ABSTRACT Investigators have targeted the onset of reference in children at varying points on the developmental continuum. Their viewpoints seem to be related to issues of the contextual flexibility, content and composition of the lexicon in comprehension and production. This study considered all of the variables in the early vocabularies of 32 children with a mean age of 1; 1·7. An intensive maternal interview was used to obtain data on the words comprehended and produced by the children and the contexts which supported their interpretation and use. The findings pointed to a relative independence between the domains of comprehension and production. Vocabulary size was related to all contextually flexible items in production while only related to the contextually flexible predicates in comprehension. Further, there was evidence for an early version of the referential style that has been reported at later stages of development.
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