Morphological Processing of L2 Arabic by Indonesian Speakers

In contrast to word formation in stem-based languages, Arabic words are derived through a process of mapping a consonantal root into a vowel pattern. Ample evidence suggests that, during lexical processing of real words in Arabic, native speakers are successful in decomposing words into their roots and patterns such that there is priming between Arabic words that share the same root. In L2 acquisition, however, the question remains whether L2 learners adopt L2 morphological processing mechanisms especially when these are different from L1 processes. The current study explores this question by investigating L2 Arabic learners’ sensitivity to the presence of roots when processing auditory speech in Arabic. 38 Indonesian learners of Arabic as a second language and 38 native Arabic speakers rated the word-likeness of auditorily presented nonwords in Arabic. Results reveal that L2 Arabic learners, like native speakers, are sensitive to the presence of roots in the nonwords. These findings are discussed in light of lexical processing models.