Transposed letter priming effects and allographic variation in Arabic: Insights from lexical decision and the same–different task.

Abstract

Reading is resilient to distortion of letter order within a word. This is evidenced in the “transposed-letter (TL) priming effect,” the finding that a prime generated by transposing adjacent letters in a word (e.g., jugde) facilitates recognition of the base word (e.g., JUDGE), more than a “substituted-letter” control prime in which the transposed letters are replaced by unrelated letters (e.g., junpe -JUDGE). The TL priming effect is well documented for European languages that are written using the Roman alphabet. Unlike these languages, Arabic has a unique position-dependent allography whereby some letters change shape according to their position within a word. We investigate the TL priming effect using a lexical decision (Experiment 1) and a same–different match task with Arabic words (Experiment 2) and nonwords (Experiment 3). No TL priming effects were found in Experiment 1, suggesting that the lexical-decision task engages lexical access processes that are sensitive to the Semitic nonlinear morphological structure. Experiments 2 and 3 revealed a robust TL priming effect overall. Nonallographic TL primes produced significantly larger facilitation than allographic TL primes, indicating that Arabic readers use allographic variation to resolve the uncertainty in letter order during the early stages of orthographic processing. The implication of these results for current letter position coding models is discussed.

Letter connectedness and Arabic visual word recognition

“…In this study, transposed-letter primes, as in the prime–target pair ئٮتنايٮن (/i tn ajin/)—ئٮنتايٮن (/i nt ajin/, very ; transposed letters are underlined), produced as much priming as identity primes (e.g., ئٮنتايٮن /intajin/, very —ئٮنتايٮن /intajin/, very ), but only when the transposed letters were in the same graphemic chunk and retained their allographic form (as in the example above). Boudelaa and colleagues (2019) obtained similar results in Arabic with a set of experiments using masked priming in a same–different match task. In this study, transposed letter primes produced robust facilitation for both word and nonword targets.…”

“…Several previous studies have indicated that Arabic does not show reliable masked form priming effects—that is, facilitated processing of targets when they share letter sequences with primes (Frost et al, 2005; Perea et al, 2010; but see Perea et al, 2014). These results, along with comparable findings from Hebrew, have been interpreted as evidence that the lexicon in Semitic languages is organised primarily based on morphological information, rather than on orthographic form (see, for example, Boudelaa et al, 2019; Frost et al, 1997, 2005; Velan & Frost, 2009, 2011). More recent research, however, has found reliable masked form priming effects in Arabic with task adjustments that reduce lexical processing demands (Perea et al, 2014).…”

“…This question is of particular theoretical interest because previous research has found that Arabic differs from many Indo-European languages in that it does not show reliable masked form priming effects—that is, facilitated processing of targets when they share letter sequences with primes (Frost et al, 2005; Perea et al, 2010; but see Perea et al, 2014). One account for these findings is that they relate to the morphological structure of this language (see, for example, Boudelaa et al, 2019; Frost et al, 1997, 2005; Velan & Frost, 2009, 2011). Arabic has a nonconcatenative morphology in which words are often formed by interleaving a morphological root (usually made up of three or four consonants) with a phonological pattern, which primarily encodes morphosyntactic and phonological information.…”

“…For example, this process of transfixation can be applied to the morphological root d-r-s , which relates to a core meaning of “learning,” to create a number of different, semantically related words, such as درس ( drs , lesson ; morphological root letters are underlined here and in the examples below), يدرس (y drs , study ), دارس ( d A rs , student ), مدرّس (m dr ~ s , teacher ), and مدرسة (m drs p, school ). There are a number of indications that the morphological root is an especially salient representational unit in Arabic lexical processing generally (see, for example, Boudelaa & Marslen-Wilson, 2005, 2011, 2015) and that this morphological structure influences form-level activation among Arabic words in particular (Boudelaa et al, 2019; Frost et al, 2005; Perea et al, 2010, 2014). Specifically, in a lexical decision task, Frost and colleagues (2005) found reliable masked priming effects in Arabic when the prime and target had the same morphological root and differed only in terms of the letters associated with their phonological patterns (شريف $r y f , noble —اشرف A $rf , nobler ; for similar findings, see Perea et al, 2013).…”

Insights from the study of Arabic reading

“…Another important aspect of Arabic words is that they constitute a remarkably dense lexical ‘space’ wherein letter transpositions within tri‐ or quadriliteral roots often results in other known roots (e.g., بعيد /bʕeed/, meaning far , becomes عبيد /ʕbeed/, meaning slaves ). Boudelaa et al (2019) estimated that this happens about 54% of the time for the commonly used Arabic roots, compared to only 7% of the time for English three‐letter words. Not surprisingly, numerous studies in Arabic and Hebrew have shown that facilitation from root‐preserving primes or parafoveal previews (e.g., the preview تقسيمات for the target الأقسام, both containing the root قسم /qsm/) is eliminated if root‐letter order is not preserved (e.g., if the parafoveal preview is either الأسقام or الأمساق where root letter transposition created the root سقم /sqm/ or the pseudo root مسق /msq/, respectively, for the target of الأقسام; Hermena, Juma, & AlJassmi, in preparation; see also Perea, Abu Mallouh, & Carreiras, 2010; Velan & Frost, 2007, 2009, 2011 for similar results in other tasks in both Arabic and Hebrew).…”