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Article published In:
The Mental Lexicon
Vol. 12:1 (2017) ► pp.21–50

L2 processing of Arabic derivational morphology

| University of Maryland, College Park
| University of Maryland, College Park
| University of Maryland, College Park

The current study examined how non-native speakers process the highly productive derivational morphology of Arabic in which, in contrast to Indo-European languages, word formation involves interleaving a root and template structure. Previous research shows that native speakers of Arabic decompose morphologically complex words in lexical processing. Using cross-modal priming, the current study shows that non-native speakers of Arabic (L1 English) also decompose derived forms such that there is priming between words that share a common root which is not due to semantic or phonological overlap. In spite of the typological distance, native English speakers organize their L2 Arabic lexicons in a manner similar to native Arabic speakers.

Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Arabic morphology
  • L1 processing of Arabic derivational morphology
  • L2 processing of derivational morphology
  • Methods
  • Participants
  • Materials
  • Vocabulary post-test
  • Procedure
  • Analysis
  • Results
  • Root vs. semantic priming
  • Root priming vs. phonological priming
  • Discussion
  • Notes
  • References


This article is currently available as a sample article.

Published online: 29 June 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ml.12.1.02fre
References

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