Introduction

What aspects of the child's mind are devoted to solving the problem of word learning? That is, what biases or constraints exist solely for the purpose of lexical acquisition?

In this chapter, I will argue that there are none. This is in contrast to two related proposals. The first is that there exist innate constraints on word learning that are part of a specialized language faculty. This is a natural extension of nativist theories of the acquisition of syntax. It is admittedly hard to find scholars who will explicitly endorse this position in its strongest form. But it is an idea that is in the air, so much so that even though nobody defends it, there are attacks on it - by Nelson (1988, 1990) for instance, who argues that certain constraint proposals, such as those developed by Markman and her colleagues (e.g. Markman & Hutchinson, 1984), entail an unrealistically nativist perspective on lexical development. Tomasello (ch. 5 of this volume) argues against these proposals on similar grounds.

In contrast, the second type of constraint proposal is very influential within developmental psychology, and is often endorsed by the same scholars who reject the nativist proposal. This view asserts that there do exist special constraints (or “biases,” or “assumptions”; in this chapter I will use the terms interchangeably) on word learning, but that these are learned by the child. This chapter will defend an alternative to both the nativist and the learning versions of the special constraints view.