Narrative microstructure and macrostructure skills in Arabic diglossia: The case of Arab immigrant children in Canada (Postprint)

Abstract

The current study investigated the composition of the lexicon deployed by Arabic-speaking Canadian immigrant children in narrative production with specific focus on diglossia (N=75; Age-range 7-12 years). The study also tested narrative microstructure skills and the relationship between microstructure and macrostructure. Participants were asked to tell a story using an Arabic version of the Test of Narrative Language (Gillam & Pearson, 2004). Instructions were given in Standard Arabic. General measures of microstructure were coded (number of tokens, type\token ratio, Mean Length of Utterance). In addition, we coded the average frequency of the following diglossia-specific lexical features: a) identical words, which keep the same phonological form in Standard Arabic (StA) and Spoken Arabic (SpA); b) cognate words (which keep different yet related forms in StA and SpA) in their SpA form (SpA cognates); c) cognate words in their StA forms (StA cognates), d) unique SpA words, and e) unique StA words. Results showed that the bulk of the lexicon of the narratives produced by immigrant children consisted of SpA words; StA words were used less frequently and English code-switched words made up a very small proportion of the words. Results also showed that narrative length and type/token ratio significantly predicted macrostructure beyond the children’s age and Arabic language proficiency. However, when diglossia-specific lexical features were used as predictors of macrostructure only use of StA words predicted unique variance beyond age, Arabic language proficiency and narrative length. Findings are discussed within the context of Arabic diglossia and lexical competition in narrative production in this context.