Introduction

In her study on the development of because and so Braunwald (1997) discusses the emergence of the causal connectives in her daughter Laura from age 15–42 months. As she observes commenting on an entry in her hand-recorded daily diary, when Laura was 2.0:18 the following exchange took place:

For Braunwald this exchange is a clear case of Laura's beginning to form an association between the word why and the causal connective because .

What makes causal connectives different from adversative and concessive connectives, is among others the fact that while there is a wh - question eliciting a because - answer, there is no simple interrogative lexeme that elicits an although - answer. In other words there is a why to every because while there is no why to any although . This simple fact brings about a whole array of questions related to the mechanism of the acquisition of adversative and concessive connectives and processing sentences containing them. Many of the questions have been given attention and found an answer in first language acquisition studies. Less interest has been taken in the acquisition of concessives/adversatives in foreign language research.