The emergence of relative clauses in early child language

This paper examines the development of relative clauses in early child language. It is argued that relative clauses constitute a network of related constructions that children acquire in a piecemeal bottom-up way, starting with relative clauses that are only little different from simple sentences which are gradually extended into more complex grammatical patterns. The acquisition process is driven by pragmatic and cognitive factors that are involved in the process of language use. The analysis draws on previous research with Michael Tomasello supplemented by a new corpus investigation of children’s spontaneous relative clauses in English (cf. Diessel and Tomasello 2000, 2005; Diessel 2004, 2008; Brandt, Diessel, and Tomasello 2007). The paper reports the results of three studies. The first study is a corpus investigation of the external properties of children’s early relative clauses; the second study is an experimental study investigating the way children process the internal structure of English and German relative clauses; and the third study is another corpus study examining the meaning of children’s subject and object relative clauses.