ABSTRACT
This study concerns the development of rules for the interpretation of the missing (PRO) subject of embedded clauses, both with and without an empty object position. We will argue that clauses attached within the VP are distinguished from adverbial (adjunct) clauses, which attach to the S node in the adult grammar, both in terms of the rules for interpreting PRO and (less conclusively) the possibility of an object gap. Our results argue against previous accounts of children's treatment of S-attached adjuncts, in which it was proposed that children misattach such adjuncts to the VP node. In common with some previous studies, we will argue that significant aspects of the grammar of control rules (rules for PRO subject interpretation) and extraction (for object gaps) may be late to develop. First we describe our experimental work; then we sketch a picture of development for the constructions we deal with within the framework of current linguistic analyses.
