Developmental Stages Of the Production of Passive Voice by Children Native Speakers of Jordanian Arabic (Published)
This study aims at investigating the children’s production of passive voice in Jordanian Arabic. It sheds light on the factors that may influence the children’s production of some passive forms in Jordanian Arabic. The sample of the study consists of thirty Jordanian children who belong to five age groups from 3; 0 – 7;11 years old. Each of these groups includes six children with equal number of males and females chosen randomly from an elementary school in Jordan. A production test was given to the children using six pairs of pictures that illustrate the contrast between the active and passive sentences. The findings indicate the nature of the construction of passive in Jordanian Arabic does not have that complexity which may pose difficulties for the Jordanian children in their production of passive voice. The increase in age is accompanied by improvement in the child’s linguistic abilities necessary for the production of passive voice.
Keywords: Acquisition, Age, Arabic, Passives, Production