Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T20:39:00.455Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Acquiring diglossia: mutual influences of formal and colloquial Arabic on children's grammaticality judgments*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 April 2011

REEM KHAMIS-DAKWAR ,
KAREN FROUD  and
PETER GORDON
REEM KHAMIS-DAKWAR*
Affiliation:
Adelphi University
KAREN FROUD
Affiliation:
Teachers College, Columbia University
PETER GORDON
Affiliation:
Teachers College, Columbia University
*
Address for correspondence: Dr Reem Khamis-Dakwar, Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Adelphi University, Garden City, NY 11530, USA. tel: 516-877-4778; e-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

There are differences and similarities between Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and spoken varieties of Arabic, in all language domains. To obtain preliminary insights into interactions between the acquisition of spoken and standard varieties of a language in a diglossic situation, we employed forced-choice grammaticality judgments to investigate morphosyntactic knowledge of MSA and the local variant of Palestinian Colloquial Arabic (PCA), in 60 Arabic-speaking children aged 6 ; 4 to 12 ; 4, from a school in Nazareth. We used morphosyntactic structures which either differed or were similar between PCA and standard Arabic. Children generally performed better on items presented in PCA than in standard Arabic, with the exception of constructions involving negation. Children performed better on items when the two constructions were similar in both language varieties. We discuss the results with respect to the multiple factors that affect acquisition in a diglossic situation, and relate our findings to the possibility of interference effects of diglossia on learning.

Type
Brief Research Reports
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 39 , Issue 1 , January 2012 , pp. 61 - 89
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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.)

Footnotes

[*]

Many thanks to the children who participated in this study, their parents and teachers and administrators at AlMukhales school in Nazareth. The authors also thank Hamid Ouali and Suzanne Dikker, as well as three anonymous reviewers for their helpful and insightful comments. The research was supported by Spencer Foundation Research Training Grant, Teachers College, Columbia University.

