Do Sentences in the Second Language Grow like Those in the First?

It seems now to be established that schoolchildren who are native speakers of English embed a larger and larger number of sentence constituents as they get older. This developmental trend can be demonstrated by having them rewrite a passage made up of exceedingly simple sentences. The developmental trend is demonstrable both in speech and writing. And skilled adult writers carry the same tendency still farther-at least in their writing. Various applications suggest themselves: (1) it should be possible to discover whether this trend is universal: whether it is characteristic of the development of native speakers of all languages; (2) perhaps, too, this measure might be found useful in measuring a person's command of a second language; and (3) since Mellon has shown that American seventh graders can be taught to carry this tendency farther than they normally do, it is possible that drill in sentence-embedding should be part of second language instruction.