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Language acquisition is, by far, the child’s most important cognitive achievement in infancy and childhood, underlying almost all communicative, social, and psychological ability (Gillis and Ravid 2003). The present entry discusses a number of key psycholinguistic terms relating to child language acquisition, with particular reference to Hebrew. 1. Approaches to Language Acquisition Unlike foreign language learning, first language acquisition generally happens naturally, successfully, and with relatively few errors, despite the incomplete and oft…

The term ‘middle’ or ‘mediopassive’ refers to verbs like נשבר nišbar ‘to break (intrans.)’,נרטב nirṭav ‘to become wet’, התנפח hitnapeax̱ ‘to be inflated’, and התפוצץ hitpoṣeṣ ‘to pop (intrans.)’, which exemplify the middle voice. While sentences with an active verb have an agent subject that performs the action, e.g., דני פוצץ את הבלון dani poṣeṣ ʾet ha-balon ‘Dani popped the balloon’, and in sentences with a passive verb an agent may be present or implied, e.g., הבלון פוצץ (על ידי דני) ha-balon puṣaṣ (ʿal yede dani) ‘The balloon was popped (by Dani)’, middle verbs downgrade the…

The terms ‘null argument’, ‘missing argument’, and ‘argument ellipsis’ refer to the omission from a clause of one or more of three types of nominals required by the main verb: the surface Subject, the Direct Object, and/or the Indirect Object. For example, אני) נתתי לרינה את הספר) [Subject: ʾani = Ø] natati le-rina ʾet ha-sefer ‘(I) gave the book to Rina’; (דן סיפר לי (סיפור dan siper li [Direct Object: sipur = Ø] ‘Dan told me (a story)’; (דן שלח את המכתב (לרינה dan šalax̱ ʾet ha-mixtav [Indirect Object: le-Rina = Ø] ‘Dan sent the letter (to Rina)’. In languages in which argument omis…

Verbs play a major role in numerous aspects of language structure, in linguistic form-function relations, and in processes of language development. In Hebrew, all verbs are formed by integrating a consonantal root into a verb-pattern or בניין binyan, e.g., רק"ד r-q-d + hiCCiC→ הרקיד hirqid ‘to cause to dance’, and all verbs carry agreement features (person, gender, number) and tense, e.g., הרקיד hirqid—3rd person, masculine, singular, past. The acquisition of verbs by Hebrew-speaking children is described here from a developmental psycholinguistic perspective a…

Nouns are content words that refer to people, places, objects, or abstract notions. In the sentence they can function as the subject or the object of a verb or as part of a prepositional phrase. Nouns in Hebrew may be inflected for gender (e.g., masculine ילד yeled ‘boy’, feminine ילדה yalda ‘girl’) and number (e.g., singular חודש x̱odeš ‘month’, plural חודשים x̱odašim ‘months’, and, rarely, dual חודשיים x̱odšayim ‘two-months’). By default the noun’s plural suffix accords with its gender (e.g., ילדים yeladim ‘boys’, ילדות yeladot ‘girls’). Hebrew nouns also get bound genitive f…

The term ‘linguistic simplification’ (פישוט לשוני pišuṭ lešoni) refers to any process that reduces the structural complexity of a text while trying to preserve its meaning and information content. Simplification is intended to make the text more comprehensible and more suited to the needs, knowledge, and proficiency level of the reader (or listener) without rendering it childish or simplistic. Linguistic simplification can be achieved using a variety of means: a vocabulary of familiar, everyday words (e.g.,להגיד lehagid ‘to say’ vs. להצהיר lehaṣhir ‘to declare’, לקנות liqnot ‘to…

This entry discusses the terms ‘predicate’ and ‘predication’ with special reference to Hebrew. Traditional grammarians define the term ‘predicate’ in relation to ‘subject’. In Hebrew, the notion of grammatical dependence of the predicate on the subject is embodied in Hebrew grammatical terminology. The term for ‘subject’ is נושא nose, the active participle of the root נש"א n-s-ʾ ‘carry’, literally meaning ‘(the one that) carries’, while the term for ‘predicate’ is נשוא nasu, the passive participle of the same root, literally meaning ‘(the one being) carried’ (Izre’…