%0 Journal Article %A Strangmann, Iris %A Slomp, Anneke %A van Hout, Angeliek %T Development of Dutch children’s comprehension of subject and object wh-questions: The role of topicality %D 2014 %J Linguistics in the Netherlands %V 31 %N 1 %P 129-144 %@ 0929-7332 %R https://doi.org/10.1075/avt.31.10str %K First language acquisition %K subject-first bias %K wh-questions %K object questions %K Dutch %K topicality %I John Benjamins %X While Dutch welke ‘which’-questions are structurally ambiguous, number agreement cues can disambiguate them. Despite such agreement cues, children misinterpret object questions as subject questions (Metz et al. 2010, 2012; Schouwenaars et al. 2014). We investigated if adding another cue, specifically, topicality in a discourse context, helps the interpretation of which-questions in two groups of Dutch children (5;5, n = 15 and 8;5, n = 21). Using a referent-selection task, we manipulated number on the verb and postverbal NP to create unambiguous wh-questions. Moreover, the questions were preceded by a discourse which established a topic, relating either to the wh-referent or the postverbal NP referent. Nevertheless, both 5- and 8-year-olds misinterpreted object questions as subject questions, ignoring the number and topicality cues to resolve the (local) ambiguity of which-questions. Our results confirm the effect of a subject-first bias in children’s interpretation of wh-questions. We conclude that topicality, in combination with number agreement, is not strong enough to overrule this subject-first bias. %U https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/avt.31.10str