, the stem is followed (in some cases, preceded) by a separate suffix (e.g., agentive –an, diminutive –it). The result is a linear structure, e.g., mada-an ‘scientist’, kos-it ‘wine glass’. Although stems often undergo morphophonological changes (e.g., layla / leyli ‘night / nocturnal’, cf. English five / fifth), the concatenated stem-and-suffix form always marks the boundaries of discernibly distinct entities. In contrast, the result of root and pattern affixation is a fused form where the two components are interdigitated. The components of linear formation are thus more analytic than those of nonlinear forms: Unlike the abstract, discontinuous, consonantal Semitic root, linear morphemes are identifiable, distinct, pronounceable units.

The linear / nonlinear contrast is relevant to the inflectional / derivational dichotomy in Hebrew. Linear structures occur in both domains, as shown in Table 2, although their historical origins are different: inflectional suffixes are typically Semitic and practically unchanged since Biblical Hebrew, while derivational suffixes are more recent and have increased in number and productivity as a result of language contact with Arabic and with European languages (Berman, 1987a; Gesenius, 1910; Holes, 1995; Nir, 1993). Nonlinear formation is mostly restricted to derivation, except for tense shifting in verbs (Schwarzwald, 1996). This again leads to the expectation that linear structures should be more accessible to analysis than nonlinear ones, as inflection is more transparent, productive, predictable and regular than derivation.

Inflection is widespread in Hebrew and mostly obligatory. Nouns are inflected for number and gender (e.g., sus / susa / susim / susot ‘horse / mare / horses / mares’), and adjectives agree with them (e.g., sus gadol ‘horse big = big horse’ / susa gdola ‘mare big = big mare’). Verbs inflect for tense, and agree with their subjects in number, gender, and (in past and future tenses), also in person (e.g., hiskamta / hiskamt ‘you, Sg agreed / you, Fm,Sg agreed’). Prepositions inflect for number, gender and person (e.g., mimex ‘from-you,Fm,Sg’).

Two knowledge sources are relevant to the development of meta-morphological perception: natural language acquisition and school instruction.

1.4 Hebrew morphology in acquisition

Grammatical morphological alternations - first number / gender distinctions, then verb tense and person - initially appear in the speech of normally developing Israeli children before the end of the second year of life (Dromi, 1987; Kaplan, 1983; Levy, 1980; Ravid, 1997). By the end of their third year, children make productive use of all obligatory inflectional marking on nouns, verbs and adjectives, though mastery of stem changes and idiosyncratic forms takes until age 7 at least (Berman, 1981a,b, 1983; Ravid, 1995a,b). Optional inflectional marking of genitive nouns first appears productively in the early years of gradeschool (Berman, 1985; Levin et al., in press), and opaque systems such as numerals are not marked correctly before highschool, and even that takes school intervention (Ravid, 1995c).

Hebrew-speaking children display knowledge of word-formation early on, though full mastery takes until adolescence since the derivational system is less regular and predictable than the inflectional one, and not as productive (Berman, 1995). The literature describes differential paths of acquisition for the three major lexical classes - nouns, verbs and adjectives - and their structural components. Verbs. This is the most structured system in Hebrew, with all verbs consisting of a combination of root and one of the seven verbal patterns, termed binyanim. Most early verbs take the semantically and syntactically neutral verbal pattern P1 (Qal), and by age three basic transitivity relations such as causativity and incohativity are expressed in the rest of the non-passive binyanim. Though children do not find novel verb formation, especially denominal verbs, to be easy, by age 4 they are able to coin semantically appropriate novel verbs from other verbs in a form consistent with the structural stipulations of their grammar, and showing knowledge of Semitic root-formation in forming verbs with irregular roots (Berman, 1999). By kindergarten, children are familiar with a large number of root-related word families, and make productive and mostly correct use of salient transitivity relations (Berman, 1993). However, more marked and less transparent operations such as morphological passive formation are still not completely mastered by 9 years of age.

Nouns are less restricted morphologically than verbs in Hebrew and offer a challenge of a wide range of structures from non-derived forms, through zero-conversion, to morphologically complex blends, compounds, linear and nonlinear forms. Children readily coin novel nouns as early as 3 years and earlier, but they often violate structural and semantic constraints in doing so (Berman, 1999). Clark & Berman (1984) found that in younger children the preferred structural option for agent and instrument nouns was the -an suffix, and they also used zero-conversion from present participles (e.g., xotex ‘cuts’ for ‘cutter’), whereas older children employed as wider variety of structures. Unlike English-speaking children, the compound option was not a preferred option by Hebrew speakers in the Clark & Berman study. Free innovation of compounds starts only at age four, and kindergartners still do not have full command of stem changes in compounds (Berman, 1987b). Sensitivity to the classic Semitic word-structure, however, is apparent in Hebrew early on. Children as young as 3 were able to interpret novel nouns, indicating their ability to extract the root from the given test item (Clark & Berman, 1984). In both a structured elicitation test of deverbal noun coinage, and in a corpus of nearly one thousand unconventional lexical usages recorded from children aged 2 to 8 years, Berman (1999) found that the majority of novel noun coinages took the form of some possible root plus noun-pattern rather than linear stem-and-suffix forms. In contrast, in a structured task eliciting novel nouns from verbs and nouns in normally developing 8-10 and 6-8 year olds, as compared to SLI children aged 8-10, nonlinear root-and-pattern responses were found to increase with age and to be significantly more prevalent in the older controls (Ravid, Avivi Ben-Zvi & Levie, 1999). Not all types of nouns are acquired productively early on. While children in all of the previously described studies find the semantics of agent and instrument easy to express early on, coining action and state nominals and other abstract nouns starts later, around age 5, and takes until highschool to consolidate as a productive system. Children initially attach the abstract suffix -ut to a variety of stems, then move on from the least marked, transitively neutral action nominal pattern CiCuC to the appropriate action nominal pattern for each binyan and finally, by adolescence, learn the complex lexical network of deverbal nouns (Berman, 1997; Ravid & Avidor, 1998).

