The Acquisition of Word Meaning

These five excellent reports of theory and research on the acquisition of word meaning testify to the current health and vigor of this branch of developmental psycholinguistics. Not only is the factual base expanding steadily, but the various interpretations proposed for those facts are sufficiently rich and suggestive to make the enterprise controversial-and, therefore, interesting. One wants to know which hypothesis is correct, and that kind of curiosity motivates good science.