The acquisition of finite complement clauses in English: A corpus-based analysis* HOLGER DIESSEL and MICHAEL TOMASELLO Abstract This article examinesthe development of finite complementclauses in the speech of seven English-speaking children aged 1;2 to 5;2. It shows that in most of children’scomplex utterances thatseemtoincludeafinite complement clause, the mainclause does notexpressa fullproposition; rather, it functionsas an epistemic marker,attention getter,or markerof illocutionary force. Thewholeconstructionthuscontainsonlya single proposition expressed by the apparent complement clause. As children grow older, some of the“mainclauses”becomemoresubstantialandnew complement-takingverbs emerge that occur with truly embedded comple¬ ment clauses. However, since the use of these constructions is limited to only a few verbs, we argue that they are not yet licensed by a general schema or rule; rather, they are “constructional i s l a n d s ” organized around individual verbs. Keywords: complement clause;performative speech act; grammat- icalization; construction; cognitive grammar. 1. Introduction At some point during their third year o f l i f e , English-speakingchildren begin to produce utterancessuchas I thinkDaddy’s sleeping orSee if Mommy’s there. These utterances have been analyzed as complex sentence constructions composed of two clauses: a main clause (i.e., I think or See) and a subordinateclause(i.e., Daddy’ssleeping orifMommy’s there) functioning as a sentential complement of the main-clause verb ( s e e Pinker 1 9 8 4 ; Bloom et al. 1 9 9 1 ) . In this article we argue that most of the c o n ¬ structions that seem to include a finite complement clause in early child speech are simple utterances in which the apparent main clauses do not express a f u l l proposition; rather, they functionas some sort of clausal Cognitive Linguistics 12-2 (2001), 97-141 0936-5907/01/0012-0097 © Walter de Gruyter Bereitgestellt von | MPI fuer evolutionaere Anthropologie Angemeldet Heruntergeladen am | 19.02.16 11:37 9 8 H. Diessel and M.Tomasello operatorguiding the hearer’s interpretationof the associated( c o m p l e ¬ ment) clause: they serve as epistemic markers, attention getters, or markers of the illocutionaryforceofanutterance.Allo ftheseusesarealso frequently found i n adult conversational English. For instance, Thompson and Mulac (1991) have shown that in spoken discourse I think and I guess are commonlyusedas parentheticalepistemicmarkersratherthanas independent assertions. Our study shows, based on natural child data, that the nonassertive use of these constructions emerges long before children begin to use complex utterances in which a finite complementclause i s embedded i n a f u l l - f l e d g e dmain clause. The most comprehensive study of the development of finite complement clauses innaturalchildspeechi s Bloom,Rispoli, Gartner,andHafltz (1991). Their investigation i s based on data fromfourEnglish-speaking children between 2 ; 0 and 3 ; 2 years of age. It concentrates on the analysis of four verbs that children frequentlyuse with a finite complement clause: think, know, look, and see. What i s interesting in the context o f the current investigationi sthatBloomandcolleaguesalreadynoticedthenon- assertive use of these four verbs. According to their analysis, children use think and know “in order to qualifythe degree ofcertainty-uncertainty o f the complement proposition”. Similarly,lookandseeprimarily function to express the speaker’s assessment of the informationprovided by the complement clause: While look suggests “an attitude o f definite- ness”, see signals the speaker’s lack o f certainty, notably when it occurs with an if-complement clause (Bloom et al. 1991: 330-331). However, since Bloom andcolleaguesrestrictedtheiranalysisto justfourverbs, iti s unclear how general their findings are. Is the nonassertive use of the main clause limited to think, know, look, and see, or does it also occur with other complement-taking verbs?Moreover, the analysis that Bloom and co-authors propose appears to be somewhat inconsistent. Although they argue thatchildren’suseo fthink,know,look, andsee i snonassertive (i.e., nonreferential),they suggest in other places thatthe mainclauses contain f u l l propositions and that the composite structure i s really a c o m ¬ plex utterance comprisedof two f u l l - f l e d g e dclauses (i.e., a main clause and a complement clause). That the early use of complement-taking verbs is not always assertive (or referential) was also noted by Limber (1973), who examined the development of various types of complex sentence constructions in the speech of twelve children aged 1;6 to 3;0. Specifically, Limber argued that childrenuse I think parenthetically as a holistic formula without knowledge of its literal meaning. (Limber 1973: 185). However, like Bloom, Rispoli, Gartner, and Hafitz, Limber did not indicate how general the parenthetical use was in his data; in fact, his analysis suggests that Bereitgestellt von | MPI