The emergence of subjects in Lebanese two-year-olds

• Published in: Journal of child language Vol. 51; no. 1; pp. 234 - 247
• Main Authors: ABBOUD, Layal, CHOUEIRI, Lina, SEIFEDDINE, Nour, TULLER, Laurice
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Cambridge University Press 01.01.2024
• Subjects: Adolescent; Arabic language; Child; Child Development; Child Language; Children; Children & youth; Female; Grammatical subject; Humans; Hypotheses; Language; Language Development; Language disorders; Language Impairments; Mothers; Native language acquisition; Predicate; Preferences; Semitic Languages; Sentences; Speech; Syntactic movement; Syntax; Verbs; Word Order; Young Children; Lebanon; language acquisition; Lebanese Arabic; subjects with verbal/non-verbal predicates
• ISSN: 0305-0009; 1469-7602; 1469-7602
• DOI: 10.1017/S0305000922000587

In Lebanese Arabic, lexical subjects may occur before or after verbs, but only before non-verbal predicates. Analysis of spontaneous language samples from 19 two-year-old children shows that postverbal (VS) and preverbal (SV) subjects emerge simultaneously. The youngest children displayed no VS-SV difference in frequency. A slight preference for SV is observed in older children. No preference for SV subjects was found in the speech of the mothers of the younger or older children. Lexical subjects systematically appeared before non-verbal predicates. We interpret these results as evidence for early knowledge of syntactic movement, consistent with Wexler’s (1998) Very Early Parameter Setting.