The acquisition of Irish: a study of word order development.
This study examines the development of word order patterns in Irish, a strict VSO language. It was found that the three children studied used subject-initial utterances considerably more frequently than adults in input, and that in both adult and child the elision of the verb 'to be' played a significant role. Another significant factor was found to be the different restrictions on main verbs and verbal nouns with regard to the subject: in neutral sentences the main verb always precedes the subject, while the verbal noun always follows it. The Bates & MacWhinney (1979) hypothesis that early verb initialization results from a tendency to place new information before given information was also investigated.
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Instiúid Teangeolaíochta Eireann, Dublin, Ireland.
D002675:Child, Preschool; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007494:Ireland; D007804:Language Development; D008037:Linguistics; D008297:Male; D013060:Speech