the cost of processing vowel diacri4cs in arabic: evidence...
TRANSCRIPT
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Thecostofprocessingvoweldiacri4csinArabic:Evidencefrommasked-priming
Diogo Almeida, Kevin Schluter, Ma7hew Tucker (NYUAD) &
Ali Idrissi (UAE University)
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Roadmapfortoday
• The problem of Visual Word RecogniLon – Specific issues related to reading Arabic
• Previous work • Experimental design • Results
• Discussion
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Basicprobleminvisualwordrecogni4on
• A major problem to overcome: Perceptual confusability
• Small inventory of basic symbols (28 in Arabic) • Large number of word forms (tens of thousands)
– All words resemble each other to some extent, because symbol sharing is rampant.
• Overcoming perceptual confusability – Familiarity with full word form as a unit
• Gestalt representaLon
– ReducLon in lexical compeLLon by reducing form ambiguity
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Basicprobleminvisualwordrecogni4oninArabic
• Overcoming perceptual confusability – Familiarity with full word form as a unit – ReducLon in lexical compeLLon by reducing form ambiguity
• These two sources of help are in opposiLon in Arabic – Short vowels and long consonants are not usually wri7en
• Form ambiguity is fairly common • DisambiguaLon by context
– Visual word forms in Arabic: • Most familiar tend to be the most ambiguous. • Least familiar tend to be the least ambiguous.
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• Only the 28 consonants are indicated with independent symbols (abjad);
b d k f ʔ
ب د ك ف عـ
ArabicOrthography
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• Only the 28 consonants are indicated with independent symbols (abjad);
• The long vowels ([ii], [uu] and [aa]) are rendered by the le7ers represenLng the consonants [y], [w] and [?];
ii uu aa
ي و ـا/ى
ArabicOrthography
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• Only the 28 consonants are indicated with independent symbols (abjad);
• The long vowels ([ii], [uu] and [aa]) are rendered by the le7ers represenLng the consonants [y], [w] and [?];
• Short vowels are indicated with diacriLcs above or beneath le7er symbols;
bi bu ba
ب ب ب
ArabicOrthography
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• Only the 28 consonants are indicated with independent symbols (abjad);
• The long vowels ([ii], [uu] and [aa]) are rendered by the le7ers represenLng the consonants [y], [w] and [?];
• Short vowels are indicated with diacriLcs above or beneath le7er symbols;
• The absence of a vowel (in coda posiLon) is marked with a sukuun; bi bu ba
ب ب ب
b]
ب
σ
ArabicOrthography
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• Vowels (and diacriLcs in general) are not used in everyday Arabic texts;
• ExcepLon: instrucLon materials for young children or second-language learners;
• Religious text; • Mainly for disambiguaLon purposes.
ArabicOrthography
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حمل حمل ‘to carry’
حمل ‘pregnancy’
حمل ‘burden’
حمل ‘a lamb’
حمل ‘to cause to
carry’
حمل ‘to be carried’
حمل ‘to be caused
to carry’
FormAmbiguityinArabic
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Basicprobleminvisualwordrecogni4oninArabic
• Visual word forms in Arabic: – most familiar tend to be the most ambiguous.
– Least familiar tend to be the least ambiguous.
• Research quesLon: – What is the rela3ve contribu3on of form familiarity and
form ambiguity to visual word recogniLon in Arabic?
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Previouswork–Equivocalfindings
• Research quesLon: – What is the rela3ve contribu3on of form familiarity and form
ambiguity to visual word recogniLon in Arabic?
• SomeLmes vowel diacriLcs help (citaLons) – Facilitatory role due to reducLon in form ambiguity
• SomeLmes vowel diacriLcs hinder (citaLons) – Inhibitory role due to controlled processes (e.g., grapheme-to-
phoneme conversion strategy) – Implies that form familiarity alone is enough to recognize words,
relaLvely automaLcally.
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Basicprobleminvisualwordrecogni4oninArabic
• Beyond theoreLcal concerns: – Arabic is heavily diglossic
• spoken varieLes are not wri7en • wri7en variety is seldom spoken
– Experimental psycholinguisLc work growing. Frequent quesLons:
• Should we use vowel diacriLcs in our study or not? • When and where are vowel diacriLcs appropriate?
• What would be the impact of deciding to use/omit them on the results?
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ExperimentalDesign
• Masked priming – PotenLal to tap into the long-term representaLon of visual
word forms
• 2 x 2 x 2 factorial design – Lexicality (word vs pseudoword) – Prime voweling (unvoweled vs voweled)
– Target voweling (unvoweled vs voweled)
• Lexical decision task on target – Measure: RelaLve magnitude of repeLLon priming effect
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ExperimentalDesign
• 55 parLcipants – All female (female
campus of UAEU), naLve speakers of Arabic
– 49 analyzed
– 6 rejected (error rate > 15%)
• Time out = 2 s (no outlier rejecLon)
|||||||||||
Prime
Target
500ms
48msLexicalDecision
TrialStructure
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Predic4ons
|||||||||||
Prime
Target
|||||||||||
Prime
Target
|||||||||||
Prime
Target
|||||||||||
Prime
Target
unvowelled vowelled unvowelled vowelled
←unvowelled
vowelled→
UnvowelledPrime
VowelledPrime
ReactionTime
MinimizationofFormAmbiguityasmainfactorfacilitatingrecognition
UnvowelledTarget
VowelledTarget
UnvowelledPrime
VowelledPrime
ReactionTime
FormFamiliarityasmainfactorfacilitatingrecognition
UnvowelledTarget
VowelledTarget
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Results
UnvowelledPrime
VowelledPrime
ReactionTime
MinimizationofFormAmbiguityasmainfactorfacilitatingrecognition
UnvowelledTarget
VowelledTarget
UnvowelledPrime
VowelledPrime
ReactionTime
FormFamiliarityasmainfactorfacilitatingrecognition
UnvowelledTarget
VowelledTarget
nonword word
600
700
800
900
unvowel vowel unvowel vowelPrime
MeanRT Target
unvowel
vowel
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Discussion
• Form familiarity determines how fast Arabic readers can recognize visual word forms. – Perhaps voweling overtly engages the orthography-
phonology interface, which takes longer?
• Form ambiguity does not slow Arabic readers even when reading isolated visual word forms. – Familiar forms have a default interpretaLon?
• Example here?
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Conclusion
• Full voweling, even if it can reduce form ambiguity, slows Arabic readers down in reading.
• Form familiarity seems to be the determining factor in how fast readers can recognize a visual word form.
• Experiments in Arabic: use full voweling only when absolutely necessary if natural automaLc linguisLc processes are being invesLgated.
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Anyques4ons?
Thankyou!