Form and function in early clause-combining.

Abstract

The study characterizes developmental trends in early Hebrew clause-combining (CC) by analyzing the interplay between linguistic form and communicative function in different interactional settings. Analysis applied to all utterances produced by three children aged 2; 0-3 ;0 who combined two or more clauses, either self-initiated or on the basis of adult input. Ten types of CC were analyzed for marking by connectives (e.g., the Hebrew equivalents of 'and', 'that', 'so'). Four shared consecutive developmental phases emerged: non-marking; partial marking by 'and' and 'that'; use of 'but' and 'because', favored significantly in interlocutor-supported contexts; marking of adverbial relations and more varied use of še- 'that'. These CC processes are interpreted as reflecting general properties of language development, in the form of gradually increasing specification of form-function relations under the impact of interlocutor-child interactive support combined with Hebrew-particular typological factors.