Use of question words in two Persian speaking children's speech from 12 to 36 months

Asking questions is one of the basic skills for getting information. “What”, “Who”, “Where”, “Why”, “How much”, “How, etc. are question words frequently used for asking questions. Studies on the sequence of acquisition of question words in English speaking children follow a unique sequence. “What” is the first question word used by these children. We aimed to study whether Persian speaking children follow a unique pattern in the acquisition and use of question words as well.Case: Two normal Persian speaking children (a boy and a girl) who were sent to the kindergarten of Faculty of Rehabilitation Sciences, Iran University of Medical Sciences by their parents were investigated. Children’s spontaneous speech from 12 to 36 months was videotaped, and question words were extracted from phonetic transcription of both children’s speech. In order to ask a question, both children initially used rising tone with /m/ or /hum/ before saying the first question word. Two first question words were “what” and “where” in both children’s speech samples. Asking about the time with the question word /when/ was not appeared in their speech samples until 36 months. These two Persian speaking children also used Wh-question sequentially. The result of this study was consistent with the results of other studies on English speaking children.