@article{GarciaDeryRoeseretal.2018,
  author    = {Garcia, Rowena and Dery, Jeruen E. and Roeser, Jens and H{\"o}hle, Barbara},
  title     = {Word order preferences of Tagalog-speaking adults and children},
  series = {First language},
  volume    = {38},
  journal   = {First language},
  number    = {6},
  publisher = {Sage Publ.},
  address   = {London},
  issn      = {0142-7237},
  doi       = {10.1177/0142723718790317},
  pages     = {617 -- 640},
  year      = {2018},
  abstract  = {This article investigates the word order preferences of Tagalog-speaking adults and five- and seven-year-old children. The participants were asked to complete sentences to describe pictures depicting actions between two animate entities. Adults preferred agent-initial constructions in the patient voice but not in the agent voice, while the children produced mainly agent-initial constructions regardless of voice. This agent-initial preference, despite the lack of a close link between the agent and the subject in Tagalog, shows that this word order preference is not merely syntactically-driven (subject-initial preference). Additionally, the children's agent-initial preference in the agent voice, contrary to the adults' lack of preference, shows that children do not respect the subject-last principle of ordering Tagalog full noun phrases. These results suggest that language-specific optional features like a subject-last principle take longer to be acquired.},
  language  = {en}
}