References

REFERENCES

Abu-Rabia, S. (2000). Effects of exposure to literary Arabic on reading comprehension in a diglossic situation. Reading and Writing 13, 147–57.Google Scholar
Abu-Rabia, S. (2002). Reading in a root-based-morphology language: The case of Arabic. Journal of Research in Reading 25, 299–309.Google Scholar
Abu-Rabia, S., Share, D. & Mansour, M. (2003). Word recognition and basic cognitive processes among reading-disabled and normal readers in Arabic. Reading and Writing 16, 423–42.Google Scholar
Abu-Rabia, S. & Taha, H. (2004). Reading and spelling errors analysis of native Arabic dyslexic readers. Reading and Writing 17, 651–89.Google Scholar
Al-Batal, M. (1992). Diglossia proficiency: The need for an alternative approach to teaching. In Rouchdy, A. (ed.), The Arabic language in America, 284–304. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press.Google Scholar
Altoma, S. J. (1969). The problem of diglossia in Arabic: A comparative study of Classical Arabic and Iraqi Arabic. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Amara, M. H. (2006). Teaching Arabic in Israel. In Whaba, K., Taha, Z. & England, L. (eds), Handbook for Arabic language teaching professionals in the 21st century, 81–96. Mahwah: NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Amayreh, M. & Dyson, A. (1998). The acquisition of Arabic consonants. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 41, 642–53.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ayari, S. (1996). Diglossia and illiteracy in the Arab world. Language, Culture and Curriculum 9, 243–52.Google Scholar
Badawi, E. (1973). Mustawayat al-A'rabiya al-mu'asira fi Misr [Levels of contemporary Arabic in Egypt]. Cairo: Dar Al-Ma'arif.Google Scholar
Badry, F. (2005). Acquisition of Arabic word formation: A multi path approach. In Alhawary, M. & Benmamoun, E. (eds), Perspectives on Arabic linguistics XVII−XVIII: Papers from the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Annual Symposia on Arabic Linguistics, held in Alexandria, Egypt in May of 2003 and at the University of Oklahoma in March of 2004, 243–72. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Bakalla, M. H. (2002). Arabic culture through its language and literature. London: Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Blau, J. (1965). The emergence and linguistic background of Judaeo-Arabic: A study of the origins of Middle Arabic. Oxford: Scripta Judaica.Google Scholar
Boussofara-Omar, N. (2003). Revisiting Arabic diglossic switching in light of the MLF model and its submodels: The 4-M model and the abstract level model. Bilingualism, Language and Cognition 6, 33–46.Google Scholar
Brosh, H. (1995). Language skills and the curriculum of a diglossic language. Foreign Language Annals 28, 247–57.Google Scholar
Costa, J, & Friedmann, N. (2009). Hebrew and Arabic children going Romance: On the acquisition of word order in Semitic and Romance. In Aboh, E., Van der Linden, E., Quer, J. & Sleeman, P. (eds), Romance languages and linguistic theory: Selected papers from ‘Going Romance’, Amsterdam 2007, 51–66. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eid, M. (1990). Arabic linguistics: The current scene. In Eid, M. (ed.), Perspectives on Arabic linguistics I, 3–37. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eisele, J. (2006). Developing frames of references for assessment and curricular design in a diglossic L2: From skills to tasks and back again. In: Wahba, K. M., Taha, Z. A. & England, L. (eds), Handbook for Arabic language teaching professionals in the 21st century, 197–221. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Elgibali, A. (2003). Arabic as a first language: A study in language acquisition and development. Cairo: Dar el Kutub [in Arabic].Google Scholar
Eviatar, Z. & Ibrahim, R. (2000). Bilingual is as bilingual does: Metalinguistic abilities of Arabic-speaking children. Applied Psychology 21(4), 451–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Farghal, M (1986). The syntax of wh-questions and related matters in Arabic. Unpublished PhD dissertation, Indiana University.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. (1959). Diglossia. Word 15, 325–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holes, C. (1995). Modern Arabic: Structures, functions, and varieties. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Ibrahim, M. (1986). Standard and prestige language: A problem in Arabic sociolinguistics. Anthropological Linguistics 28, 115–26.Google Scholar
Israeli Ministry of Education. (2009). Curriculum for Arabic Language Teaching: Language, Literature, and Culture for Elementary School Level (1st–6th grade). Tel-Aviv: Maalot Publisher.Google Scholar
Khamis-Dakwar, R. (2005). Children's attitudes towards the diglossia situation in Arabic and its impact on learning. Language, Communities, and Education, Spring 2005, 75–86.Google Scholar
Khamis-Dakwar, R. (in press). Early Acquisition of SVO and VSO word orders in Palestinian Colloquial Arabic. In Ouali, H. & Broselow, E. (eds), Perspectives on Arabic linguistics XXIV. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Khamis-Dakwar, R. & Crowley, C. (2005). Language testing for Arabic speaking individuals in Israel. Paper presented at the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Annual Convention, San Diego, CA, November.Google Scholar
Khamis-Dakwar, R. & Froud, K. (2007). Lexical processing in two language varieties: An event-related brain potential study of Arabic native speakers. In Mughazy, M. (ed.), Perspectives on Arabic linguistics XX, 153–68. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Mansouri, F. (2000). Grammatical markedness and information processing in the acquisition of Arabic as a second language. Munich: Lincom Europa.Google Scholar
Meisel, J. (1995). Parameters in acquisition. In Fletcher, P. & MacWhinney, B. (eds), The handbook of child language, 10–35. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Mitchell, T. F. (1986). What is educated spoken Arabic? International Journal of the Sociology of Language 61, 7–32.Google Scholar
Omar, M. (1973). The acquisition of Egyptian Arabic as a native language. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Rababa, G. (2005). Communication problems facing Arab learners of English. Journal of Language and Learning 3, 180–97.Google Scholar
Ravid, D. & Farah, R. (1999). Learning about noun plurals in early Palestinian Arabic. First Language 19, 187–206.Google Scholar
Ravid, D. & Hayek, L. (2003). Learning about different ways of expressing number in the development of Palestinian Arabic. First Language 23, 41–63.Google Scholar
Rosenhouse, Y. (1997). Morphological and syntactical acquisition of spoken Arabic as native language: Preliminary findings [in Hebrew]. Hilkat Lashon 27, 76–93.Google Scholar
Ryding, K. C. (2006). Teaching Arabic in the United States. In Wahba, K., Taha, Z. & England, L. (eds), Handbook for Arabic language teaching professionals in the 21st century, 13–21. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Saiegh-Haddad, E. (2003). Linguistic distance and initial reading acquisition: The case of Arabic diglossia. Applied Psycholinguistics 24, 115–35.Google Scholar
Saiegh-Haddad, E. (2004). The impact of phonemic and lexical distance on the phonological analysis of words and pseudowords in a diglossic context. Applied Psycholinguistics 25, 495–512.Google Scholar
Saiegh-Haddad, E. (2005). Correlates of reading fluency in Arabic: Diglossic and orthographic factors. Reading and Writing 18, 559–82.Google Scholar
Saiegh-Haddad, E. (2007). Linguistic constraints on children's ability to isolate phonemes in Arabic. Applied Psycholinguistics 28, 607–625.Google Scholar
Shlonsky, U. (1997). Clause structure and word order in Hebrew and Arabic. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Spolsky, B. (1994). The situation of Arabic in Israel. In Suleiman, Y. (ed.), Arabic sociolinguistics: Issues and perspectives, 227–34. London: Curzon Press.Google Scholar
Stevens, P. B. (2006). Is Spanish really so easy? Is Arabic really so hard?: Perceived difficulty in learning Arabic as a second language. In Wahba, K., Taha, Z. & England, L. (eds), Handbook for Arabic language teaching professionals in the 21st Century, 35–63. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Suleiman, S. M. (1986). Jordanian Arabic between diglossia and bilingualism: Linguistic analysis. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Wagner, A. (1993). Literacy, culture, and development: Becoming literate in Morocco. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wahba, K. M. (2006). Arabic language use and the educated language user. In Wahba, K., Taha, Z. & England, L. (eds), Handbook for Arabic language teaching professionals in the 21st Century, 139–57. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Wexler, K. (1994). Optional infinitives, head movement and the economy of derivations. In Lightfoot, D. & Hornstein, N. (eds), Verb movement, 305–350. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
White, L. (1987). Against comprehensible input: The input hypothesis and the development of L2 competence. Applied Linguistics 8, 95–110.Google Scholar