%0 Journal Article
%A Diessel, Holger
%A Tomasello, Michael
%+ Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Max Planck Society
Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Max Planck Society
%T The acquisition of finite complement clauses in English: A corpus-based analysis : 
%G eng
%U https://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001M-0000-0010-091F-E
%F EDOC: 233069
%F OTHER: 43868
%R 10.1515/cogl.12.2.97
%7 2008-03-10
%D 2001
%* Review method: peer-reviewed
%X This article examines the development of finite complement clauses in the speech of seven English-speaking children aged 1;2 to 5;2. It shows that in most of children's complex utterances that seem to include a finite complement clause, the main clause does not express a full proposition; rather, it functions as an epistemic marker, attention getter, or marker of illocutionary force. The whole construction thus contains only a single proposition expressed by the apparent complement clause. As children grow older, some of the “main clauses” become more substantial and new complement-taking verbs emerge that occur with truly embedded complement 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 islands” organized around individual verbs.
%K complement clause; performative speech act; grammaticalization; construction; cognitive grammar
%J Cognitive Linguistics
%V 12
%N 2
%& 97
%P 97 - 142