The acquisition of clause chaining

Although clause chains are a primary complex sentence type in hundreds of languages around the world, acquisition scholars have turned their attention to cross-linguistic investigation of clause chains only very recently. Because clause chains involve neither textbook subordination nor coordination and can include up to ten or more clauses, children’s development of clause chaining yields special insights that have expanded our knowledge of grammatical development as a whole. This chapter presents an overview of what is known about child acquisition of clause chaining in six main areas: the development of clause chaining compared with the development of other complex sentence types; the development of inter-clause semantic linkage types within clause chains; the development of participant tracking and subject continuity; the development of clause chain length; clause chain development compared with complex predicate development; and the uses of ʼnon-canonical’ clause chains by children and their caretakers.