fuer evolutionaere Anthropologie Angemeldet Heruntergeladen am | 19.02.16 11:37 Acquisition of finite complement clauses 99 the parenthetical use i s restrictedto(I)think and perhaps a f e wother mental verbs. In accordance withLimber,Shatz, Wellman,andSilber(1983:3 0 1 ) observed that thinkandothermentalverbsarenotusedfor“mental reference” when they emerge i n children’s speech; rather, the earliest uses serve various “conversational functions”: they may modulate an assertion, express the speaker’s desire, or direct the interaction (see also Wellman 1 9 9 0 ; Bartsch andWellman1995). Theresults ofShatz’sinvestigation are consistent withourempiricalfindings.However,sinceShatzand colleagues are primarilyconcernedwiththecognitivedevelopmentof children (as indicated by their use of mental verbs), they do not consider the implications of their findings for grammatical development; i nfact, the grammatical contextplays onlya minorrole in theirstudy,which considers children’s use of mentalverbsacross a wide varietyof c o n ¬ structions (i.e., not just in complex sentences including finite complement clauses). Apart from these f e w corpus-based analyses, there have been a number o f experimental studies testing children’s comprehension o f complement clauses (see Phinney1981; de Villiers et al. 1 9 9 0 ; Roeper and de Villiers 1 9 9 4 ; Vainikka and Roeper 1 9 9 5 ; de Villiers 1 9 9 5 , 1 9 9 9 ; de Villiers and de Villiers 1 9 9 9 ) . However,mostof these studies are notspecificallyc o n ¬ cerned with the acquisition of finite complement clauses; rather, they use complement clauses in orderto investigatethe developmentofgeneral grammatical principles. For instance, in one series o f experiments c o m ¬ plement clauses were usedto studythe developmentofwh-movement, as i n (1): ( 1 ) What did the girl say she bought? Although such sentencesareextremelyrareinthespeecho fyoung children, they can provide crucial insights into the child’s comprehension of complement clauses. Forinstance, de Villiers (1999) pointsoutthat when children under four years of age are asked to answer the question in (1), they usually name the thing that the girl actually bought rather than what she said she bought, which might be different. In other words, young children do not understand that “the question concerns the joint effect of two verbs: both saying and buying” (de Villiers 1999: 103); instead, they concentrate on the verb inthe complementclause, which accordingto de Villiers suggests that they have not yet fully mastered the syntax and meaning of sentential complements (see also de Villiers et al. 1990; Roeper and de Villiers 1994). Though this conclusion is open to various inter¬ pretations, it is inanycasecompatiblewiththeanalysiswepropose: children might ignore the main clause predicate in sentences like (1), Bereitgestellt von | MPI fuer evolutionaere Anthropologie Angemeldet Heruntergeladen am | 19.02.16 11:37 1 0 0 H. Diessel and M.Tomasello because the main clause does not usually express a f u l l proposition in early child language. In what follows w e w i l l examine the development of finite complement clauses based on observational data from seven English-speaking children between1 ; 2 and5 ; 2 years of age. Before presenting our results, w e w i l l considerthe use of complementclauses in adultEnglish, providingthe backgroundfor our investigation of children’s early use of complement clauses in spontaneous speech. 2. C o m p l e m e n t clauses Complement clauses(henceforth abbreviated asCOMP-clauses) are commonly defined as subordinate clauses functioning as an argument of a predicate (Noonan 1 9 8 5 : 42);1 they may serve as subject or object o f the superordinate clause: ( 2 ) That B i l l wasn’t in class annoyed the teacher. (3) The teacher noticed that B i l l wasn’t in class. The COMP-clausein( 2 ) functionsassubjectoftheverbannoyed;it could easily be replaced by a subject noun phrase (such as Bill’s absence from class annoyed the t e a c h e r ) . 2 Such subject COMP-clauses do not occur in our child language data ( s e e also Limber 1973: 1 7 5 ) . The COMP-clause in ( 3 ) serves as the direct object of the verb noticed; it could also be replaced by a simple noun phrase (compare The teacher noticed Bill’s absence from class).3 UnlikesubjectCOMP-clauses,objectCOMP-clausesarevery common in early child speech (see Limber 1973; Bloom et al. 1 9 9 1 ) . They may include a finite or nonfinite verb. Nonfinite COMP-clauses comprise infinitival and participial constructions (see Quirk et al. 1 9 8 5 : 1185-1208); however,nonfiniteCOMP-clausesw i l l notbe consideredin thiswork. Finite COMP-clauses can be divided into three types: 1 . S-complements marked by that or by zero; 2. if-complementsmarked by if (or whether); 3. wh-complementsintroduced by a wh-pronounorwh-adverb. Examples of each type are given in examples (4) to (6). ( 4 ) Sally thought that he was crazy. ( 5 ) Peter asked B i l l i f that was true. ( 6 ) Mary didn’t understand what B i l l was saying.