Word order preferences of Tagalog-speaking adults and children

Garcia, R ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1363-542X, Dery, JE, Roeser, J ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4463-0923 and Höhle, B, 2018. Word order preferences of Tagalog-speaking adults and children. First Language, 38 (6), pp. 617-640. ISSN 0142-7237

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Abstract

This article investigates the word order preferences of Tagalog-speaking adults and five- and seven-year-old children. The participants were asked to complete sentences to describe pictures depicting actions between two animate entities. Adults preferred agent-initial constructions in the patient voice but not in the agent voice, while the children produced mainly agent-initial constructions regardless of voice. This agent-initial preference, despite the lack of a close link between the agent and the subject in Tagalog, shows that this word order preference is not merely syntactically-driven (subject-initial preference). Additionally, the children’s agent-initial preference in the agent voice, contrary to the adults’ lack of preference, shows that children do not respect the subject-last principle of ordering Tagalog full noun phrases. These results suggest that language-specific optional features like a subject-last principle take longer to be acquired.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	First Language
Creators:	Garcia, R., Dery, J.E., Roeser, J. and Höhle, B.
Publisher:	Sage
Date:	2018
Volume:	38
Number:	6
ISSN:	0142-7237
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1177/0142723718790317 DOI
Divisions:	Schools > School of Social Sciences
Record created by:	Jonathan Gallacher
Date Added:	21 Aug 2018 13:10
Last Modified:	05 Jul 2019 08:17
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/34366

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