An Investigation of the Word Order Parameter of a Parent-Child Verbal Interaction in a Relatively Free Order Language

Abstract

A number of investigators have assumed that the relatively free word order of a given language was the relatively free word order which the child encountered during his language acquisition period. This study investigated the word order of a Hebrew speaker's verbal interaction with (1) his 2 year old daughter (2) an adult. The results show the father to use a relatively free word order in his verbal interaction with the adult and a fairly rigid word-order (S-V-O) in his verbal interaction with his child. Some possible interpretations are discussed.