Joseph Shimron

The role of vowel signs in Hebrew: Beyond word recognition

After third grade of elementary school, native Hebrew speakers in Israel gradually become expert in reading two kinds of writing systems: the one they start with that contains signs for every phoneme of the spoken language, and another, to which they are steadily introduced, beginning with the second grade, which omits most vowels, together with few consonantal distinctions. Earlier studies indicate that single voweled words are read faster than unvoweled words, particularly in a naming task. This study examined another possible contribution of vowel signs in reading Hebrew: Its effect on memory and comprehension. It was assumed that if subvocalization facilitates memory of words while reading, and if vowel signs facilitate phonological processing, as is perhaps the case in naming tasks, then vowelization may intensify the processing of the articulatory loop and this should improve memory and comprehension. Our first two experiments assessed the contribution of vowel signs to the memory of word lists in either recognition memory or word recall tasks. The third experiment examined the contribution of vowel signs to the reading of connected texts. We found that vowel signs speeded up recognition memory of words in third graders, and improved the recall of words printed in the context of mixed lists in sixth graders. We also found that vowelization improved memory and comprehension of some prose texts.

Does Word Naming Involve Grapheme-to-Phoneme Translation? Evidence from Hebrew.

Are grapheme-to-phoneme rules automatically applied when a word pattern is encoded? This question was examined using Hebrew words. In written Hebrew vocalic information is sometimes transmitted by vowel signs written below the letters, but most often is omitted altogether. Hebrew speakers were asked to name Hebrew words by their letters only, disregarding vowel signs. Naming was equally fast for words with no vowel signs, with correct vowel signs, and with incorrect ones that nevertheless preserved word sound. Naming was slower when the vowel signs were incompatible with the word sound. That this is mediated by visual mechanisms was ruled out by a further experiment. It is concluded that grapheme-to-phoneme translation is a natural response to written words, at least when naming is required.

The dependence on graphemes and on their translation to phonemes in reading: A developmental perspective

THIS STUDY COMPARED CHILDREN and adult readers in the degree to which they are able to avoid grapheme-to-phoneme translation; in how much they benefit from redundant phonemic information; and in the degree to which they are disturbed by minor changes in graphemes which are still phonemically appropriate. Hebrew readers begin reading instruction with words in which vocalic information is transmitted by vowel signs written below and above the letters; later on, they learn to read the same words without the vowel signs. Also, a change of vowel signs in Hebrew may or may not involve a change of phonemic value of the words. These facts were exploited experimentally in this study (following Navon & Shimron, 1981). Subjects were asked to name Hebrew words by their letters only. The words were sometimes vowelized correctly, and at other times, they were either unvowelized or misvowelized in a way which either preserved or did not preserve phonemic values. It was found that both children and adults were unable to resist grapheme-tophoneme translation, that both children and adults benefitted from redundant information in their normal reading, and that children but not adults were sensitive to minor changes in graphemes which still preserved phonemic values.

The Nature of Regularity and Irregularity: Evidence from Hebrew Nominal Inflection

Most evidence for the role of regular inflection as a default operation comes from languages that confound the morphological properties of regular and irregular forms with their phonological characteristics. For instance, regular plurals tend to faithfully preserve the bases phonology (e.g., rat-rats), whereas irregular nouns tend to alter it (e.g., mouse-mice). The distinction between regular and irregular inflection may thus be an epiphenomenon of phonological faithfulness. In Hebrew noun inflection, however, morphological regularity and phonological faithfulness can be distinguished: Nouns whose stems change in the plural may take either a regular or an irregular suffix, and nouns whose stems are preserved in the plural may take either a regular or an irregular suffix. We use this dissociation to examine two hallmarks of default inflection: its lack of dependence on analogies from similar regular nouns, and its application to nonroots such as names. We show that these hallmarks of regularity may be found whether or not the plural form preserves the stem faithfully: People apply the regular suffix to novel nouns that do not resemble existing nouns and to names that sound like irregular nouns, regardless of whether the stem is ordinarily preserved in the plural of that family of nouns. Moreover, when they pluralize names (e.g., the Barak-Barakim), they do not apply the stem changes that are found in their homophonous nouns (e.g., barak-brakim “lightning”), replicating an effect found in English and German. These findings show that the distinction between regular and irregular phenomena cannot be reduced to differences in the kinds of phonological changes associated with those phenomena in English. Instead, regularity and irregularity must be distinguished in terms of the kinds of mental computations that effect them: symbolic operations versus memorized idiosyncrasies. A corollary is that complex words are not generally dichotomizable as “regular” or “irregular” different aspects of a word may be regular or irregular depending on whether they violate the rule for that aspect and hence must be stored in memory.

