Abstract
The study examines how language processing is done in the brain whereby two languages that is English and Arabic are used to assess the differences by presenting some printed words in both languages to different participants individually to read them. The participants were to read Arabic words first in three types of setting which are the upper part, lower part and then the complete part. Then they read the English words by starting with the lower part, the upper part and finally the complete part.
From the study We found out that all participants involved in the study had a high percentage score (88%) in reading Arabic words in the lower part and they had a lower percentage (13%) in reading the Arabic words in the upper part a figure which is lower than the upper part and complete part in Arabic and lower than upper and complete part in English.
Furthermore, In English words, participants have high percentage score in reading the upper part that they get 87%, which is higher than the upper in Arabic and higher than the lower part in English. The results have shown that the reading words in Arabic language in the lower part are much easier than the upper part from the Arabic and the lower part from the English. Besides, English words are easier than the lower part of the same language and also the upper part in Arabic.
Introduction
One of the main topic which has received a lot of debate in neurocognitive research is how language processing is done in the brain and how the qualitative differences in processing different languages and also how the different specific properties of the language modulate the way it is processed. So far, the behavioral studies which have been conducted on cross-linguistic comparisons have so far not produced undisputed results (Bick, Goelman& Frost, 2011). In the current study we will try to look into these issues by considering imaging data of morphological processing during reading of Arabic and English where printed words are presented to different individuals to read them.
From the different studies which have been conducted, the main difference seems to be that in English, the processing system is tuned to the word’s linear orthographic structure whereas in Arabic the processing system automatically searches for the root letters. This is because the words in Arabic mental lexicon have been shown to be organized by morphology such as by root families rather than by simple letter sequences which mostly are not the case in English Bick, Goelman& Frost, 2011).
Method
The study was conducted by a group of five researchers who interviewed 20 participants both employees and students who could be able to read Arabic and English whereby each individual was supposed to interview four participants and all participants were between 20-30 years old. The researchers had already informed the participants about the topic of the study and the purpose of the study and we used experimental method to collect the qualitative data to be analyzed.
Stimuli
Different words both in Arabic and English were presented to the participants under three different conditions; upper, lower and complete formats. First the participants are presented with different words from Arabic language in the following series; first the UPPER part, second the LOWER part and then the COMPLETE part. Then following the same format the participants are presented with the words from the English language by presenting the LOWER part first, then the UPPER part is presented and lastly the COMPLETE part.
Design
The experiment had words printed on the paper which were then presented to the participants individually and they were to choose 3 different words randomly from the Arabic language in different conditions enumerated above. Using the same criteria they were to choose 3 different words randomly from the English language individually following the three conditions discussed above.
Apparatus
We used the Photoshop editor program to help us divide the words from the middle to have upper part and the lower part so that we could have a printout which had accurate size of all alphabets from the both Arabic and English words. The experiment was therefore presented to the participants on these printouts and a table sheet was used to record their responses which were comprised on how many words each participant read correctly and that he/she was unable to read correctly.
Procedure
The participants were presented with the first section which they were supposed to read in the following series, the UPPER part, then the LOWER part and finally the COMPLOTE part and they started with Arabic words, in which they were to identify the part which is easier to read. The following criteria were used for the second section where they read the English words from the LOWER part, then the UPPER part and finally the COMPLETE part. Then each participant could identify which part was easier to read and then responses were recorded as enumerated above.
Results / Outcomes/ findings
We found out that all participants involved in the study had a high percentage score (88%) in reading Arabic words in the lower part and they had a lower percentage (13%) in reading the Arabic words in the upper part a figure which is lower than the upper part and complete part in Arabic and lower than upper and complete part in English. In English words, participants have high percentage score in reading the upper part that they get 87%, which is higher than the upper in Arabic and higher than the lower part in English.
In addition, participants have low percentage score in the lower part in English, they get 25%, which is lower than the lower and complete in Arabic and lower than the upper and complete in English. While the participants have upper and lower different percentage, for sure they get the full high percentage 100% in complete part in both language; Arabic and English words.
Discussion
| LANGUAGE/CORRECT | UPPER | LOWER | COMPLETE |
| ARABIC | 13% | 88% | 100% |
| ENGLISH | 87% | 25% | 100% |
The results have shown that the reading words in Arabic language in the lower part are much easier than the upper part from the Arabic and the lower part from the English. Which is matching with what participants said; they can read the lower part in Arabic and they feel it is easier than reading the upper part in Arabic and the lower part in English.
The lower part in Arabic language is easier to read as they are formed by intertwining consonants roots derived from its rich systematic morphology which makes the ,lower parts to have lines that connect between the alphabets which helps the reader to explore the word from this part (Lavric, Clapp & Rastle, 2007).
English morphology on the other hand is characterized by a linear and sequential concatenation of prefixes or a suffix which makes the English language lack lines that connects the alphabets and therefore, it is easier to read lower part in Arabic than the lower part in English Lehtonen, et al, 2009). But in contrast reading the upper part of the English words are easier than the lower part of the same language and also the upper part in Arabic is because when reading this part the processing system (brains) is tuned to the word’s linear orthographic structure which makes this part to become easier to read and pronounce (Tyler, et al 2004).
Behavioral studies which have been investigating the morphological processing and semantic and orthographic processing have concluded that, reading processes in Hebrew and in English differ qualitatively. The main difference is brought by the fact that in English like any other Indo-European has its processing tuned to the world’s linear orthographic structures, whereas in Hebrew the processing system automatically searches for root letters. This is so because words in the Hebrew mental lexicon have been shown to be organized by morphology and by root families rather than by simple letter sequences and this makes Hebrew more difficult to read than English (Bick, Goelman & Frost, 2011).
References
Bick, A. S., Goelman, G., & Frost, R. (2011). Hebrew brain vs. English brain: language modulates the way it is processed. Journal of cognitive neuroscience, 23(9), 2280-2290. http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/jocn.2010.21583
Lavric, A., Clapp, A., & Rastle, K. (2007). ERP evidence of morphological analysis from orthography: A masked priming study. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 19(5), 866-877. http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=6794257
Lehtonen, M., Vorobyev, V., Soveri, A., Hugdahl, K., Tuokkola, T., & Laine, M. (2009). Language-specific activations in the brain: Evidence from inflectional processing in bilinguals. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 22(5), 495-513. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0911604409000396
Tyler, L. K., Bright, P., Fletcher, P., & Stamatakis, E. A. (2004). Neural processing of nouns and verbs: The role of inflectional morphology. Neuropsychologia, 42(4), 512-523. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0028393203002410