Complex grammar in English: A snapshot of comprehension in children aged 5 to 8

Our study makes an empirical contribution to questions relating to the developmental trajectory of four examples of English complex grammar: subject and object control, subject and object relative clauses, long passives, and seem-raising constructions with and without an overt experiencer argument. We tested children’s comprehension of all seven sentence sets at the same point in time using a picture-selection task. 45 children (20 girls) from three Year groups (1, 2, and 3) with a mean age of 6.3, 7.4, and 8.3 years participated. The three groups scored at ceiling on subject relatives and on raising without an experiencer, and there were Year differences in order of age for object and subject control. Subject control showed a predictably delayed pattern and success with it correlated positively with verb-knowledge scores. However, all Year groups performed less well – with no differences between Years – on passives, object relatives, and raising with an experiencer, suggesting that even at age 8, these constructions were not fully comprehended. The most problematic construction was raising with an experiencer, where all Years achieved a mean score of 3/6 or below. We discuss this data pattern in relation to four grammatical properties (empty categories, displacement, intervention, word order), frequency and the lexical idiosyncrasies of some of the verbs. With respect to the grammatical properties, we ask whether certain combinations are more difficult for children to navigate than others.