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Acquiring diglossia: mutual influences of formal and colloquial Arabic on children's grammaticality judgments*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 April 2011

REEM KHAMIS-DAKWAR ,
KAREN FROUD  and
PETER GORDON
REEM KHAMIS-DAKWAR*
Affiliation:
Adelphi University
KAREN FROUD
Affiliation:
Teachers College, Columbia University
PETER GORDON
Affiliation:
Teachers College, Columbia University
*
Address for correspondence: Dr Reem Khamis-Dakwar, Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Adelphi University, Garden City, NY 11530, USA. tel: 516-877-4778; e-mail: khamis-dakwar@adelphi.edu
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Abstract

There are differences and similarities between Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and spoken varieties of Arabic, in all language domains. To obtain preliminary insights into interactions between the acquisition of spoken and standard varieties of a language in a diglossic situation, we employed forced-choice grammaticality judgments to investigate morphosyntactic knowledge of MSA and the local variant of Palestinian Colloquial Arabic (PCA), in 60 Arabic-speaking children aged 6 ; 4 to 12 ; 4, from a school in Nazareth. We used morphosyntactic structures which either differed or were similar between PCA and standard Arabic. Children generally performed better on items presented in PCA than in standard Arabic, with the exception of constructions involving negation. Children performed better on items when the two constructions were similar in both language varieties. We discuss the results with respect to the multiple factors that affect acquisition in a diglossic situation, and relate our findings to the possibility of interference effects of diglossia on learning.

Type
Brief Research Reports
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 39 , Issue 1 , January 2012 , pp. 61 - 89
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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Footnotes

[*]

Many thanks to the children who participated in this study, their parents and teachers and administrators at AlMukhales school in Nazareth. The authors also thank Hamid Ouali and Suzanne Dikker, as well as three anonymous reviewers for their helpful and insightful comments. The research was supported by Spencer Foundation Research Training Grant, Teachers College, Columbia University.

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