Language input and child syntax.

Abstract

Existing work on the acquisition of syntax has been concerned mainly with the early stages of syntactic development. In the present study we examine later syntactic development in children. Also, existing work has focused on commonalities in the emergence of syntax. Here we explore individual differences among children and their relation to variations in language input. In Study 1 we find substantial individual differences in children's mastery of multiclause sentences and a significant relation between those differences and the proportion of multiclause sentences in parent speech. We also find individual differences in the number of noun phrases in children's utterances and a significant relation between those differences and the number of noun phrases in parent speech. In Study 2 we find greater syntactic growth over a year of preschool in classes where teachers' speech is more syntactically complex. The implications of our findings for the understanding of the sources of syntactic development are discussed.