Usage and acquisition patterns of the how come- and why-constructions by young English-speaking children

This paper explores young English-speaking children’s usage andacquisition patterns of the how come- and why-constructions on the basis of authenticdata from the CHILDES (Child Language Data Exchange System) subcorpora. In doingso, it particularly focuses on whether young children show the same or similar acquisitionprocesses of the two constructions which have similar meanings and if not, in whataspects they display different behavior, and what implications they have in children’sacquisition of wh-question constructions in general. A detailed analysis of the data showsthat 1) children start to use and acquire the how come-construction later than thewhy-construction in general; 2) although they use and acquire the two constructionsin a similar way to some extent, their usage and acquisition patterns differ rathersignificantly, regarding the dependent category/construction types, the illocutionaryfunction distributions/preferences; 3) children’s difficulty in employing SAI in thewhy-construction is demonstrated in a large number of underdeveloped/erroneousinstances with a finite sentence dependent at early acquisition stages and frequentoccurrences of the small clause dependent in spite of the lack of parents’ input; 4)children use and acquire the why-construction earlier in the positive contexts than inthe negative contexts; 5) parents’ input does not play a sole determining role inaccounting for children’s usage and acquisition patterns of the two constructions. Thefindings of this paper thus make a significant contribution to the body of irregularwh-questions including the how come-construction and typical wh-questions such asthe why-construction at the same time, inviting further subsequent empirical studieson the related constructions.