Psychologist Paul Bloom explores the complex process of how children acquire the meanings of words, arguing against simpler associative theories. The author proposes that word learning requires rich mental capacities, including conceptual, social, and linguistic abilities, rather than a dedicated mental mechanism. Key topics include the role of theory of mind in intentional inference for word learning, the debate surrounding the existence of a "word spurt", and the acquisition of different types of words such as object names, pronouns, proper names, verbs, and number words. The text also discusses how syntactic cues and linguistic context contribute to word learning, and it touches on the relationship between language and thought, particularly in the context of abstract concepts and cross-linguistic differences.

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