ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the major forms of sentence construction from the barest simple sentence to complementation, focusing upon the processes that have been most heavily researched in child language. Children learning English as a first language have been extensively studied in natural environments. The data base on the acquisition of English is rich and varied, and is growing at a rapid rate. The chapter explores the acquisition of English syntax in the order that it was discussed for adult English, since that roughly parallels the course of development. English-speaking children may differ from each other in the prevalence of variable word order in their speech. While individual children may differ in their reliance on pivot patterns for their initial two-word utterances, in the proportion of nouns and pronouns that they use, and in the variability of their word order, more work is needed to establish the existence or absence of consistent or coherent styles of language acquisition.
