The development of relative clauses in spontaneous child speech* HOLGER DIESSEL and MICHAEL TOMASELLO Abstract This study examines the development of relative clauses in the speech of four English-speaking children between 1;9 and 5;2 years of age. It is shown that the earliest relative clauses occur in presentational constructions that express a single proposition in two ®nite clauses. Starting from such simple sentences, children gradually learn the use of more complex constructions in which the relative clause modi®es the noun of a full-¯edged main clause. Five factors are considered that might contribute to the development of relative clauses in spontaneous child speech: (1) the ambient language, (2) the formulaic character of the main clause, (3) the information structure of the whole utterance, (4) the communicative function of presentational relatives, and (5) the limited processing capacity of young children. Keywords: relative clause; syntactic development; construction grammar; presentational construction. Introduction The acquisition of relative clauses has been studied extensively over the past 30 years. The bulk of this work is concerned with children's comprehension of relative clauses in experiments (cf. Brown 1971; Smith 1974; Sheldon 1974; Hakes et al. 1976; de Villiers et al. 1979; Tavakolian 1981; Hakuta 1982; Goodluck and Tavakolian 1982; Hamburger and Crain 1982; Clancy et al. 1986; Keenan and Hawkins 1987; MacWhinney and PleÂh 1988; Correa 1982, 1995; McKee et al. 1998; Kidd and Bavin 2000). The current study investigates the use (i.e., production) of relative clauses in naturally occurring child speech, which has never been exam- ined in detail. Menyuk (1969) and Limber (1973, 1976) discuss a few aspects of children's spontaneous use of relative clauses in English; Cognitive Linguistics 11±1/2 (2000), 131±151 0936±5907/00/0011±0131 # Walter de Gruyter