Early word meanings: The case of object names

It has been claimed that young children use object names overgenerally and undergenerally because they do not have notions of objects of particular kinds, but rather, complexive notions of objects and their habitual actions or locations. However, for overgeneral uses in particular, it is difficult to differentiate word meaning from word use because communicative functions are not explicitly expressed in single-word speech. In the present paper, we identify three types of overgeneral uses, and argue that two of these reflect communicative functions rather than complexive meanings. We obtained production data from 10 children in the single-word period, using a standardized method of recording utterance contexts. Most uses of object names were for appropriate instances of the adult categories. Of the overgeneral uses, most were attributable to communicative functions rather than complexive meanings, and there was no evidence of undergeneral use. The results provide strong evidence that, from the very start, children's object names, like those of adults, apply to objects of particular kinds.