Adjectives. Morphologically complex adjectives in Hebrew take two main structures: Nonlinear form, based on present-participle verb forms, e.g., matsxik ‘funny’ (P5), and linear form, consisting of a nominal stem with the suffix -i, e.g., xashmal-i ‘electr-ic’. In a study of spontaneous speech in preschoolers, Ravid & Nir (2000) found that nonlinear affixation precedes linear suffixation in adjectives, which occurred only in the oldest group of kindergartners. This finding is supported by other studies on the morphological development of adjectives in Hebrew (e.g., Berman, 1994, 1997; Levin et al., in press; Ravid, Levie & Avivi Ben-Zvi, in press).

A major source of information about morphological structure and semantics in schoolage children is formal and informal school instruction. Recent studies indicate that learning about written Hebrew both requires and fosters morphological knowledge, since Hebrew spelling consistently represents both roots and affixes. Israeli gradeschoolers make use of these morphological consistencies from early on in their spelling strategies (Gillis & Ravid, 2000). Exposure to highly synthetic written Hebrew texts encourages young readers to employ syntactic and morphological cues in analyzing long strings of letters designating morphemes, e.g., the written string WBMHBRTH pronounced u-ve-maxbart-a ‘and-in-notebook-hers’. Moreover, formal language instruction in Israel focuses on Hebrew structure, and especially on its morphology and phonology, from the youngest grades.

1.5 Study hypotheses

It is clear that both linear and nonlinear formation are essential components of Hebrew morphology, and that they both occur in natural language acquisition in different morphological classes. Focusing on the development of meta-linguistic awareness, for which salience and analyticity of structures are crucial (Gombert, 1992), we make two predictions: (1) Linear precedence. Awareness of linear morphemes will precede that of nonlinear morphemes, since linear morphemes are easier to perceive and isolate than nonlinear morphemes which are fused together. (2) Lexical precedence. Awareness of lexical morphemes - roots and stems, which carry the main lexical substance of the word, will precede awareness of affixal patterns and linear suffixes, which have categorical functions in both inflection and derivation.

2.0 Method

This study examines the development of morphological awareness in Hebrew speakers, assessed by an experimental design testing two main types of processes: nonlinear word-formation by the Semitic combination of consonantal root and affixal pattern in the derivational domain; and linear concatenation of stem and suffix in the inflectional domain.

2.1 Participants

100 children, adolescents and adults, 20 in each of the five age groups and divided equally by gender participated in this study: Kindergarten (mean age: 5;5; range: 5;1-5;11). This was the youngest group that piloting showed could handle the study tasks. By this age, children are familiar with most of the morphological constructions in Hebrew, though mastery of exceptions and of literate forms is far in the future. Kindergartners do not receive formal language instruction, but they are exposed to stories and poems and encouraged to experiment with writing. 3rd grade (mean age: 8;7; range: 8;2-9) represents middle childhood. By this age, all children without special needs have reached behavioral mastery in reading and are well on the way to grasping spelling regularities. They are familiar with Biblical Hebrew and in many schools have started learning English as a second language. 6th grade (mean age: 11;7; range: 11;3-13) marks the end of gradeschool. 6th graders, on the verge of adolescence, have virtually no spelling errors and are familiar with a range of textual genres. They have been learning English and sometimes another foreign language for a number of years. 9th grade (mean age:14;5; range:14;1-14;11) represents highschool, a time when formal, analytic language instruction is at its most demanding, alongside with reading and writing texts of all types. The oldest group is that of adults, students or college graduates in subjects other than Hebrew language, literature or linguistics, (mean age: 27; range: 20-39). All participants were native speakers of Hebrew from a middle to high socio-economic background.

2.2 Procedure

Participants were tested individually and orally at school, in a quiet room. Adults were tested in their homes. Kindergartners were tested in two separate meetings to reduce test pressure. Responses were recorded and transcribed by the tester.

2.3 Materials

There were five study tasks, each containing 6 test items, in two sections: I Nonlinear tasks: 1. Nonce words, 2. Noun patterns, 3. Analogies; II Linear tasks: 4. Backformation,

5. Grammatical judgments. Each task was preceded by 2 training items. Order of the five tasks, of task sections, and of items within each task was randomized. The full tasks appear in the Appendix.

