Hostname: page-component-7dd5485656-wjfd9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-10-31T23:15:58.218Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

More on the acquisition of locative prepositions: an analysis of Hebrew data*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Esther Dromi
Esther Dromi
Affiliation:
University of Kansas
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The use of locative prepositions by Hebrew-speaking children aged 2; 0–3; 0, was investigated in a cross-sectional study. Thirty kibbutz children served as subjects. The spontaneous utterances of each child were analyzed and scored for the frequency with which the child supplied obligatory contexts for locative expressions as well as for appropriate use. The findings suggest the following order of acquisition: be- ‘in’; le- ‘to’; le+ pronominal suffixes ‘to’ (dative); al ‘on’; le ‘to’ (directional); mi- ‘from’; al-yad ‘beside’; meaxorey ‘behind’; mitaxat le- ‘under’. The role of formal linguistic complexity in determining that order is discussed. Special reference is made to the contrast between enclitic prefix prepositions and separate word prepositions that express the same locative notions.

Information

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 6 , Issue 3 , October 1979 , pp. 547 - 562
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1979

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

[*]

I am extremely grateful to Dr Melissa Bowerman, the Bureau of Child Research, University of Kansas, and Dr Ruth Berman, Department of Linguistics, Tel Aviv University, Israel, for their valuable criticisms of the early drafts of this paper. Address for correspondence: Esther Dromi, School of Education, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv, Tel Aviv, Israel.

References

REFERENCES

Brown, R. (1973). A first language: the early stages. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, E. V. (1972). On the child's acquisition of antonyms in two different semantic fields. JVLVB 11. 750–8.Google Scholar
Clark, E. V. (1973). Non-linguistic strategies and the acquisition of word meanings. Cognition 2. 161–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, H. H. (1973). Space, time, semantics and the child. In Moore, T. E. (ed.), Cognitive development and the acquisition of language. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Clark, E. V. & Clark, H. H. (1977). Psychology and language. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.Google Scholar
De Villiers, J. G. & De Villiers, P. A. (1973). A cross-sectional study of the acquisition of grammatical morphemes in child speech. JPsycholRes 2. 267–77.Google ScholarPubMed
Dromi, E. (1977). MLU as a measure of language development in Hebrew-speaking children aged 2–3. Master's dissertation, Tel Aviv University.Google Scholar
Grieve, R., Hoogenraad, R. & Murry, D. (1977). On the young child's use of lexis and syntax in understanding locative instructions. Cognition 5. 235–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grimm, H. (1975). On the child's acquisition of semantic structure underlying the word field of prepositions. L&S 18. 91–119.Google Scholar
Johnston, J. R. & Slobin, D. I. (1979). The development of locative expressions in English, Italian, Serbo-Croatian and Turkish. JChLang 6. 531–47.Google ScholarPubMed
Lipp, E. (1977). The acquisition of Estonian inflections. JChLang 4. 313–19.Google Scholar
Lyons, J. (1967). A note on possessive, existential and locative sentences. FL 3. 390–6.Google Scholar
MacWhinny, B. (1976). Hungarian research on the acquisition of morphology and syntax. JChLang 3. 397–410.Google Scholar
Parisi, D. & Antinucci, F. (1970). Lexical competence. In D'Arcais, G. Flores & Levelt, W. J. M. (eds), Advances in psycholinguistics. Amsterdam: North-Holland.Google Scholar
Slobin, D. I. (1973). Cognitive prerequisites for the development of grammar. In Ferguson, C. A. & Slobin, D. I. (eds), Studies of child language development. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.Google Scholar
Washington, D. & Naremore, R. (1978). Children's use of spatial prepositions in two and three dimensional tasks. JSHR 21. 151–65.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed