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Word learning is studied in a multitude of ways, and it is often not clear what the relationship is between different phenomena. In this article, we begin by outlining a very simple functional framework that despite its simplicity can serve as a useful organizing scheme for thinking about various types of studies of word learning. We then review a number of themes that in recent years have emerged as important topics in the study of word learning, and relate them to the functional framework, noting nevertheless that these topics have tended to be somewhat separate areas of study. In the third part of the article, we describe a recent computational model and discuss how it offers a framework that can integrate and relate these various topics in word learning to each other. We conclude that issues that have typically been studied as separate topics can perhaps more fruitfully be thought of as closely integrated, with the present framework offering several suggestions about the nature of such integration.Keywords: word learning; integrative framework; phonological short-term memory; phonological learning; short-term and long-term memory interactions; computational modellingAlthough human children and adults learn new words effortlessly, understanding how they do so is a complex endeavour. Although it seems clear that word learning or vocabulary acquisition entails learning a word form, a meaning and the link between them (e.g. Saussure 1916; Desrochers & Begg 1987), this simple formulation encompasses a multitude of different abilities and subcomponents. As a result, the terms 'vocabulary acquisition' and 'word learning' have been used to mean a wide variety of different things, as revealed by consideration of the many different facets of what has been studied as word learning (for review, see Gupta 2005b). In this article, we begin by outlining a very simple functional framework that despite its simplicity can serve as a useful organizing scheme for thinking about various types of studies of word learning. In §2, we review a number of themes that in recent years have emerged as important topics in the study of word learning, and relate them to the functional framework, noting nevertheless that these topics have tended to be somewhat separate areas of study. In the third part of the article, we describe a recent computational model developed by Gupta & Tisdale (2009), and discuss how it offers a framework that can integrate and relate these various topics to each other. We conclude that issues that have typically been studied as separate topics can perhaps more fruitfully be thought of as closely integrated, with the present framework offering several suggestions about the nature of such integration. FUNCTIONAL ASPECTS OF WORD LEARNINGIn considering the functional aspects of word learning, it is useful to begin with some terminology. First of all, we will reserve the term vocabulary acquisition to refer to the overall phenomenon of acquiring a vocabulary of words over an extended period of time. We will reserve the...

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