Domain-specificity and the development of syntactic dependencies: the role of working memory in the acquisition of adjunct control

This study tests the predictions of domain-general and language-specific accounts for children’s interpretations of adjunct control, as in “John called Bill before running to the store.” While adults only allow a subject interpretation for these sentences – that John ran to the store – children have allowed non-subject interpretations at various rates across studies. In particular, we consider how these interpretations may arise due to incomplete working memory development. This contrasts with language-specific accounts (e.g. grammatical and pragmatic accounts), which predict that children’s adjunct control will resemble other structures which allow non-subject interpretations – for example, the referentially ambiguous subject pronoun in “John called Bill before he ran to the store.” Our results support a domain general account: adjunct control is predicted by working memory, and does not pattern with ambiguous pronouns. We consider the implications for a more fine-grained account of children’s interpretations, and for interactions between working memory development and language acquisition.