The Influence of Diglossia on Different Types of Phonological Abilities in Arabic

Abstract

The present study examined the impact of diglossia, a characteristic of the Arabic language, on the developmentof phonological abilities in the spoken and the literary language forms. Participants were 571 children from 10grade levels (1-7, 9, 11 and 12), which were recruited from 10 schools by taking into account two importantfactors: the accent factor (Bedouins, Druze and Arabs) and the geographical factor (south, Haifa, center andnorth). All participant were administered phonemic segmentation and phonemic deletion tasks, each comprisedof two types of stimulus: spoken and literary words. The results indicated an opposite effects of the stimuluswhere in the phonemic segmentation tasks, an advantage was found for the spoken stimulus over the literary andin the phonemic deletion task, the advantage was recorded in the literary stimulus. In addition, a significant maineffect of grade was found for both tasks. An interaction between grade and the type of stimulus was observedonly in the phonemic deletion task. These differences between the two tasks may suggest that they are processeddifferently via the auditory and the visual modality. In addition, our findings provide evidence concerns thedevelopmental capacity of phonemic awareness. The results, as a whole, support the notion that the effect oflexical distance on phonological awareness depends on modes of stimulus presentation.