Tracking the Stem and Root Morphemes in Arabic: Evidence from Visual Morphological Priming

Area of Science:

• Linguistics
• Psycholinguistics
• Cognitive Science

Background:

• The morphemic status of the consonantal root in Arabic linguistics is debated.
• Priming experiments in Arabic have yielded inconsistent results regarding root effects.
• The role of the stem in Arabic lexical access requires further investigation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To experimentally investigate the priming effect of stems on lexical access in Arabic.
• To compare the priming effects of inflectional stems, derivational stems, and consonantal roots.
• To contribute to the theoretical debate on the organization of the Arabic lexicon.

Main Methods:

• A visual lexical decision masked priming experiment was conducted.
• Participants were presented with target words preceded by related or unrelated primes.
• Priming conditions included shared surface stem, shared abstract stem, shared root, and phono-orthographic control.

Main Results:

• A gradient facilitation effect was observed across all priming conditions.
• Inflectional stems showed significantly greater priming than derivational stems or roots.
• Reaction times were slowest in the phono-orthographic control condition.

Conclusions:

• The findings support a gradient salience of stem and root in Arabic lexical organization.
• Words sharing surface stems prime lexical access more effectively than those sharing derivational stems or roots.
• A hybrid model of the Arabic lexicon, incorporating both root and stem access, is proposed.