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Word order preferences for direct and indirect objects in children learning Korean
Sookeun Cho1, Miseon Lee, William O'Grady
1Korea University.
Journal of Child Language
|December 11, 2002
Summary
Preschool Korean children prefer accusative-dative object order in sentences, even when mothers use the reverse. This preference is linked to the described situation, not just grammatical roles.
Area of Science:
- Linguistics
- Developmental Psychology
- Psycholinguistics
Background:
- Korean children comprehend Subject-Object-Verb (SOV) sentences better than Object-Subject-Verb (OSV).
- Limited research exists on Korean children's object ordering preferences.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate Korean preschool children's word order preferences for direct (accusative) and indirect (dative) objects.
- To explore hypotheses explaining these ordering preferences.
Main Methods:
- An act-out comprehension experiment was conducted with 40 Korean children aged 4 to 7.
- A follow-up study examined transitive verbs with instrument arguments.
Main Results:
- Children showed a statistically significant preference for the accusative-dative object order.
- This preference persisted despite mothers using the dative-accusative order more frequently in speech.
- Results supported the hypothesis linking word order preference to the type of situation described.
Conclusions:
- Korean preschool children's object ordering preferences are influenced by the semantic context of the sentence.
- This suggests a nuanced understanding of grammatical relations and situational semantics in language acquisition.