Meaning and Use: Children's Acquisition of the Mental Lexicon

Katherine Nelson would no doubt feel sympathy for the little girl whom Wallas

quoted-she has the makings of a poet, perhaps, but a psychologist too. Nelson

(1996) showed how children’s developing understanding of the world depends on

their developing language abilities. In her terms, early pragmatic language-“use

before meaning”— leads to the acquisition of “meaning from use” (Nelson, 1996,

p. 145). The little girl, it might be said, will know what she thinks as she sees what

she says and sees how others react and reply to what she says.