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Linguistic constraints on children's ability to isolate phonemes in Arabic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2007

ELINOR SAIEGH-HADDAD
ELINOR SAIEGH-HADDAD
Affiliation:
Bar-Ilan University, Israel
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Abstract

The study tested the effect of three factors on Arab children's (N=256) phoneme isolation: phoneme's linguistic affiliation (standard phonemes vs. spoken phonemes), phoneme position (initial vs. final), and linguistic context (singleton vs. cluster). Two groups of children speaking two different vernaculars were tested. The two vernaculars differed with respect to whether they included four critical Standard Arabic phonemes. Using a repeated-measure design, we tested children's phonemic sensitivity toward these four phonemes versus other phonemes. The results showed that the linguistic affiliation of the phoneme was reliable in explaining phoneme isolation reaffirming, hence the external validity of the linguistic affiliation constraint in explaining phoneme awareness in diglossic Arabic. The results also showed that initial phonemes and initial singleton phonemes were particularly difficult for children to isolate. These findings were discussed in light of a stipulated unique phonological and orthographic cohesion of the consonant–vowel unit in Arabic.

Type
Articles
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 28 , Issue 4 , October 2007 , pp. 607 - 625
Copyright
2007 Cambridge University Press

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