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Prosodic patterns in Hebrew child-directed speech*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 November 2008

OSNAT SEGAL ,
BRACHA NIR-SAGIV ,
LIAT KISHON-RABIN  and
DORIT RAVID
OSNAT SEGAL*
Affiliation:
Tel-Aviv University
BRACHA NIR-SAGIV
Affiliation:
Tel-Aviv University
LIAT KISHON-RABIN
Affiliation:
Tel-Aviv University
DORIT RAVID
Affiliation:
Tel-Aviv University
*
Address for correspondence: Osnat Segal, 7b Zelig Bas, Petach Tiqwa, Israel. e-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

The study examines prosodic characteristics of Hebrew speech directed to children between 0 ; 9–3 ; 0 years, based on longitudinal samples of 228,946 tokens (8,075 types). The distribution of prosodic patterns – the number of syllables and stress patterns – is analyzed across three lexical categories, distinguishing not only between open- and closed-class items, but also between these two categories and a third, innovative, class, referred to as between-class items. Results indicate that Hebrew CDS consists mainly of mono- and bisyllabic words, with differences between lexical categories; and that the most common stress pattern is word-final, with parallel distributions found for all categories. Additional analyses showed that verbs take word-final stress, but nouns are both trochaic and iambic. Finally, a developmental analysis indicates a significant increase in the number of iambic words in CDS. These findings have clear implications regarding the use of prosody for word segmentation and assignment of lexical class in infancy.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 36 , Issue 3 , June 2009 , pp. 629 - 656
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

[*]

This work was performed in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a PhD of Osnat Segal, Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Israel. We are indebted to three anonymous reviewers and to the associate editor of the journal for their detailed and helpful comments. The authors are alone responsible for any inadequacies that remain.

References

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