Children employ multiple cues to identify the referent of a novel word. Novel words are often embedded in sentences and children have been shown to use syntactic cues to differentiate between types of words (adjective vs. nouns) and between types of nouns (count vs. mass nouns). In this study, we show that children learning Malay (N = 67), a…

Two strategies that children use to figure out new word meanings--attention to linguistic form class and the assumption of lexical contrast--were examined. It was found that very young children use both form class and lexical contrast to interpret new words. (PCB)