Dorit Diskin Ravid (b. 1952) is a professor of

linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

Tel Aviv University Tel Aviv University (TAU) ( he, אוּנִיבֶרְסִיטַת תֵּל אָבִיב, ''Universitat Tel Aviv'') is a public research university in Tel Aviv, Israel. With over 30,000 students, it is the largest university in the country. Locate ...

, specializing in

psycholinguistics Psycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of the interrelation between linguistic factors and psychological aspects. The discipline is mainly concerned with the mechanisms by which language is processed and represented in the mind ...

with a focus on

language acquisition Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language (in other words, gain the ability to be aware of language and to understand it), as well as to produce and use words and sentences to ...

Education, career and honours

Ravid’s early studies were carried out under the mentorship of

Ruth A. Berman Ruth Berman (née Aronson, born 1935 in Cape Town, South Africa) is an Israeli linguist, Professor Emerita, Tel Aviv University, where she held the chair in “Language across the Lifespan.” Berman's research deals with the morphology, syntax, ...

. She has spent her whole career post-PhD at Tel Aviv University. Hired initially as a lecturer in 1994, she was promoted to senior lecturer (with tenure) in 1998, associate professor in 2003, and full professor in 2007. In 2011 she was elected as a member of the Academia Europaea. Before this, in 2005, she was awarded an International Francqui Chair at the University of Antwerp,

Belgium Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to th ...

. She has also served as Chair of the Israel Organization for Language and Literacy between 2005 and 2009. In 2022 she was the recipient of a

festschrift In academia, a ''Festschrift'' (; plural, ''Festschriften'' ) is a book honoring a respected person, especially an academic, and presented during their lifetime. It generally takes the form of an edited volume, containing contributions from the h ...

, ''Developing Language and Literacy: Studies in Honor of Dorit Diskin Ravid''.

Research

Ravid’s research has focused on language acquisition, both in children and adolescents, touching also on the fields of

language change Language change is variation over time in a language's features. It is studied in several subfields of linguistics: historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, and evolutionary linguistics. Traditional theories of historical linguistics identify ...

and

sociolinguistics Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the effect of any or all aspects of society, including cultural Norm (sociology), norms, expectations, and context (language use), context, on the way language is used, and society's effect on languag ...

. Her research is carried out within a usage-based framework. Her 1995 book ''Language Change in Child and Adult

Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...

'' investigated variation and change in ten different groups of Modern Hebrew speakers, taking into account age, level of education, and socio-economic status, leading her to propose that the development of literacy goes hand in hand with cognitive maturation; the book has been described as pathbreaking.Berman (2022), Developmental pathways in child and adult Hebrew: the case of the subordinator ''še-'', p4. In Levie et al. (eds.), 3–34.

Selected publications

* Ravid, Dorit D. 1995. ''Language change in child and adult Hebrew: A psycholinguistic perspective.'' Oxford: Oxford University Press. * Ravid, Dorit D., and Liliana Tolchinsky. 2002. Developing linguistic literacy: A comprehensive model. ''Journal of Child Language'' 29(2), 417-447. * Berman, Ruth A., and Dorit D. Ravid. 2009. Becoming a literate language user: oral and written text construction across adolescence. In David R. Olson and Nancy Torrance (eds.), ''The Cambridge handbook of literacy'', 92–110. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. * DeKeyser, Robert, Iris Alfi-Shabtay and Dorit D. Ravid. 2010. Cross-linguistic evidence for the nature of age effects in second language acquisition. ''Applied Psycholinguistics'' 31(3), 413-438. * Ravid, Dorit D. 2011. ''Spelling morphology: the psycholinguistics of Hebrew spelling''. New York: Springer.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ravid, Dorit Living people Tel Aviv University alumni Academic staff of Tel Aviv University Women linguists Psycholinguists 1952 births Members of Academia Europaea