Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-hvd4g Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-25T01:24:59.915Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Contribution of phonological and morphological information in reading Arabic: A developmental perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 October 2018

AMALIA BAR-ON ,
YASMIN SHALHOUB-AWWAD  and
REEM IBRAHEEM TUMA-BASILA
AMALIA BAR-ON
Affiliation:
Tel Aviv University
YASMIN SHALHOUB-AWWAD*
Affiliation:
University of Haifa
REEM IBRAHEEM TUMA-BASILA
Affiliation:
Tel Aviv University
*
ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE Yasmin Shalhoub-Awwad, Department of Learning Disabilities, Faculty of Education, and Edmond J. Safra Brain Research Center for the Study of Learning Disabilities, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Arabic-speaking students learn to read a transparent maʃku:l script, which provides full vowel information using letters to represent long vowels and phonemic diacritics for short vowels. Gradually, they progress to an opaque ɣayr-maʃku:l script, without diacritics. In this script, internal short vowels can be retrieved using morphological information about word patterns. The current study compared the contribution of phonological information to that of morphological information in the reading acquisition process in Arabic. Four Arabic-speaking groups (2nd, 4th, 6th grades, and adults) read three lists of pseudowords aloud. Two lists included the same morphologically based pseudowords (MPW), one maʃku:l and the second ɣayr-maʃku:l. The third list comprised matched maʃku:l nonwords (NW) with no internal morphological structure. All groups read the ɣayr-maʃku:l MPW list faster than the two other maʃku:l lists, and maʃku:l NWs were read the slowest. There was an age by list type accuracy interaction: while ɣayr-maʃku:l MPWs were read more accurately with increasing age, there were no differences between the student groups with respect to either of the other two lists. However, maʃku:l MPWs were read more accurately than maʃku:l NWs. The findings suggest that from very early on, morphology exceeds phonology, playing a crucial role in supplementing missing vowel information.

Keywords

Arabic languagemorphologyphonologypseudowordsreading development
Type
Original Article
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 39 , Issue 6 , November 2018 , pp. 1253 - 1277
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abdelhadi, S., Ibrahim, R., & Eviatar, Z. (2011). Perceptual load in the reading of Arabic: Effects of orthographic visual complexity on detection. Writing Systems Research, 3, 117–127.Google Scholar
Abu Ahmad, H., Ibrahim, R., & Share, D. L. (2014). Cognitive predictors of early reading ability in Arabic: A longitudinal study from kindergarten to grade 2. In E. Saiegh-Haddad & R. M. Joshi (Eds.), Handbook of Arabic literacy (pp. 171–194). New York: Springer.Google Scholar
Abu-Rabia, S. (1997a). Reading in Arabic orthography: The effect of vowels and context on reading accuracy of poor and skilled native Arabic readers. Reading and Writing, 9, 65–78.Google Scholar
Abu-Rabia, S. (1997b). Reading in Arabic orthography: The effect of vowels and context on reading accuracy of poor and skilled native Arabic readers in reading paragraphs, sentences, and isolated words. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 26, 465–482.Google Scholar
Abu-Rabia, S. (1998). Reading Arabic texts: Effects of text type, reader type and vowelization. Reading and Writing, 10, 105–119.Google Scholar
Abu-Rabia, S. (2001). The role of vowels in reading Semitic scripts: Data from Arabic and Hebrew. Reading and Writing, 14, 39–59.Google Scholar
Abu-Rabia, S., & Seigel, L. S. (1995). Different orthographies, different context effects: The effects of Arabic sentence context in skilled and poor Arabic readers. Reading Psychology, 16, 351–394.Google Scholar
Abu-Rabia, S., & Seigel, L. S. (2003). Reading skills in three orthographies: The case of trilingual Arabic-Hebrew-English-speaking Arab children. Reading and Writing, 16, 611–634.Google Scholar
Anglin, J. M. (1993). Vocabulary development: A morphological analysis. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 58 (10, Serial No. 238),1–165.Google Scholar
Asaad, H., & Eviatar, Z. (2013). Learning to read Arabic: The long and winding road. Reading and Writing, 27, 649–664.Google Scholar
Assadi, I., Shany, M., Ben-Simon, A., & Ibrahim, R. (2016). (“lugat al kiraat”, The Language of Reading) [A Test for the Diagnosis of Reading and Writing Disabilities in the Arabic language, Based on National Israeli Norms], Tel Aviv, Israel: Yesod.Google Scholar
