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

Publisher: Springer Country of Publication: United States NLM ID: 0333506 Publication Model: Print-Electronic Cited Medium: Internet ISSN: 1573-6555 (Electronic) Linking ISSN: 00906905 NLM ISO Abbreviation: J Psycholinguist Res Subsets: MEDLINE

Publication: Sept. 2004- : New York : Springer
Original Publication: New York, Plenum Press

Reading* ; Language*; Humans ; Arabs

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.
(© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.)

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Keywords: Arabic; Complex; Derivations; Fluency; Inflections; Morphological decomposition; Word-reading

Date Created: 20231103 Date Completed: 20231216 Latest Revision: 20231216

20231217

10.1007/s10936-023-10024-x

37922026