How Do Non-native Speakers of Arabic Language Acquire and Learn Morphology in Arabic? Evidence from Analysis of Three Young Acquirers: An

Purpose: To describe the earliest and latest morphological elements acquired by non-native speakers of Arabic language. Methods: Three young non-native speakers (a Spanish and two Beninois) were tape-recorded, twenty-minutes each and tested based on traditional classification of words in Arabic: nouns-class, verbs-class, and function-words class. Face-to-face observations were also noted down. Results: Results indicated that case-one had many problems regarding plurality, duality, gender, agreement between adjectives and nouns, number in general except simple numbers when used separately. Case-two produced a large number of the content-words, but again with many atypical ones. Case-three had only a few errors in patterns like broken-plural and diminutives. Additionally, case-one demonstrated a limited use of verbs, a very few or no function-words, case-two showed a quiet number of verbs compared to case one’s poor use of verbs, and function-words as well, and case-three proved to have good command of nouns-class, verbs-class and function-words-class. Conclusions: Cases 1-3 are alike yet dissimilar in terms of acquired and non-acquired morphological patterns. These variances were shown clear through the produced morphological patterns by each and may be affected by the period spent in the Saudi Arabi