The acquisition of complement clause constructions : A sentence repetition study

The presence of complement clause constructions in child speech marks the beginning of the child’s entrance into the more complex aspects of grammar. Since complement clauses are lexically-specified, individual complement taking verbs (CTVs) must be tagged with information about the kinds of complements they can license; their acquisition suggests that children are beginning to elaborate the argument structure privileges of individual CTVs. This suggests that children must attend to the distributional properties of individual CTVs and gradually master complementation over time, an hypothesis that has been confirmed by studies of children’s naturalistic speech (Bloom, Rispoli, Gartner, & Hafitz 1989, Diessel & Tomasello 2001, Limber 1973). This paper reports on an experiment investigating 3 – 5-yearold children’s acquisition of sentential complements. We present results that suggest children’s acquisition of complement clause constructions is intimately tied to CTV frequency.