The role of allophony and frequency in the acquisition of the Hebrew rhotic (original) (raw)
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This study investigates the roles of two factors potentially affecting acquisition order of phonemes: (a) the lexical frequency of the phoneme in various prosodic positions, and (b) phoneme consistency. The research analyses rhotic attempts and productions in the spontaneous speech of two Hebrew-acquiring children from the onset of speech until the completion of rhotic acquisition. I show that the more consistent (i.e. less allophonic variation) a phoneme is in a given prosodic position, the more likely the infant is to attempt targets with this phoneme in this position (selectivity) and the earlier the faithful production of the phoneme in this position will be. Lexical frequency is shown to play no noticeable role in the early acquisition of Hebrew rhotics. Rather, it is phoneme consistency which drives selectivity and biases acquisition order.
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This paper investigates manner variation of Israeli Hebrew rhotics with respect to two factors: prosodic position and speaker gender. An acoustic experimental study shows that although the Hebrew rhotic phoneme tends to be a dorsal approximant, it is significantly more likely to undergo fortition in onset position. This fortition is a result of target overshoot, the rhotic subsequently being produced with a greater degree of constriction than that which would have resulted in an approximant, subsequently surfacing as a stop, a fricative, a tap or a trill. Furthermore, in onset position, female speakers show more variation and produce fewer approximants than male speakers .
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Corpus linguistics and Modern Hebrew: Towards the …, 2003
Phonological Variation in Spoken Hebrew Except for Standard vs. Arabicized Israeli Hebrew (see Blanc 1964), one can hardly speak of dialects within contemporary spoken Hebrew. Thus in this chapter, the discussion on phonological variation in spoken Hebrew is restricted to variation in style. Attention is given mostly to speech rate and degree of casualness, which constitute a major cause of phonetic variability in any particular dialect. "Informal speech" is often identified with "fast speech," but speech style is not necessarily the same as speech rate, even though both may involve similar phonological phenomena. "Fast speech" is usually associated with reduction and assimilation phenomena, but those are not necessarily the consequences of speech rate. Casual speech style is often associated with the same manifestations. The emotional content and a variety of psychological and sociological factors appear to determine the degree of attention one pays to one's own speech. Increased attention ascertains that articulatory goals are attained, whereas decreased attention allows natural reduction and assimilation (the "ease of articulation" phenomenon). But decreased attention does not preclude increase in speech rate: Often, one's natural rate of speech in informal contexts is faster than it is in more formal situations, and the faster rate may, in itself, contribute to reduction. The reason is that with less time, the inherently reducible elements are more likely to be
Journal of Communication Disorders, 2001
Phonological deficits are common in children with specific language impairment (SLI). However, the degree to which they constitute an area of extraordinary difficulty, and their contribution to the morphological deficits of these children are largely unknown. In this investigation, we studied a group of young children with SLI who were acquiring Hebrew, a language in which phonology and morphology are closely linked. The phonology of these children lagged behind that of same-age peers as well as younger normally developing children matched according to mean number of morphemes per utterance. Furthermore, the children with SLI were more likely to commit phonological errors that neutralized important morphological distinctions in their language. These findings have implications for both assessment and therapy. Learning outcomes: As a result of this activity, the following learning outcomes will be achieved: The participant will be able to: (1) describe the differences in phonology between children with SLI and typically developing children; (2) describe the impact of phonological disorders on the assessment of the morphological systems of children with SLI; and (3) explain the necessary modifications to a therapy program for children with a combination of morphological and phonological disorders. D
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This paper examines the phenomenon of 'missing' or ‘unintentional silently articulated’ consonants in Israeli Hebrew (IH)-speaking atypical adult and child populations. 'Missing' consonants first appeared in the phonological process of 'Non– Vocalization' (N-V) in eight profoundly ('speech readers') and severely ('hearers') hearing-impaired adults (4 male/4 female-17-45 years old). In N-V the hearing-impaired articulate the consonant phoneme but without phonation: i.e. looking as if it is produced but sounding as if it is omitted. Atypical children display a similar phenomenon in Consonant-Free-Words (CFWs): (a) six monolingual hearing-impaired children using a cochlear implant device (3 male/3 female-1;5-2;8 years) and (b) the a-synchronization of the development of syllable structure, the extreme manifestation of which is CFWs, found in 16 children with Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS) (11 male/5 female-average age 3;11). Spectrographic ana...
Vowel harmony and universality in Hebrew acquisition
Brill’s Annual of Afoasiatic Languages and Linguistics, 2012
The role of universals versus language specific grammars during acquisition is at the focal point of this study. A corpus-based investigation of two children’s harmony patterns during acquisition is carried out. It is shown that although Hebrew does not have a productive harmony grammar, there is nevertheless a considerable amount of vowel harmony in the children’s productions, suggesting speakers have a universal predisposition for such patterns. The children start out at roughly the same point, the ultimate goal being determined by the ambient language. The developmental paths, however, are individual. One child shows a preference for segmental considerations in determining harmony patterns, while the other shows a preference for prosodic considerations. Both children, however, gradually modify their grammars, presented herein within an Optimality Theoretic framework, ultimately reaching the same goal, an adult grammar without active vowel harmony.