The acquisition of control

Abstract

This paper will report on some research that was undertaken to investigate the acquisition of control; that is, the way in which children formulate rules to interpret the subject of embedded infinitival clauses. The study had two major goals. One was to determine whether or not there are stages in the acquisition of control and to propose certain principles which would account for these stages. A second goal was to examine the acquisition of control in connection with the predictions made by the Theory of Markedness.