Sensitivity to phonological, morphological, and semantic cues in early reading and writing in Hebrew

Emergent literacy in Hebrew was studied by analyzing the attempts of nursery children and kindergartners to write and read pairs of nouns. The noun pairs were selected to represent differences along the linguistic dimensions of phonology (length of syllables), semantic content (e.g., individuals vs. plurality), and morphological complexity (mono- vs. bimorphemic words). Children of both age groups exhibited sensitivity to all three linguistic dimensions by writing longer those words that sounded longer, denoted more objects, and were composed of more morphemes. With age, children's sensitivity to phonology increased and sensitivity to semantics decreased, and both these sensitivities played a greater role in literacy acquisition than did sensitivity to morphology. Consideration of multiple cue systems was found to be both wide-spread and prolonged developmentally.