Diacritics improve comprehension of the Arabic script by providing access to the meanings of heterophonic homographs

Abstract

The diacritical markers that represent most of the vowels in the Arabic orthography are generally omitted from written texts. Previous research revealed that the absence of diacritics reduces reading comprehension performance even by skilled readers of Arabic. One possible explanation is that many Arabic words become ambiguous when diacritics are missing. Words of this kind are known as heterophonic homographs and are associated with at least two different pronunciations and meanings when written without diacritics. The aim of the two experiments reported in this study was to investigate whether the presence of diacritics improves the comprehension of all written words, or whether the effects are confined to heterophonic homographs. In Experiment 1, adult readers of Arabic were asked to decide whether written words had a living meaning. The materials included heterophonic homographs that had one living and one non-living meaning. Results showed that diacritics significantly increased the accuracy of semantic decisions about ambiguous words but had no effect on the accuracy of decisions about unambiguous words. Consistent results were observed in Experiment 2 where the materials comprised sentences rather than single words. Overall, the findings suggest that diacritics improve the comprehension of heterophonic homographs by facilitating access to semantic representations that would otherwise be difficult to access from print.

Arabic Diacritics and Their Role in Facilitating Reading Speed, Accuracy, and Comprehension by English L2 Learners of Arabic

“…In other words, the learners who used the vowelized textbook always read vowelized words more accurately than un-vowelized words, which is congruent with previous studies (Abu-Hamour et al, 2013;Abu-Rabia, 1997, 1999Maroun & Hanley, 2017;Seraye, 2004). This benefit of reading with diacritics was consistent with the goal for the historical development of the diacritics system in Arabic orthography, which aimed to improve accuracy and comprehension when reading Arabic texts (Alhamad, 1982;Alhassan, 2003;Framawi, 1978;Ismaeel, 2001;Jumʻah, 1967;Sharshal, 2000).…”

“…Taha (2016a) suggested that vowelization caused a visual load and could be considered redundant information for native speakers. Maroun and Hanley (2017) conducted two experiments to investigate whether diacritics improved the comprehension of all written words and whether the effects were confined to heterophonic homographs. The results of one experiment showed diacritics significantly increased the accuracy of the participants' semantic decisions about ambiguous words, but no effects for diacritics were found on unambiguous words.…”

Perceptual Enhancement for Arabic Reading: An Intervention to Support Fluency and Automaticity in Grade One

“…The Iqra textbook's simple design that minimized visual crowding by leaving space between letters and words and included few images helped students focus on the text on each page (Chung, 2002;Zhu et al, 2016;Levi, 2008). Keeping the harakat in the text also trained the students to recognize words more accurately (Maroun & Hanley, 2017).…”

“…Even though short vowels are often predictable in Arabic and other Semitic languages, omitting them causes many words to become homographic which can slow down the reading speed (Abu-Rabia, 2001; Abu-Rabia, 1999; Taha, 2013). Adding harakat back to text can increase reading speed (Maroun & Hanley, 2017). To predict successfully, readers must know Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) well.…”

“The Script Does Not Respond” ‐ Arabic Script's Difficulties in the Digital Realm. A Visual Approach

“…-Thoughts on Arabic script's fault tolerance A script -be it a writing system or a cultural or programming script -has a certain fault tolerance beyond which it cannot be recognized or understood anymore. Scientific approaches can measure this tolerance in a particular case, like word recognition in Arabic (Maroun and Hanley 2017). What I am interested in, though, are the social, cultural, and religious conditions for handling errors.…”