Badawi, E. (1973). Levels of modern Arabic in Egypt. Cairo, Egypt: dar al-ma’arif.Google Scholar
Bar-Kochva, I., & Breznitz, Z. (2012). Does the reading of different orthographies produce distinct brain activity patterns? An ERP study. PLOS ONE, 7, 1–8.Google Scholar
Bar-On, A., & Ravid, D. (2011). Morphological analysis in learning pseudowords in Hebrew. Applied Psycholinguistics, 32, 553–581.Google Scholar
Bar-On, A., Dattner, E., & Ravid, D. (2017). Context effects on heterophonic-homography resolution in learning to read Hebrew. Reading and Writing, 30, 463–487.Google Scholar
Boudelaa, S., & Marslen-Wilson, W. D. (2000). Non-concatenative morphemes in language processing: Evidence from Modern Standard Arabic. In A. Cutler, J. McQueen & R. Zondervan (Eds.), Proceedings of SWAP (Workshop on Spoken Word Access Processes), (Vol.1, pp. 23–26). Nijmegen, Netherlands: Max-Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.Google Scholar
Boudelaa, S., & Marslen-Wilson, W. D. (2001). The time-course of morphological, phonological, and semantic processes in reading Modern Standard Arabic. In J. D. Moore & K. Stenning (Eds.), Proceedings of the Twenty-third Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, University of Edinburgh (pp. 138–143). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Boudelaa, S., & Marslen-Wilson, W. D. (2005). Discontinuous morphology in time: Incremental masked priming in Arabic. Language and Cognitive Processes, 20, 207–260.Google Scholar
Boudelaa, S., & Marslen-Wilson, W. D. (2011). Productivity and priming: Morphemic decomposition in Arabic. Language and Cognitive Processes, 26, 624–652.Google Scholar
Carlisle, J. F., & Fleming, J. (2003). Lexical processing of morphologically complex words in the elementary years. Scientific Studies of Reading, 7, 239–253.Google Scholar
Carlisle, J. F., & Katz, L. A. (2006). Effects of word and morpheme familiarity on reading of derived word. Reading and Writing, 19, 669–693.Google Scholar
Carlisle, J. F., & Stone, C. A. (2005). Exploring the role of morphemes in word reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 40, 428–449.Google Scholar
Colé, P., Bouton, S., Leuwers, C., Casalis, S., & Sprenger-Charolles, L. (2012). Stem and derivational-suffix processing during reading by French second and third graders. Applied Psycholinguistics, 33, 97–120.Google Scholar
Deacon, S. H., Whalen, R., & Kirby, J. R. (2011). Do children see the danger in dangerous? Grade 4, 6, and 8 children’s reading of morphologically complex words. Applied Psycholinguistics, 32, 467–481.Google Scholar
Deutsch, A., Frost, R., & Forster, K. (1998). Verbs and nouns are organized and access differently in the mental lexicon: Evidence from Hebrew. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 24, 1238–1255.Google Scholar
Deutsch, A., Frost, R., Peleg, S., Pollatsek, A., & Rayner, K. (2003). Early morphological effects in reading: Evidence from parafoveal preview benefit in Hebrew. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 10, 415–422.Google Scholar
Deutsch, A., & Malinovitch, T. (2016). The role of the morpho-phonological word-pattern unit in single-word production in Hebrew. Journal of Memory and Language, 87, 1–15.Google Scholar
Ehri, L. C. (2005). Development of sight word reading: Phases and findings. Malden, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Eviatar, Z., & Ibrahim, R. (2014). Why is it hard to read Arabic? In E. Saiegh-Haddad & R. M. Joshi (Eds.), Handbook of Arabic literacy (pp. 77–96). New York: Springer.Google Scholar
Feitelson, D., Goldstein, Z., Iraqi, J., & Share, D. L. (1993). Effects of listening to story reading on aspects of literacy acquisition in a diglossic situation. Reading Research Quarterly, 28, 70–79.Google Scholar
Ferguson, C. A. (1959). Diglossia. Word, 15, 325–340.Google Scholar
Frith, U. (1985). Beneath the surface of developmental dyslexia. In K. Patterson, M. Coltheart & J. Marshall (Eds.), Surface dyslexia (pp. 301–330). London: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Frost, R. (2012). Towards a universal model of reading. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 35, 263–279.Google Scholar
Frost, R., Deutsch, A., & Forster, K. I. (2000). Decomposing morphologically complex words in nonlinear morphology. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning Memory and Cognition, 23, 829–856.Google Scholar
Frost, R., Forster, K. I., & Deutsch, A. (1997). What can we learn from the morphology of Hebrew? A masked priming investigation of morphological representation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 23, 829–856.Google Scholar
