Abstract
60 preschool Hindi-speaking children, randomly assigned to 3 context conditions, were asked to describe 24 pictures depicting locative relationships—under, front, behind, and above—between pairs of nouns. Preceding each locative picture there were three context cards showing the subject of the locative proposition in the subject-context condition, the object of the locative term in the object-context condition, and an unrelated object in the neutral condition. As permissible in Hindi, children's locative utterances began either with the subject or the object of the proposition. Compared to the neutral condition, subject-first word order was more frequent in the subject-context condition and less frequent in the object-context condition. Analysis of variance showed a significant context effect. The results were interpreted as showing a pragmatic topic-comment strategy in syntactic ordering of Hindi locative propositions.
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