Word Order Acquisition in Persian Speaking Children

Abstract

Objectives: Persian is a pro-drop language with canonical Subject-Object-Verb (SOV) word order. This study investigates the acquisition of word order in Persian-speaking children. Methods: In the present study, participants were 60 Persian-speaking children (30 girls and 30 boys) with typically developing language skills, and aged between 30-47 months. The 30-minute language samples were audio-recorded during free play with an examiner and during description of pictures.  Results: Object-Verb (OV) and subject-verb (SV) sentence structures were the most commonly used in two-component simple sentences. SOV was the most common three-component structures used by Persian-speaking children. Discussion: Despite the fact that the spoken-Persian language has no strict word order, Persian-speaking children tend to use other logically possible orders of subject (S), verb (V), and object (O) lesser than the SOV structure.

Keywords

• Sentence
• Word order
• MLU
• Normally developing children
• Persian