Child language cuts capers : variability and ambiguity in early child develpment

In this thesis, I have elaborated on the concepts of variability and ambiguity. I have argued that these two concepts are important, not only in the study of early language development, but also in other domains of child development. In this thesis, I have initiated a first step toward the development of approaches and techniques that are suited to study these phenomena in developmental data. This implicates a different view on development, which embraces ambiguity and variability as intrinsic characteristics of a developing system. Hopefully, it will be used as a source of inspiration to the development of new hypotheses and future research.