Production and Comprehension of Malay Relative Clauses by L1 Children

Abstract

Malay and related languages such as Indonesian are regarded as having a subject relativization advantage in terms of acquisition (Tjung 2009; Bakar, Razak, and Woan 2016). The present study investigates whether there is a preference for agent or patient relative clauses in production and comprehension in child Malay. Twelve Malaysian Malay-speaking children aged 3;9-8;6 (mean: 6;6) participated in an experiment involving an elicited-production task and a picture-selection task. From the overall responses, the children were found not to have any agent or patient preference in terms of production. However, the children performed better for agent relative clauses in terms of comprehension.