CNL Lunch Talks

Takuya Goro

On the distribution of to-infinitives

in early child English

Thursday October 23rd 2003, 12:30 PM, 3416 Marie Mount Hall

This paper investigates to-infinitives in early child English. By comparing PRO-subject infinitival complements with overt-subject infinitival complements, I will show that there is a sharp asymmetry in the omission rate of the infinitival marker to. Specifically, while children around age 3 do not omit to within a majority of PRO-subject complements, they drop to within overt-subject complements most of the time (e.g. d(o) you wan(t) me look both ways? - I don't want to look both ways. (Adam 3;0)). The data suggest that early grammar restricts the use of to-infinitives to PRO-subjects. This result provides an answer to the question why English children do not use matrix to-infinitives, as opposed to the early use of unambiguous root infinitival forms found in European languages. If we assume that children disallow the use of PRO in matrix clauses, their avoidance of to-infinitives in matrix clauses is straightforwardly explained.