The Processing of Adjective Agreement Morphology in Native, Heritage, and L2 Arabic

Oct 15, 2026

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Speakers of European languages routinely segment morphologically complex, inflected forms into stems and grammatical affixes during word recognition, while evidence about late second-language (L2) learners is mixed. This study examines Arabic adjective gender and number agreement morphology, focusing on how natives, heritage speakers, and late L2 learners process regular agreement. Masked priming results indicate all groups decompose adjectives into stems and affixes, suggesting L2 learners store and process morphologically complex words similarly to native speakers.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages31

Reading Time1 h 18 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

Introduction

The Processing of Adjective Agreement Morphology in Native, Heritage, and L2 Arabic Arab Journal of Applied Linguistics e-ISSN 2490-4198 Vol. 6, No. 1, May 2021, 1-31 © AJAL [http://www.arjals.com](http://www.arjals.com) Rebecca K. Foote1, University of Arkansas, USA Eman Saadah, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA Abstract According to previous research, speakers of European languages parse regularlyinflected, morphologically-complex words into stems and grammatical affixes during word recognition. In contrast, some studies suggest that late second language ( L2 ) learners do not. We ask how these types of words are processed in Arabic, a language whose primary morphological process is infixation, which exists alongside prefix-and suffixation. Specifically, we ask how natives, heritage, and late L2 learners process regular gender and number agreement morphology on adjectives. Results of amasked priming experiment suggest that all three groups parse adjectives into stems and affixes depending on agreement type, suggesting that learners store and process morphologically-complex words like native speakers, even when the first and second language have very different morphological systems. Keywords: Arabic morphology, heritage learners, lexical processing, L2 learners 1 Corresponding author: [rebeccaf@uark.edu](rebeccaf@uark.edu) Introduction A consistent finding in the literature on second language (L2) acquisition is that postpuberty, or late, L2 learners do not always produce inflectional morphology accurately and consistently, even at advanced proficiency levels. The cause of these morphological difficulties has been hotly debated. According to one view, as the result of a critical period for language acquisition, late L2 learners lack nativelike knowledge of the second language, which leads to morphological errors (e.g., Clahsen, 1990; Hawkins & Chan, 1997; McCarthy, 2008) . In opposition to this view is the claim that late L2 learners may not differ from native speakers in their knowledge of the L2; however, they may not be able to access their L2 knowledge consistently and accurately, possibly due to factors such as time pressure, working memory constraints, slowed lexical access, or interference from the native language (e.g., Ellis & Sagarra, 2010; Hopp, 2013; McDonald, 2006; Prévost & White, 2000) . Recent research has taken the debate about L2 morphology to the lexical level, asking how L2 learners process words that are morphologically-complex due to inflectional processes, with the idea that one possible cause of morphological difficulties could be that these types of words are not represented or processed in the same manner by learners as they are by native speakers. This possibility has led to a significant body of research that has been devoted to the question of how and why L2 learners may differ from native speakers in the manner in which they process morphologically-complex words. According to several studies on English and other languages, native speakers seem to decompose words that consist of more than one morpheme into their component parts during lexical processing. To give an example, if an English native speaker is exposed to the morphologically-complex word pushed, he or she automatically and unconsciously segments the word into its stem, push, and the inflectional morpheme, -ed (Marslen-Wilson & Tyler, 1997) . In contrast, several studies that have examined lexical processing in late L2 learners seem to show that learners do not segment morphologically-complex words into their component morphemes, but rather process them as non-decomposable wholes (Silva & Clahsen, 2008) . Based on this finding, Clahsen et al (2010) hypothesize that late L2 learners do not have as detailed a representation of morphologically-complex words as native speakers do, and hypothesize that this could be because of an increased dependence on declarative instead of procedural memory in post-pub

FAQs

What morphological process does Arabic primarily use in the study?

Arabic’s primary morphological process is infixation, alongside prefixation and suffixation.

What groups are compared in the adjective agreement processing experiment?

The study compares native speakers, heritage speakers, and late L2 learners.

What do the masked priming results suggest about adjective processing?

All three groups parse adjectives into stems and affixes depending on agreement type, indicating that learners process morphologically complex words similarly to native speakers.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Dipper