Abstract
Clause chains are a special type of complex sentence, found in hundreds of languages outside Western Europe, in which clauses are dependent but not embedded, and dozens of clauses can be combined into a single sentential unit. Unlike English complex sentences, clause chains’ distribution is partially predictable in that they can, most fundamentally, be linked to a particular semantic context: description of temporally sequential events or actions. This and the morphological simplicity of verb forms in clause chains may combine to accelerate their acquisition by children, relative to complex sentences in other languages. No previous cross-linguistic studies of the acquisition of complex sentences have investigated clause chaining. In this paper, we report insights from a survey of the acquisition of clause chaining in six languages of diverse stocks with child speech databases spanning 1;1 to 10 years. Overall, children acquiring clause chaining languages begin to produce 2-clause chains between around 1;11 and 2;6. An initial stage in which chains are limited to just two clauses in length is followed by a stage in which longer chains of 3–5 clauses are also produced. Children acquiring languages in which adults produce both same-subject and different-subject clause chains produce a similar mix from early on; for some languages, this involves morphological “switch-reference” marking that anticipates the identity of the subject of an upcoming clause. This survey broadens our understanding of the acquisition of complex sentences by adding new data on the acquisition timing, semantics, and reference continuity of early clause chains.
Highlights
In hundreds of languages around the world, speakers have a third option for complex sentence formation, in addition to the wellknown “subordination” and “coordination.” This third option is called a “clause chain,” and involves one or more “medial” clauses with under-inflected verbs as predicates, followed or preceded by a “final” clause with a fully inflected verb as predicate1(Longacre, 1985; Dooley, 2010; Sarvasy, 2015)
An example of a clause chain in Korean is in (1); throughout this paper, medial clauses are in single curly brackets and final clauses are in double curly brackets, following the convention in Sarvasy (2017): (1) a. {nolan kong-i chayk-ul yellow ball-SBJ
Even adult narratives in the Turkish study contained maximally 4-clause-long chains, in contrast to adult chains in Japanese, Korean, Ku Waru, and Nungon. Differences between these groups cannot be attributed to relative morphological or semantic complexity of the verb forms involved in clause chaining: in each language, there is at least one “same-subject” medial verb form with maximally general, temporally sequential meaning, formed with a monosyllabic suffix after the verb root (Japanese -te, Korean -ko, Nungon -nga/-a, Pitjantjatjara -la/-ra, Turkish -Ip, and Ku Waru various forms with subject inflection)
Summary
In hundreds of languages around the world, speakers have a third option for complex sentence formation, in addition to the wellknown “subordination” and “coordination.” This third option is called a “clause chain,” and involves one or more “medial” clauses with under-inflected verbs as predicates, followed or preceded by a “final” clause with a fully inflected verb as predicate. Even adult narratives in the Turkish study contained maximally 4-clause-long chains, in contrast to adult chains in Japanese, Korean, Ku Waru, and Nungon Differences between these groups cannot be attributed to relative morphological or semantic complexity of the verb forms involved in clause chaining: in each language, there is at least one “same-subject” (see section) medial verb form with maximally general, temporally sequential meaning, formed with a monosyllabic suffix after the verb root (Japanese -te, Korean -ko, Nungon -nga/-a, Pitjantjatjara -la/-ra, Turkish -Ip, and Ku Waru various forms with subject inflection). Nungon data indicate something similar: at the age when children’s clause chain production increases (around 2;11), they produce a mix of same- and different-subject clause chains, just as Nungon adults do consistently
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