Adult speakers constantly offer young children
new terms, conventional words for the events and objects being
talked about. They make direct offers of unfamiliar words, using
deictics or other forms that signal that the upcoming term is
new, and they make indirect offers on the assumption that the
relevant meaning is computable on that occasion. Adults also
present young children with information about how words are
related to each other through such connections as is a part
of, is a kind of, belongs to, or is
used for. These pragmatic directions provide children with
essential information about language and language use as they
make inferences about possible meanings for unfamiliar words.
They also offer support for an alternative to constraints-based
accounts of lexical acquisition by providing a conversation-based
approach more consistent with the findings from spontaneous
speech and from experimental results.