Co-occurrence restrictions on identical consonants in the Hebrew lexicon: are they due to similarity ?

tions in terms of a single monotonic ban on perceived similarity (Pierrehumbert 1993; Frisch, Broe & Pierrehumbert 1997). We compare these accounts by examining the acceptability of roots with identical and homorganic consonants at their end. If wellformedness is an inverse, monotonic function of similarity, then roots with identical (fully similar) consonants should be less acceptable than roots with homorganic (partially similar) consonants. Contrary to this prediction, Hebrew speakers prefer root final identity to homorganicity. Our results suggest that speakers encode long-distance identity among root radicals in a manner that is distinct from feature similarity. It is well known that Semitic grammars constrain the structure of lexically stored forms. To reveal these grammatical constraints, we examine here the predictable regularities in a word’s consonantal melody ‐ the sequence of consonants obtained after removing nonreduplicative inflectional affixes and vowels from the word. Because this consonantal melody coincides with the unit listed as ‘root’ in Semitic dictionaries, this terminology is often maintained even for melodies that exhibit predictable regularities. For instance, the consonantal melody smm is dubbed ‘root’ by sources that clearly argue against its lexical storage in this form (e.g. McCarthy 1981). For the sake of simplicity, we follow here the same tradition. We wish to emphasize, however, that the consonantal melodies we examine are strictly SURFACE forms. We make no claims as to whether these strings are stored as such in the lexicon nor do we argue that they correspond to a phonological or morphological constituent.

PSYCHOLOGICAL PROCESSES BEHIND THE COMPREHENSION OF A POETIC TEXT

In addition to the psychological operations which are typical of the reading processes of most regular texts, such as recall of memory schemes, developing hypotheses and tests of relevance, I suggest that in the reading of poetic texts there would be at least two additional kinds of processes; namely the process by which the reader discovers analogies, and compares them, and the process of drawing conclusions from this comparison. The predisposition of a poetry reader is characterized by (a) the tendency to process a maximum of information from memory schemes that are evoked during reading; and (b) the readers readiness to process information expressed similarly to metaphors. That is, to process pieces of information whose meanings would not be considered consistent if taken literally.

Typicality shift in semantic categories as a result of cultural transition: Evidence from Jewish Argentine immigrants in Israel

This article examines changes in the internal structure of semantic categories as a result of cultural transition. Assuming that the typicality of the members of a semantic category determines the categorys internal structure, this work investigates typicality shifts in semantic categories of Jewish Argentine immigrants in Israel. To assess a possible shift toward the host (destination) culture, typicality ratings of the items were measured in the origin, immigrant, and destination populations. A distinction was made between typicality strengthening that occurs when an item strengthens its typicality rating, and typicality weakening that occurs when an items typicality is weakened. The results indicate a typicality shift among immigrant subjects, reflecting the change and adaptation processes that result from the cultural transition. Typicality strengthening was found to be more common than typicality weakening reflecting the “integration—assimilation” nature of the immigrant subjects. A mathematical mo...

Word Decomposition in Hebrew as a Semitic Language

Most researchers of Semitic morphology refer to the principal characteristic of Semitic morphology as non-linear or non-concatenative. Namely, instead of the morphemes being placed linearly, one after the other before or after the word stem (or base), as prefixes and suffixes, as in English, the morphemic structure of Semitic words is characterized by at least two morphemes interwoven (or interdigitated) within each other in a discontinuous (or non-concatenative) manner. Thus, we have one morpheme, the root, inserted into the other (call it template, pattern or scheme) in certain slots of the word stem structure.

Semantic development and communicative skills in different social classes

Lower‐class school children were found to be less effective in referential communications than middle‐class children. The attempt of this study was to explain this gap as a matter of linguistic development. Two hundred and six pairs of lower‐ and middle‐class children from kindergarten, second, and sixth grades were tested in the area of referential communication, using a large variety of communication tasks. Social class and age differences were found to be significant and the interaction between these two variables was also significant. The quality of listening and speaking skills was analyzed independently and distinctive patterns of development were found in each class. The content of the messages was also analyzed and frequencies were computed for the linguistic strategies employed in each group. It is suggested that considerations of semantic development may be pertinent to an account of class differences in communicative conduct.

Perceptions and Evidence of Early Literacy in Hebrew

Hebrew is among the first alphabets to be used intensely and extensively from the beginning of the first millennium BCE. The inception and development of the Canaanite alphabet as unique writing system occurred in an area where writing was in fact a long-standing and well-established tradition. The cities of Canaan lay in the midst of (or near enough to) the traffic of goods, merchants, and armies among the superpowers of the time: Egypt to the southwest, Sumer and Babylon to the northeast. Under the governance of these superpowers, writing had already been used since 3100 BCE, at least a millennium and a half before the invention of the alphabet. In particular, those Hebrews who were in Egypt were bound to have observed the monumental writing of the Egyptians. In this way the meta-language of literacy, and literacy as a state of mind, preceded and then accompanied the origination of alphabetic literacy. From this vantage point one may construe the invention of the alphabet by the Canaanites in the early second millennium BCE, as a local phenomenon of adapting a universal device to the local tongue. The story of early literacy in Hebrew may be told on the basis of two sources: texts found in archaeological sites and biblical documents. Each of these sources is somewhat problematic. As for archaeological evidence, the media for most of the writing at that time was either papyrus or parchment. Unfortunately, except for the very arid land