Sabbagh & Gelman have written an unusually thorough and careful commentary, and furthermore, I agree with virtually everything they say. Most of what I want to do in this commentary (given the space) is to try to situate these issues in a broader perspective.

To start with, I'll assume that my sympathy for statistical analytic processes as an important part of children's language acquisition is well-established (Maratsos & Chalkley, 1980; Maratsos, 1998), even if I think there are qualifications and limits of some sorts that are necessary (Maratsos, 1998). Simultaneously, I strongly agree with the implications of many of Sabbagh & Gelman's remarks: these mechanisms may be variously biased or specially set for various activities, and probably are not the only thing going on, either.