ORTHOGRAPHIC EFFECTS IN L2 ARABIC WORD PROCESSING: A PRIMING STUDY

Abstract

Late Arabic learners seem to process words in a similar manner to native speakers, distinguishing their processing pattern from the commonly held assumption that form-relatedness drives lexical access in L2 learners. The morphologically driven facilitation witnessed in L2 Arabic learners inspired the current study to further investigate if orthographic effects can be obtained within the same population. Therefore, the current study investigated if late Arabic learners process orthographically related prime-target pairs in a similar manner to native speakers. The study measured participants' reaction times during a lexical decision task while being primed by orthographic neighbors ( شاب – باب ) and orthographic embedded words ( أسباب - باب ). The results contradicted the prediction and challenge the notion that L2 learners are generally primed by form similarities. L2 Arabic learners seem to differ from L2 speakers of concatenative languages. The results also confirmed previous claims suggesting a lack of orthographic priming effects in L2 Arabic learners, indicating that their processing could be morphologically driven.