The Role of Morphological Decomposition in Reading Complex Words in Arabic in Elementary School Years

We examined the role of morphological processing in the reading of inflections and derivations in Arabic, a morphologically-rich language, among 228 first-graders and 230 second-graders. All words were morphologically complex, with differences in number of morphemes and morphological transparency. I...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of psycholinguistic research 2023-12, Vol.52 (6), p.2863-2876
Main Authors: Asadi, Ibrahim A., Vaknin‑Nusbaum, Vered, Taha, Haitham
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Arabic
Arabic language
Arabs
Behavioral Science and Psychology
Cognitive Psychology
Compositionality
Decomposition
Derivation (Morphology)
Difficulty Level
Education
Elementary School Students
Elementary schools
Error Patterns
Fluency
Grade 1
Grade 2
Humans
Inflection (Morphology)
Language
Learning disabilities
Length (Phonological)
Linguistics
Morphemes
Morphological complexity
Morphological processing
Morphology
Phonology
Psycholinguistics
Psychology
Reading
Reading accuracy
Reading acquisition
Reading Fluency
Reading processes
Semantics
Syllables
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Summary:We examined the role of morphological processing in the reading of inflections and derivations in Arabic, a morphologically-rich language, among 228 first-graders and 230 second-graders. All words were morphologically complex, with differences in number of morphemes and morphological transparency. Inflections consisted of three morphemes, with high transparency of the root morpheme, while derivations consisted of two morphemes with lower transparency of the root. Results indicated that, despite their matching in frequency and syllabic length, reading performances of derivations was better than those of inflections. That is, three-morphemic highly transparent inflections were read slower and involved more errors than bi-morphemic less transparent derivations. These differences in reading performance between inflectional and derivational words might suggest that Arab-speaking novice readers use a morphological decomposition process that is reflected in reading accuracy and fluency. The results highlight the important role morphology has in reading, even at a young age, along with reading acquisition.
ISSN:0090-6905
1573-6555
DOI:10.1007/s10936-023-10024-x