Morphological optionality in Arabic informal reading aloud

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.