For decades, a spirited debate has existed over whether infants’ remarkable capacity to learn words is shaped primarily by universal features of human language or by specific features of the particular native language they are acquiring. A strong focus for this debate has been a well‐documented difference in early word learning: Infants’ success in learning verbs lags behind their success in learning nouns. In this review, we articulate both sides of the debate and summarize new cross‐linguistic evidence from infants that underscores the role of universal features and begins to clarify the impact of distinctly different languages on early language and conceptual development.

中文翻译：

---

名词是先学还是动词？婴儿为长期争论提供了见解。


几十年来，关于婴儿学习单词的卓越能力主要是由人类语言的普遍特征还是由他们正在习得的特定母语的特定特征决定的，一直存在激烈的争论。这场争论的一个重点是早期单词学习中的一个有据可查的差异：婴儿学习动词的成功落后于学习名词的成功。在这篇综述中，我们阐明了争论的双方，并总结了来自婴儿的新的跨语言证据，这些证据强调了普遍特征的作用，并开始阐明截然不同的语言对早期语言和概念发展的影响。