Word meaning acquistion and numerical classifiers

This paper reports on studies of the acquisition of numeral classifiers and discusses the process by which children acquire word meaning. The different developmental rates in the acquisition of the configurational classifiers, in particular, indicate that language specific properties are often a more accurate predictors of rate of acquisition than universal perceptual properties suggested by other researchers. The comparison of findings of three different studies suggests that acquisition of classifier(s) within each category will be governed by the number of ‘contrasts’ which are necessary in that category. Acquisition within a category which encodes more contrasts will be delayed compared to acquisition in a category which encode fewer contrasts