Early knowledge of word order in Palestinian Arabic
An eye-tracking study
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21630828 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Tala Nazzal (0000-0001-6148-6962, An-Najah National University, corresponding author), Jingtao Zhu (0000-0002-1885-9329, ClicAsia), Anna Gavarró (0000-0003-2373-7243, Universitat Autonòma de Barcelona) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 33 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 165-180 |
| Publication date | 2026-01-02 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Language Acquisition (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1048-9223 • E-ISSN: 1532-7817 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/10489223.2025.2456564 |
| OpenAlex | W4407749365 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 24 |
This paper addresses the underexplored realm of early parameter setting in language acquisition before the two-word stage, in a less researched language, Palestinian Arabic. Building on Franck et al.’s (2013) exploration of the verb–direct or indirect object/direct or indirect object–verb (VO/OV) parameter in infants exposed to French, we investigate the acquisition of the VO order (as opposed to OV) in 17-month-old native Palestinian Arabic infants using a combination of the preferential looking paradigm, the weird word order paradigm, and pseudo-verbs. The results from our study show that Palestinian Arabic infants have established VO by the age of 1;5 and ignore sequences of ungrammatical OV. This pattern is different from that of the adults, who do not ignore ungrammatical sequences. Additionally, we find no correlation between the infants’ performance and vocabulary size or age within the range tested. The infants in the study constitute, with Mandarin infants in a similar study, the youngest age group to show sensitivity to the VO/OV contrast
Arabic · Eye tracking · Linguistics · Natural language processing · Semitic languages · Word order · Computer Science · Language Development and Disorders · Philosophy · Psychology · Reading and Literacy Development · Text Readability and Simplification · Artificial Intelligence
First Verbs
Clause Structure And Word Order In Hebrew And Arabic
Looking while listening
Learning Words and Rules
The Structure of Arabic Language and Orthography
Linguistic distance and initial reading acquisition
Do young children have adult syntactic competence?
An Adaptation of the MacArthur-Bates CDI in 17 Arabic Dialects for Children Aged 8 to 30 Months
The eyes have it
Do infants have abstract grammatical knowledge of word order at 17 months? Evidence from Mandarin Chinese
Acquiring basic word order
Exemplar-learning and schematization in a usage-based account of syntactic acquisition
The CHILDES Project
Knowledge of the OV parameter setting at 19 months
Very early parameter setting and the unique checking constraint
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |