Developing linguistic register across text types

Abstract

The study considers the topic of linguistic register by examining how schoolchildren, adolescents, and adults vary the texts that they construct across the dimensions of modality (spoken/written discourse) and genre (narrative/expository discourse). Although register variation is presumably universal, it is realized in language-specific ways, and so our analysis focuses on Israeli Hebrew, a language that evolved under peculiar socio-historical circumstances. An original procedure for characterizing register -as low, neutral, or high -was applied to four text types produced by the same speaker-writers. We found that across all age groups, "neutral" items constituted the bulk of the material, and that the lexicon accounted for some 80% of variation. Developmentally, we found that acquisition of fully flexible register variation continues beyond adolescence. Finally, we observed that text types range on a cline from everyday colloquial usage in oral narratives to more formal, high-level language in written expository essays. These results are discussed in light of their implications for the nature of register variation, later language development, and the sociolinguistics of contemporary Hebrew.

Linguistics in the service of communication disorders

“…This enables researchers to investigate the elusive concept of "syntactic complexity" in the context or writing. Writing moreover encourages the retrieval of higher-register, literate lexical items, and marked morpho-syntactic structures (Ravid & Berman 2009;Ravid & Levie 2010). At the same time, these very same features impose a greater burden on less experienced writers such as children, who still lack the executive functions for monitoring large pieces of text, especially in expository writing (Berman 2008).…”

Children's command of plural and possessive marking on Hebrew nouns: a comparison of obligatory versus optional inflections*

“…The optionality and opacity of noun possessives entails their scarcity in child-directed speech and their concomitant status as a literate high-register marker (Ravid & Berman, 2009). Possessive nouns are rare in everyday spoken communication, except for a small class of kinship terms (e.g.…”

“…Possessive incorporation is optional, since noun possessives are usually expressed syntactically in everyday language, and certainly in input to children and in their own output, as evidenced in the many syntactic errors described above. The bound morphological option is rarer, typical of higher register, specifically written, formal or narrative language (Ravid & Berman, 2009). Thus children are exposed to noun plurals earlier and in larger quantities than to noun possessives, and they are also obliged to compose plural forms morphologically from early on, whereas the major possessive expression remains syntactic.…”

Hebrew verbal passives in Later Language Development: the interface of register and verb morphology

“…Passive Nif'al past and future tense forms in the same corpora were as sparse. However, passive verb usage was noted as a prominent high register marker in the expression of detached, abstract discourse stance in adolescent and adult discourse production (Berman & Ravid, 2009; Ravid & Berman, 2009), with special concentration in adult narrative writing (Ravid & Chen-Djemal, 2015). This supports our hypothesis regarding the special role passive constructions occupy in Hebrew event-telling and the drawn-out route to learning their usage contexts in the language.…”

“…Moreover, register-sensitive usage is more aligned with the displaced writing mode, which allows for more planning and monitoring, hence more complex linguistic features (Halliday, 1989). Accordingly, verbal passives occupied a prominent part of the elevated Hebrew register in Ravid and Berman's (2009) analysis of text production across adolescence.…”