Vocabulary Explosion At 18 Months

If I'm not mistaken this partially undermines one of the drivers towards a Chomskyan belief in an innate language learning faclity: based as it is on the observation of the rapid acquisition of language.

Children are going to get that word spurt guaranteed, mathematically, as long as a couple of conditions hold," McMurray said. "They have to be learning more than one word at a time, and they must be learning a greater number of difficult or moderate words than easy words. Using computer simulations and mathematical analysis, I found that if those two conditions are true, you always get a vocabulary explosion

Vocabulary Explosion At 18 Months