A fundamental component of language acquisition involves organizing words into grammatical categories. Previous literature has suggested a number of ways in which this categorization task might be accomplished. Here we ask whether the patterning of the words in a corpus of linguistic input ("distributional information") is sufficient, along with a…

Three experiments involving 128 infants studied whether and how novel words influence object categorization in 12- to 13- month-old infants. Data revealed that a linkage between words and object categories emerged early enough to be a guide in infants' efforts to map word meanings. (SLD)