THE ROLE OF ANIMACY IN THAI CHILDREN’S RELATIVE CLAUSE ACQUISITION
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Abstract
Relative clauses have been extensively studied in language acquisition due to their complex structures and internal syntactic properties, especially subject relative clause (SRC) and object relative clauses (ORC). Relative clauses are not only structurally complex but also semantically complex, particularly the animacy of the head noun which plays an important role in the acquisition of subject-object relative clauses. The present study explores the effects of animacy on head nouns of subject and object relative clause production in Thai children. Cross-sectional data were collected from 85 2–5-year-old children living in Bangkok. They were interviewed using a preference task consisting of four sets of pictures with animate and inanimate head nouns for eliciting SRCs and ORCs.
The experiment's overall findings show that subject relative clauses (SRCs) are less difficult to understand than object relative clauses (ORCs). Subject relative clauses with animate head nouns are easier to learn than subject relative clauses with inanimate head nouns. Object relative clauses with inanimate head nouns are easier to understand than object relative clauses with animate head nouns.
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References
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