This article examines,the development,of finite complement,clauses in the speech of seven English-speaking children aged 1;2 to 5;2. It shows that in most,of children’s complex,utterances,that seem,to include a finite complement clause, the main clause does not express a full proposition; rather, it functions as an epistemic marker, attention getter, or marker of illocutionary force. The whole,construction thus contains only a single proposition expressed by the apparent complement,clause. As children grow older, some of the ‘‘main clauses’’ become more substantial and new complement-taking verbs emerge,that occur with truly embedded,comple- ment clauses. However, since the use of these constructions is limited to only a few verbs, we argue that they are not yet licensed by a general schema or rule; rather, they are ‘‘constructional islands’’ organized around individual verbs. Keywords:,complement,clause; performative,speech,act; grammat-