Developing Language and Literacy

This volume dedicated to Dorit Ravid, offers 29 new chapters on the multiple facets of spoken and written language learning and usage from a group of illustrious scholars and scientists, focusing on typologically different languages and anchored in a variety of communicative settings. The book encompasses five interrelated yet distinct topics. One set of studies is in the field of developmental psycholinguistics, covering the acquisition of lexical and grammatical categories from toddlerhood to adolescence. A second topic involves a section of studies on the interface of cognition and language, with chapters on processing, production, comprehension, teaching and learning language in usage and in historical perspective. A third topic involves a theoretical and applied perspectives on the acquisition and development of literacy competence, including reading, writing, spelling and text production. A fourth topic brings together an array of studies on social, environmental and clinical diversity in language, highlighting novel issues in multilingualism, immigration, language and literacy disorders. Finally, a section of the volume examines in depth questions in Modern Hebrew linguistics, as the home language and launching base of Dorit Ravid’s research work.

Ronit Levie is a Speech-Language Therapist by training, a faculty member specializing in developmental psycholinguistics at the Department of Communication Disorders, Tel-Aviv University. Ronit is interested in the emergence and development of the Hebrew morphology and lexicon across the learning years. Her research derives from Usage Based models, focusing on corpus analyses of typical and atypical populations from different socio-economic backgrounds. She has published papers in leading journals, such as Morphology, Reading and Writing, First Language, The Mental Lexicon, and Dyslexia.

Amalia Bar-On is a Speech and Language Therapist by training and a senior faculty member at the Department of Communication Disorders, Tel-Aviv university. She has developed a psycholinguistic model of Hebrew reading development which is widely accepted among researchers, clinicians, and educators. Her research addresses the orthographic features of the Hebrew orthography, focusing on Hebrew-specific as well as universal processes of reading and learning to read in typical and atypical populations. She has published papers in leading journals, such as Reading and Writing, Applied Psycholinguistics, and Journal of Learning Disabilities.

Orit Ashkenazi is a senior Speech and Language Therapist and a developmental psycholinguist teaching at Hadassa Academic College in Jerusalem. Her research focuses on the acquisition of the Hebrew verb from a usage-based perspective. Her seminal dissertation on this topic has expanded into various research avenues including verb analyses in peer conversations and an investigation of Hebrew verb binyan functions. Orit has published in leading journals such as Journal of Child Language, First Language and Morphology.

Elitzur Dattner is a linguist, teaching at the Department of Communication Disorders, Tel-Aviv university, and at the Department of Hebrew and Semitic Languages, Bar-Ilan University. Elitzur’s research focuses on a cognitive-discursive perspective on morphological and syntactic phenomena, by applying new and advanced statistical methodologies in a usage-based framework. He collaborates with developmental psycholinguists and speech-language therapists to model the cognitive representation of language and its development, as governed by usage, discourse pragmatics and communicative needs. He published papers in leading journals, such as Linguistics, Reading and Writing, and Applied Psycholinguistics. He acts as the assistant editor for the journal Written Language and Literacy, and was an editorial associate of two large-scale edited books.

Gilad Brandes is a speech-language therapist teaching at the Department of Communication Disorders, Hadassa Academic College. He is alsoa doctoral student at the School of Education, Tel Aviv University. His doctoral research, under the supervision of Prof. Dorit Ravid, focuses on the development of clause combining in Hebrew written narratives. His work has been published in First Language and Written Language and Literacy. The recipient of the Israeli Ministry of Education’s Zalman Aran scholarship for outstanding doctoral students in education.