Acquiring case-marked pronouns in Hebrew: the interaction of linguistic factors

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Abstract
Children's production of case-marked pronouns in Hebrew was studied with respect to possessive marking, direct-object marking, and ‘on’- locative marking. In each of these three instances the preposition appears in a bound form with a suffixal pronominal. One hundred and five children between 2;0 and 5:5 were tested in a game-like procedure designed to elicit each of the three prepositions with 1st, 2nd and 3rd personal pronouns. Results indicate that general cross-linguistic principles are operating in the acquisition process, while language specific morphophonological complexity affects relative order of acquisition. A developmental sequence may be seen in the five response patterns identified.