Lexical Complexity and Age-of-Acquisition: A Comparison of Six Palestinian Arabic Dialects

The study investigates the relationship between lexical complexity and subjective age of acquisition (AoA) for nouns and verbs across six regional dialects of Palestinian Arabic (PA) spoken in northern Israel. Sixty adult native PA speakers (M age =36.9 years; Range: 25-62) representing six different PA dialects, participated in a picture naming task of 154 nouns and 124 verbs. The target words varied in lexical-phonological complexity measured by syllable length, and the number of intra-syllabic consonant clusters, inter-syllabic consonant clusters (consonant sequences), and consonant doublings. Participants further provided subjective AoA estimates. Our results revealed significant dialectal differences in AoA, but not in complexity. Moreover, significant differences in AoA and complexity were observed between nouns and verbs. Nouns were acquired earlier within all dialects, despite being longer and with more inter-syllabic clusters. Verbs had more consonant doublings. Testing the relationship between complexity and subjective AoA, a regression analysis showed that AoA was predicted by lexical complexity in some but not all of the dialects tested, offering partial support for the hypothesis that greater complexity corresponds to later lexical acquisition. For example, positive correlation analyses showed complexity effects for verbs; as verbs with more intra-syllabic clusters (in Wadi Sallami dialect) were acquired later. Likewise, for nouns, those with more inter-syllabic clusters were acquired later (in Kufur Kanna dialect). An exception is observed in the Msherfi dialect, where a negative correlation indicates that verbs with more inter-syllabic clusters were acquired earlier rather than later. The results have implications that extend beyond Arabic, offering insights into lexical acquisition in dialectal and multilingual contexts.