Grainger, J., & Ziegler, J. C. (2011). A dual-route approach to orthographic processing. Frontiers in Psychology, 2, 1–12.Google Scholar
Harm, M. W., & Seidenberg, M. S. (2004). Computing the meaning of words in reading: Cooperative division of labor between visual and phonological processes. Psychological Review, 111, 662–720.Google Scholar
Hende, N. (2012). Predicting second grade reading from kindergarten language and literacy in Arabic (Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Tel Aviv University).Google Scholar
Holes, C. (2004). Modern Arabic: Structures, functions and varieties. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Laxon, V., Rickard, M., & Coltheart, V. (1992). Children read affixed words and non-words. British Journal of Psychology, 83, 407–423.Google Scholar
Maamouri, M. (1998). Language education and human development: Arabic diglossia and its impact on the quality of education in the Arab region. Washington, DC: World Bank, Mediterranean Development Forum.Google Scholar
Mann, V. A. (2000). Introduction to special issue on morphology and the acquisition of alphabetic writing systems. Reading and Writing, 12, 143–147.Google Scholar
Marcolini, S., Trificante, D., Zoccolotti, P., & Burani, C. (2011). Word frequency modulates morpheme-based reading in poor and skilled Italian readers. Applied Psycholinguistics, 32, 513–532.Google Scholar
Meiseles, G. (1980). Educated spoken Arabic and the Arabic language continuum. Archivum Linguisticum, 11, 118–143.Google Scholar
Perfetti, C. A. (1992). The representation problem in reading acquisition. In P. B. Gough, L. C. Ehri & R. Treiman (Eds.), Reading acquisition (pp. 145–174). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Perfetti, C. A., & Hart, L. (2001). The lexical basis of comprehension skill. In D. S. Gorfein (Ed.), On the consequences of meaning selection: Perspectives on resolving lexical ambiguity. Decade of behavior (pp. 67–86). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.Google Scholar
Plaut, D. C., & Gonnerman, L. M. (2000). Are non-semantic morphological effects incompatible with a distributed connectionist approach to lexical processing? Language and Cognitive Processes, 15, 445–485.Google Scholar
Quémart, P., Casalis, S., & Colé, P. (2011). The role of form and meaning in the processing of written morphology: A priming study in French developing readers. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 109, 478–496.Google Scholar
Ravid, D. (1996). Accessing the mental lexicon: Evidence from incompatibility between representation of spoken and written morphology. Linguistics, 34, 1219–1246.Google Scholar
Ravid, D. (2012). Spelling morphology: The psycholinguistics of Hebrew spelling. New York: Springer.Google Scholar
Ravid, D., & Schiff, R. (2006). Roots and patterns in Hebrew language development: Evidence from written morphological analogies. Reading and Writing, 19, 789–818.Google Scholar
Saiegh-Haddad, E. (2003). Linguistic distance and initial reading acquisition: The case of Arabic diglossia. Applied Psycholinguistics, 24, 431–451.Google Scholar
Saiegh-Haddad, E. (2004). The impact pf phonemic and lexical distance on the phonological analysis of word and pseudowords in a diglossic context. Applied Psycholinguistics, 25, 495–512.Google Scholar
Saiegh-Haddad, E. (2007). Linguistic constraints on children’s ability to isolate phonemes in Arabic. Applied Psycholinguistics, 28, 605–625.Google Scholar
Saiegh-Haddad, E. (2013). A tale of one letter: Morphological processing in early Arabic spelling. Writing Systems Research, 5, 169–188.Google Scholar
Saiegh-Haddad, E. (2017). MAWRID: A model of Arabic word reading in development. Journal of Learning Disabilities. Advance online publication.Google Scholar
Saiegh-Haddad, E., & Geva, E. (2008). Morphological awareness, phonological awareness, and reading in English-Arabic bilingual children. Reading and Writing, 21, 481–504.Google Scholar
Saiegh-Haddad, E., & Henkin-Roitfarb, R. (2014). The structure of Arabic language and orthography. In E. Saiegh-Haddad & R. M. Joshi (Eds.), Handbook of Arabic literacy (pp. 3–28). New York: Springer.Google Scholar
Saiegh-Haddad, E., & Schiff, R. (2016). The impact of diglossia on voweled and unvoweled word reading in Arabic: A developmental study from childhood to adolescence. Scientific Studies of Reading, 20, 311–324.Google Scholar
Saiegh-Haddad, E., & Spolsky, B. (2014). Acquiring literacy in a diglossic context: Problems and prospects. In E. Saiegh-Haddad & R. M. Joshi (Eds.), Handbook of Arabic literacy: Insights and perspectives, (Vol. 9, pp. 225–240). Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Springer.Google Scholar
