The acquisition of relative clauses: A functional analysis

Abstract

Over the past few years, research in language acquisition has shifted away from the view that linguistic structures are learned independently of semantic concepts and grammatical functions and toward a more cognitively based perspective (cf. Slobin 1973 ; Clark and Clark 1977). In the latter approach, cognitive principles are assumed to govern the acquisition of linguistic structures, and the earlier autonomous view of language acquisition is replaced by a more catholic attitude encompassing both formal and psychological aspects of language. This perspective is adopted for the analyses presented below.