Building a Grammatical Network: Form and Function in the Development of Hebrew Prepositions

Abstract

This study investigates the emergence of prepositions in Hebrew-speaking children aged 2;6–6;0 years, analyzing a peer talk corpus of 75 children across five age groups. Across 45-minute triadic conversations, we examined the distributions, semantic functions, and form-function relations of prepositions. Two results sections are presented. First, using network analysis, we modeled the development of form-function correlations of Hebrew prepositions. Second, we conducted qualitative developmental analyses of the distributions and semantics of all prepositions identified in the study. Our findings reveal that prepositions expressed 22 functions, predominantly grammatical, spatial, and temporal. With age, the use of prepositions increased, abstract functions became more prevalent, and functions were served by a broader range of prepositions. The data suggest the emergence of systematic relations, forming network-based clusters or communities of semantically related functions. This systematic growth of the prepositional category signifies not just lexical but also syntactic development in Hebrew, transitioning from lexicalized preposition-marked verb arguments to diverse, abstract preposition-marked syntactic adjuncts, which enrich clause-level complexity.