Children Prefer the Accusative-Dative Order to the Dative-Accusative Order in Japanese

摘要

In recent years, there is a heated discussion about the relative ordering of indirect and direct objects in Japanese. This study investigates Japanese-speaking children's comprehension of the ditransitive construction that involves an indirect object marked with the dative case-marker ni and a direct object with the accusative case-marker o. Preliminary results show that the children prefer the accusative-dative order to the dative-accusative order, contrary to the adults' preference for the opposite order. I discuss some factors that account for the results, including the Iconicity Hypothesis (Cho et al., 2002; Suzuki et al., 1999).