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Article published In: Written Language & Literacy
Vol. 27:2 (2024) ► pp.127–152

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Morphological optionality in Arabic informal reading aloud

ORCiD logo with link | University of Gothenburg
 | Independent researcher
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Published online: 20 January 2026
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https://doi.org/10.1075/wll.00086.hal
Abstract
Case and mood inflection (CMI) is traditionally regarded as a central feature of Standard Arabic, even though it is typically not graphemically represented. In reading, these inflectional suffixes are often omitted. This is the first study to empirically explore this omission in reading for comprehension. 18 native skilled readers read texts aloud while being audio recorded, instructed to focus on the content of the text. The recordings were analyzed for production of CMI. Participants produced on average 6.4% of all CMI expected according to standard grammatical descriptions, far below the prescriptive ideal of complete use of CMI. Furthermore, around one fifth of all inflected forms produced were incorrect. These results indicate that reading without CMI may be a more appropriate benchmark for reading proficiency than is reading with CMI, despite the latter traditionally being regarded as more correct. Implications of these findings for reading research and reading instruction are discussed.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1The morphology of CMI
    • 2.2The graphemics of CMI
    • 2.3CMI as markers of linguistic correctness
    • 2.4Registers of reading aloud
  • 3.Method
    • 3.1Participants
    • 3.2Material
    • 3.3Procedure
    • 3.4Annotation
    • 3.5Statistical analysis
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Overall results
    • 4.2Morphological parameters
  • 5.Discussion
    • 5.1Comparison with formal speech
    • 5.2Reading research
    • 5.3Reading instruction
  • 6.Conclusion
  • 7.Author contributions
  • Notes
  • References
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