Root and Function Letters

Abstract

Homophony in Hebrew involves the possible assignment of more than one letter to a single phoneme, thereby interfering with the one-to-one mapping of phonology onto spelling, rendering the orthography ‘deep’ or ‘opaque’. Root and function letters have different morphological roles in the written Hebrew word, and generate different predictions regarding the pace of spelling acquisition. In case of root letters, the single-function derivational role, coupled with high type and low token frequency predict serious challenges to spelling acquisition. However, in case of most homophonous function letters, spelling is facilitated, since only one of the homophonous competitors designates function roles. Therefore, learning about the correct spelling of homophonous function letters is expected to consolidate much earlier before root letters. The chapter details all the grammatical roles of all function letters and analyzed in depth the contributions of various factors such as root structure and frequency to learning of root spelling.