L2 processing of Arabic derivational morphology

Abstract

Abstract 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.