Effects of Diglossic Lexical Class on Phonological Awareness in Arabic-Speaking Children

The effect of Arabic Diglossia on phonological awareness (PA) performance has been well documented, primarily through comparisons between spoken and standard lexical forms. Given the diversity of lexical classes in Arabic, the present study examined the effects of four lexical classes: spoken, standard, identical, and cognate, on phonological performance across six elementary grades. A total of 1,516 Arabic-speaking children participated in the study (228 first graders, 230 second graders, 254 third graders, 267 fourth graders, 266 fifth graders, and 271 sixth graders). Of these, 425 were classified as having poor PA and 1,005 as having typical PA. All children completed phonemic deletion and phonemic segmentation tasks designed to examine lexical-class effects. Mixed-effects ordered beta regression models revealed significant effects of lexical class, grade level, and PA proficiency in both tasks, with phoneme position additionally affecting deletion. In phoneme deletion, spoken and cognate words yielded higher performance than standard and identical words, and final phoneme deletion was easier than initial deletion. In segmentation, standard words yielded the lowest performance. Across both tasks, performance improved with grade and was higher among children with typical than poor PA. Importantly, lexical-class differences were more pronounced among children with poor PA in deletion, with a similar trend observed in segmentation. These findings demonstrate that lexical-class effects on PA vary according to task and phonological proficiency and underscore the importance of considering lexical variation in phonological assessment and instruction in Arabic.