Theoretical implications of complement structure acquisition in Korean.

The acquisition of complement phrasal constructions in Korean is examined in spontaneous speech data from two children, who were observed from one and a half to three years of age. In spite of typological differences between English and Korean, both syntactic and semantic characteristics are found to be shared by children acquiring complement constructions in the two languages. However, certain language-specific features of Korean complement structures make it possible to address theoretical points concerning the structure of infinitival complements which cannot be resolved with the acquisition data on English. The error pattern in the acquisition of certain 'subject-equi' verbs in Korean poses problems both for LFG and GB accounts of the constituent structure of infinitival complements and the acquisition of those constructions. On the basis of the Korean data, I propose that base-generated VP complements are acquired first, with semantically motivated reanalysis of previously acquired infinitival complement structures occurring at a later stage.