title: Word order preferences for direct and indirect objects in children learning Korean.
abstract: Pre-school Korean children typically manifest higher comprehension rates on the 'unmarked' SOV sentences of their language than on the 'scrambled' OSV patterns. To date, however, scant attention has been paid to children's ordering preferences with respect to direct and indirect objects. The results of an act-out comprehension experiment involving 40 subjects (aged 4;0 to 7;0) show a strong, statistically significant preference for the accusative-dative order, despite evidence that the reverse order is more common in mother-to-child speech. Two hypotheses are considered, one involving the relationship between word order and grammatical relations and the other involving the relationship between word order and the types of situations denoted by the sentences in question. The results of a follow-up study involving transitive verbs with instrument arguments provide strong evidence in favour of the latter hypothesis.
authors.affiliation: Korea University.
authors.forename: Sookeun
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Cho
authors.forename: Miseon
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: William
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: O'Grady
authors.forename: Minsun
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Song
authors.forename: Takaaki
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Suzuki
authors.forename: Naoko
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Yoshinaga
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D002755:Choice Behavior; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D012660:Semantics; D014706:Verbal Learning; D014825:Vocabulary