Aims and objectives: The study investigated narrative microstructure skills of Arabic-speaking immigrant children in Canada ( N = 75; age range 7–12 years) with specific focus on diglossia and the lexical distance between Spoken Arabic (SpA) and Standard Arabic (StA). The study also tested the relationship between microstructure and macrostructure and probed into the relative importance of general versus diglossia-specific features of microstructure in predicting macrostructure. Design/methodology/approach: Participants were asked to tell a story from a picture using an Arabic version of the Test of Narrative Language (Gillam & Pearson, 2004). Instructions to participants were given in StA. Data and analysis: General measures of microstructure were coded: number of tokens, number of types, type/token ratio, and mean length of utterance (MLU). In addition to these general measures, we coded the average frequency of five diglossia-specific word types: (a) identical words, which keep the same phonological form in StA and SpA; (b) SpA cognates, namely, cognate words that keep different yet related forms in StA and SpA, used in their SpA form; (c) StA cognates, cognate words used in their StA forms; (d) unique SpA words; and (e) unique StA words. Regression analysis was used to predict macrostructure from general and diglossia-specific features of microstructure. Findings/conclusions: Results showed that the bulk of the lexicon of the narratives produced by immigrant children consisted of words and word forms that are within SpA: identical words, SpA cognates, and unique SpA words; StA word forms appeared less frequently, and English code-switched words were very rare. Results also showed that the microstructure features of narrative length in tokens and type/token ratio significantly predicted macrostructure beyond the children’s age and Arabic language proficiency. However, when diglossia-specific lexical features were added as predictors, the frequency of StA words predicted unique variance in macrostructure beyond age, Arabic language proficiency, and narrative length. Findings advance our understanding of narrative skills in Arabic diglossia among new immigrants and the role of lexical distance in narrative production in this context. Originality: The study is innovative in investigating the manifestation of diglossia in narrative microstructure features and the role of diglossia-specific features in predicting macrostructure, as well as in testing this question among immigrant children. Significance/implications: The study demonstrates the multifaceted lexicon of diglossic Arabic speakers as reflected in the microstructure of their narratives and the prevalence of SpA word forms in their lexicons. The study also demonstrates a significant relationship between microstructure and macrostructure, and the important role of StA lexical features of microstructure in predicting macrostructure. The results of the study have theoretical implications for the importance of lexical distance in understanding narrative production in children at both the microstructure and macrostructure levels. The study also has practical implications for assessment and intervention with Arabic-speaking children in diglossic Arabic.

This study examines the possible effects of bilingualism, mother tongue and type of morphology on morphological awareness of Arabic- and Hebrew-speaking preschoolers (mean age – 5:4). Four groups of children participated in the study: (1) 50 Arabic-speaking monolingual speakers; (2) 50 Hebrew-speaking monolingual speakers; (3) 50 Arabic/Hebrew bilingual speakers; and (4) 50 Hebrew/Arabic bilingual speakers. Participants from the bilingual groups were sequential non-balanced bilingual speakers who started learning a second language at ages 3–4 in a bilingual Arabic/Hebrew kindergarten. All children performed two tasks on inflectional morphology and three tasks on derivational morphology in one or both languages. To examine inflectional morphology, domain plural nouns were chosen because of their linear nature in both Hebrew and Arabic and because inflectional plural-noun morphology is acquired very early. In derivational morphology, the focus was on the verbs because of their high token frequency, early acquisition compared to nominal morphology, and its importance for Semitic languages. The results demonstrate significant effects of mother tongue, bilingualism and type of morphology on the children’s performance. The better results were obtained in Hebrew-speaking monolinguals and in Arabic-speaking bilinguals. Monolingual Hebrew speakers performed better in Hebrew than Arabic-speakers did in Arabic. At the same time, Arabic-speaking bilingual children demonstrated significantly better results in Hebrew (second language) than Hebrew speakers did in Arabic (second language). Analysis of the findings also shows that differences in performance among the bilingual and monolingual groups seem to relate not only to psycholinguistic factors such as linguistic complexity but also to sociolinguistic factors (e.g. diglossia in Arabic).

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This case study aims to compare narratives written in digital media by Arabic native speaking teenagers in Israel. The data was collected from two schools in Kufr Qari’ village in the Triangle region. Of these students, 35 were boys (45%) and 43 were girls (55%). The teenagers are of different ages (13, 15, 17 years old) who wrote stories in their preferred writing system (WS) used in digital media (Arabic, Arabic written with Roman alphabets, or Arabic written in Hebrew letters). Focusing on the macrostructure as well as the microstructure, we investigate differences in narratives among the different age groups across several skills as well as differences across the varied writing systems. In analyzing the narrative texts, we applied several statistical models. All macro and micro element evaluations were compared across ages and language choices within a Generalized Linear Model (GLM) framework. The results show significance by age for the Macrostructures of goal and meta ending as they require deeper thinking skills. Moreover, WS affected the macro- and microstructure of the narrative. Producing a narrative in Arabic script burdened the teens due to the diglossic nature of the language and orthographic complexities. In Arabic script, the use of MSA nouns and verbs added to the quality of the macrostructure. In addition, girls tended to choose Arabic, whereas boys were more likely to choose Hebrew script. This may be ascribed to social factors. Finally, girls regularly generated more micro elements in parallel to the boys’ micro-element production.

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