Children's online use of word order and morphosyntactic markers in Tagalog thematic role assignment: an eye-tracking study

Rowena Garcia,Barbara Höhle,Jens Roeser

doi:10.1017/s0305000919000618

Abstract

We investigated whether Tagalog-speaking children incrementally interpret the first noun as the agent, even if verbal and nominal markers for assigning thematic roles are given early in Tagalog sentences. We asked five- and seven-year-old children and adult controls to select which of two pictures of reversible actions matched the sentence they heard, while their looks to the pictures were tracked. Accuracy and eye-tracking data showed that agent-initial sentences were easier to comprehend than patient-initial sentences, but the effect of word order was modulated by voice. Moreover, our eye-tracking data provided evidence that, by the first noun phrase, seven-year-old children looked more to the target in the agent-initial compared to the patient-initial conditions, but this word order advantage was no longer observed by the second noun phrase. The findings support language processing and acquisition models which emphasize the role of frequency in developing heuristic strategies (e.g., Chang, Dell, & Bock, 2006).

Highlights

In daily communications, we often have to identify the agent and the patient of an action described in a sentence that we hear
Nested comparisons inspecting the two-way interaction of Age Group (5:7) and Word Order showed that the seven-year-olds scored higher than the five-year-olds in both Word Order conditions, but this difference was more pronounced in the agent-initial condition (coefficient = 3.60, [2.26, 5.00], P(b < 0) < .001) than in the patient-initial condition (coef = 1.45, [0.54, 2.38], P(b < 0) = .001)
Nested comparisons inspecting the interaction of Voice and Word Order showed an agent-initial over patient-initial advantage for both voices, but with Word Order having a greater effect in the agent voice (coef = 9.82, [6.69, 13.59], P(b < 0) < .001) than in the patient voice (coef = 3.98, [1.20, 7.00], P(b < 0) = .004)

Summary

Introduction

We often have to identify the agent and the patient of an action described in a sentence that we hear. It is crucial in language acquisition for children to learn how their language marks these agent and patient thematic roles, and to integrate this knowledge in their sentence processing. They have to do this role assignment rapidly in the ongoing process of sentence interpretation. The current study investigates thematic role assignment in children learning Tagalog – a language that has a complex but reliable system of morphosyntactic markers of thematic roles

Methods

Results

Conclusion