Schiff, R., Raveh, M., & Kahta, S. (2008). The developing mental lexicon: Evidence from morphological priming of irregular Hebrew forms. Reading and Writing, 21, 719–743.Google Scholar
Schreuder, R., & Baayen, R. H. (1995). Modeling morphological processing. In L. B. Feldman (Ed.), Morphological aspects of language processing (pp. 131–154). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Seidenberg, M. S. (2005). Connectionist models of word reading. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14, 238–242.Google Scholar
Seidenberg, M. S. (2011). Reading in different writing systems: One architecture, multiple solutions. In P. McCardle, B. Miller, J. Lee & O. Tzeng (Eds.), Dyslexia across languages: Orthography and the brain-gene-behavior link (pp. 151–174). Baltimore, MD: Brookes.Google Scholar
Seidenberg, M. S., & Gonnerman, L. M. (2000). Explaining derivational morphology as the convergence of codes. Trends in cognitive sciences, 4, 353–361.Google Scholar
Seidenberg, M. S., & McClelland, J. L. (1989). A distributed, developmental model of word recognition and naming. Psychological Review, 96, 523–568.Google Scholar
Seymour, P. H. (2005). Early reading development in European orthographies. In M. J. Snowling & C. Hulme (Eds.), The science of reading: A handbook (pp. 296–315). Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Shalhoub-Awwad, Y. (2013). Morphological structures in visual word recognition: Evidence from Arabic (Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel).Google Scholar
Shalhoub-Awwad, Y., & Leikin, M. (2016). The lexical status pf the root in processing morphologically complex words in Arabic. Scientific Studies of Reading, 20, 296–310.Google Scholar
Shany, M., Bar-On, A., & Katzir, T. (2012). Reading different orthographic structures in the shallow-pointed Hebrew script: A cross-grade study in elementary school. Reading and Writing, 25, 1217–1238.Google Scholar
Share, D. L. (1995). Phonological recoding and self-teaching: Sine qua non of reading acquisition. Cognition, 55, 151–218.Google Scholar
Share, D. L. (2008). On the Anglocentricities of current reading research and practice: The perils of over-reliance on an “outlier” orthography. Psychological Bulletin, 134, 584–616.Google Scholar
Share, D. L., (in press). Foundations for a universal model of learning to read. In A. Bar-On & D. Ravid (Eds.), Handbook of communications disorders: Theoretical, empirical, and applied linguistic perspectives. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Share, D. L., & Bar-On, A. (2017). Learning to read a Semitic abjad: The triplex model of Hebrew reading development. Journal of Learning Disabilities. Advance online publication.Google Scholar
Shimron, J. (1993). The role of vowels in reading: A review of studies of English and Hebrew. Psychological Bulletin, 114, 52.Google Scholar
Shimron, J., & Sivan, T. (1994). Reading proficiency and orthography evidence from Hebrew and English. Language Learning, 44, 5–27.Google Scholar
Simon, G., Bernard, C., Lalonde, R., & Rebaï, M. (2006). Orthographic transparency and grapheme–phoneme conversion: An ERP study in Arabic and French readers. Brain Research, 1104, 141–152.Google Scholar
Taha, H. Y. (2013). Reading and spelling in Arabic: Linguistic and orthographic complexity. Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 3, 721.Google Scholar
Van Orden, G. C. (1987). A ROWS is a ROSE: Spelling, sound and reading. Memory & Cognition, 15, 181–198.Google Scholar
Velan, H., & Frost, R. (2011). Words with and without internal structure: What determines the nature of orthographic and morphological processing? Cognition, 118, 141–156.Google Scholar
Velan, H., Frost, R., Deutsch, A., & Plaut, D. C. (2005). The processing of root morphemes in Hebrew: Contrasting localist and distributed accounts. Language and Cognitive Processes, 20, 169–206.Google Scholar
Verhoeven, L., & Perfetti, C. A. (2011). Morphological processing in reading acquisition: A cross-linguistic perspective. Applied Psycholinguistics, 32, 457–466.Google Scholar
Yamin, R., & Raveh, M. (2005). Development of explicit and implicit morphological knowledge among young readers and its contribution to reading ability. Paper presented at the Twentieth Conference of the Israeli Association for Literacy, Nir Etzion, Israel (in Hebrew).Google Scholar
Zhang, S., & Perfetti, C. A. (1993). The tongue-twister effect in reading Chinese. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 19, 1082–1093.Google Scholar
Ziegler, J. C., & Goswami, U. (2005). Reading acquisition, developmental dyslexia, and skilled reading across languages: A psycholinguistic grain size theory. Psychological Bulletin, 131, 3–29.Google Scholar