Stoel-Gammon (this issue) provides a welcome addition to the phonological acquisition literature, bringing together insights from long-standing and more recent research to address the relationship between the developing phonological system and the developing lexicon. A growing literature on children's early use of words across languages and phonological contexts provides additional insight into the nature of the interactions between phonological and lexical development, suggesting that learners' knowledge and connection of the two may develop much earlier than often thought. This commentary highlights some of these exciting results from recent cross-linguistic research on development between the ages of 1 and 3.