Cognitive Limits and Focused Grammatical Structures in English and Arabic

Introduction: The paper looks at the effect of cognitive limitations, such as memory load and processing cost, in encoding and processing focus structures in English and Arabic. Based on the paradigm of concentrative grammar, the study deals with the questions of whether grammatical focus marking varies in response to cognitive efficiency of typologically different languages. Methods: Ninety participants (L1 English, L1 Arabic and advanced L2 speakers) were used and they were provided with three tasks; acceptability judgements, self-paced reading and recall probes in various conditions of cognitive load (Ellis, 2003). Results: Findings showed that there were high impacts of Language and Cognitive Load on accuracy and speed where English constructions were processed more accurately and faster than Arabic constructions. Constructions with focus particles (e.g. only, even, إنما, fqts) were most efficient in processing and clefts were least efficient and had the highest cognitive cost. Favorable load decreases were consistent and group performance enhanced. Even though the L2 respondents were slower in their response, their accuracy was not significantly lower than native speakers, indicating that they could have implemented compensatory attentional processes. Discussion: The results confirm the hypothesis that focus marking is in cognitively mediated and prove the interaction of grammatical and processing constraints. The research may be helpful in the cross-linguistic paradigms of information organization, as well as in the teaching implication on training learners in second language to develop a narrower focus in understanding information within cognitive limitations.