On the acquisition of maximality in free relative clauses and plural definite descriptions

Plural definite descriptions (e.g. the things on the plate) and free relative clauses (e.g. what is on the plate) have been argued to share the same semantic properties, despite their syntactic differences: both are non-quantificational expressions referring to the maximal element of a given set (e.g. the set of things on the plate). Experimental support to this semantic analysis is provided by the first investigation ever of children’s interpretation of both constructions. A Truth-Value Judgment task, an Act-Out task, and a corpus study of the children’s linguistic input show that children are aware that the two constructions are different from quantificational nominals (e.g. all the things on the plate, some of the things on the plate) very early on (4 years old), despite the major difference in frequency in the input. Children acquire the adult interpretation of both constructions at the very same time, around 6-7 years old. We suggest that this relative delay depends on children’s difficulties with the concept of the maximal element of a set or its association with specific linguistic constructions.