2.3.1 Nonlinear formation tasks

Since root-and-pattern word formation constitutes the major lexical device in Hebrew, we examined participants’ awareness of these two components in three lexical categories (nouns, adjectives and verbs), by using three different tasks which provide different ways of looking at how Hebrew speakers construe roots and patterns.

1. Nonce word task. The participant was presented with a set of 6 sentences containing a nonce word (2 nouns, 2 verbs, and 2 adjectives) constructed of an active root (occurring in several Hebrew words) and a pattern, again common in Hebrew words. For example The boy *hidrig `(possible interpretation) graded’ the blocks (nonce word *hidrig composed of root d-r-g ‘grade’ and causative verb pattern hiCCiC; cf. the extant word dereg ‘ranked’). S/he was then presented with 2 extant words, related to the nonce word morphologically through the root (e.g., madrega `step’ with the same root d-r-g) or through the pattern (hisbir `explained’ with the same pattern hiCCiC) and asked if the nonce word was connected to the extant word. Responses were scored as correct if the participant replied “yes”, identifying a relationship between the two words. The requirement for root and pattern awareness in this task is thus basic, on the one hand, since it is enough to establish a connection between two words by saying “yes” to score correct. On the other hand, the fact that the stimulus word is an unfamiliar nonce word means participants have to focus on root and pattern alone with no clue provided by lexical meaning of the whole word. Each root and pattern response received a scoring of 1, so that the maximal points for each response type was 6.

2. Noun patterns task. This task tested awareness of root and pattern in nouns by open-ended questions. The participant was asked, for example, why a librarian (Hebrew safran, root s-p-r ‘tell’, agent noun pattern CaCCan) is called that way. The task contained 6 nouns, each representing an ontological category: Agent, instrument, collective noun, disease name and abstract nominal (see Appendix). A correct response contained the same root as in the stimulus word, and a designation of its category (person, disease, etc.). An example of a fully correct response would be: It’s a man (indicating awareness of the agent noun CaCCan) working in the library (Hebrew sifriya, containing the root s-p-r `tell’). This task does not require the analysis of the components of nonce words, but it does direct participants’ attention to the internal structure of a known word, seeking a same-root word to serve as a focal point in a proposition that would explain the stimulus word. Note that a correct root score required the actual production of a word sharing the same root, but a correct pattern score only required a generalization about the pattern meaning – e.g., person, instrument, disease, etc. Each root and pattern response received a scoring of 1, so that the maximal points for each response type was 6.

3. Analogies task. This task tested awareness of root and pattern indirectly by eliciting analogies to 6 words - 3 nouns, 2 verbs, one adjective. For example, the participant was presented with the action nominal ktiva ‘writing’ (root k-t-v ‘write’, pattern CCiCa) and asked to provide similar words. The training part directed the participants to both root and pattern responses (see Appendix). A correct response was related to the stimulus word in either root or pattern. Root responses could be, for example, katav `wrote’ or mixtav `letter’, and pattern responses could be glisha `surfing’ or sgira `closing’. In this case, both response types required an analysis of the stimulus word into its components, in addition to actually seeking words containing one of these components. The maximal score for each response type was 6.

2.3.2 Linear formation tasks

We examined awareness of linear components in the backformation and in the grammaticality judgment task, focusing on awareness of the semantics of linear inflectional affixes.

4. Backformation task. Backformation is a reverse process of deriving a simplex stem from a complex form by removing a suffix, which occurs naturally in both child language and language change (Ravid, 1995b). Here, we made use of this morphological device to see if participants were aware of the relationship between complex inflectional forms and their stems by asking them to find the word hidden within the stimulus word. This task contained 6 inflected words with a linear structure, e.g., adumim `red, Pl’ consisting of singular adom `red’ and the plural suffix -im. Each correct response was given a score of 1, so that the maximal score was 6.

5. Grammatical judgment task. Participants were presented with 6 sentences with ungrammatical inflected words and 2 grammatical sentences. They were asked to judge which sentences were “funny” (for the children) or incorrect (the adults). They were also asked to correct the incorrect items and to explain what was wrong with them. Examples: ani halaxta `I went, 2nd person’ to the store (cf. correct ani halaxti ‘I went,1st’ or ata halaxta ‘you went,2nd’. Participants’ responses on the grammaticality judgment task were scored 1 point for each identified and corrected structure, a maximal score of 6.

3.0 Results

INSERT TABLE 3 AND FIGURE 1 ABOUT HERE

Looking at the two major morphological devices in Hebrew, we hypothesized linear precedence: Awareness of linear formation would precede nonlinear structure. In order to test this hypothesis, we combined the scores of the three nonlinear tasks (nonce words, noun patterns, and analogies tasks) and the two linear tasks (backformation and grammaticality), and compared their mean percentages (Table 3). A two-way analysis of morphological task type (2 - linear / nonlinear) by age (5) with repeated measures showed an effect of age (F(4,95)=97.34, p ................
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