== Meaning == 
 Below is an outline of my plan for the 'meaning' section of this article.  
 === The question of meaning, or 'the mapping problem' === 
 In word learning, 'the mapping problem' refers to the question of how infants attach the forms of language to the things that they experience in the world.  Golinkoff, R. M., Hirsh-Pasek, K., Bloom, L., Smith, L. B., Woordward, A. L., Akhtar, N.,…Hollich, G. (2000). Becoming a word learner: A debate on lexical acquisition. New York: Oxford University Press. There are infinite objects, concepts, and actions in the world that words could be mapped onto . So how does the language learner successfully complete the word mapping process? Several answers to this question have been explored. Some theorists believe that children have built-in constraints that help them to map words onto concepts in the world  Clark, E. V. (2009). Lexical meaning. In E. L. Bavin (Ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of Child Language (pp. 283-300). New York: Cambridge University Press. . Social pragmatic theories propose that caregivers act as experts in order to assist children in the word mapping process . Domain-general views, as well as an emergentist coalition model have also been proposed to account for the way that children map meaning onto words .  
 ==== Theories of constraints ==== 
 -General overview of theories 
 ===== Mutual Exclusivity (ME) ===== 
 -Here, I will discuss the ways in which the ME bias might influence children's word learning, including the disambiguation effect, the correction effect, the rejection effect, and the restriction effect  Merriman, W. E., & Bowman, L. L. (1989). The mutual exclusivity bias in children’s word learning. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 54(3-4, Serial No. 220).. I will also discuss three confliction positions in the literature regarding the ME bias: that children are biased from the start, that children are never biased, and that children acquire the ME bias during early childhood .  
 ===== Properties and relations ===== 
 -In this section, I will discuss the attention that children pay to properties and relations, and, in particular, to the shape of objects  Clark, E. V. (1993). The lexicon in acquisition. New York: Cambridge University Press. .  
 ===== Whole Object Assumptions ===== 
 -The literature suggests that children are most likely to apply a label to a whole object, as opposed to a part or property of the whole .  
 ===== Taxonomic Assumptions ===== 
 -Children assume that labels pick out categories of objects, rather than those objects and the things that are related to them .  
 === Social pragmatic theories === 
 -This branch of theories argues that the caregiver's gaze, body language, gesture, and smile might help infants acquire clues from context in order to understand the meaning of a word . While the main emphasis is usually placed on the role of adults in guiding the meaning-making process, some theorists have suggested that the child also plays an important role in this interaction .  
 ===== Joint Attention ===== 
 -The literature suggests that joint attention is an important mechanism through which children learn to map words-to-world, and vice versa .  
 ===== Pragmatic Assumptions ===== 
 -Children may adopt some of the same pragmatic assumptions that adults have in order to learn the meaning of words . I will discuss two examples of these assumptions, conventionality and contrast, here . 
 === Domain-General Views === 
 -This view argues that children do not need principles or constraints in order to successfully develop word-world mappings . Instead, children notice the objects, actions, or events that are most salient in context, and then associate them with the words that are most frequently used in their presence .  
 === Emergentist Coalition Model === 
 -Children map novel labels to novel objects using a variety of cues in their environment. Different cues will come to be utilized by infants as they progress along the path of world-learning .  
 === Summary === 
 -Here, I will suggest that the field reflects controversial perspectives on how children map meaning onto real world events, objects, and actions.  
 

  
 == References ==