The acquisition of sentential complements

<p dir="ltr">Within generative linguistics, recursion is assumed to be the core of human language, and significant research has thus been undertaken on recursive structures, including considerable investigation into the availability of recursive structures in child grammars. One such recursive structure, sentential complements, has inspired additional interdisciplinary work due to its relatively late acquisition coupled with the complex coordination of syntax, semantics, and cognition that this structure requires. Previous research has suggested that children may fail to recognise that sentential complements are embedded under the matrix clause and thus interpret them conjunctively rather than subordinately. This study examined 15 3–6-year-old English-speaking children’s comprehension of sentential complements, utilising a Truth Value Judgement Task to address two research questions: (1) Do children have access to recursive (embedded) interpretations of sentential complements? and (2) Do cues from functional categories (e.g., complementisers) contribute to subordinate interpretations? The findings of this study indicated that children do have access to subordinated representations of sentential complements from as young as 3, but interactions at the interfaces (particularly pragmatics and cognition) significantly affect their performance in complement syntax tasks. These results lend support to accounts of early access to recursive structures, and also contribute to growing research that suggests that children’s complementation abilities have broad implications for their linguistic and cognitive development.</p>