A major cognitive milestone that children achieve at an early age is the ability to form categories. Cross-classification is the ability to place conceptually an object into more than one category. My goal was to examine how language impacts children’s cross-classification, particularly generic and specific noun phrases. The hypothesis was that children will tend to cross-classify items that are taught with generic statements more than items taught with specific statements because generics refer to categories as a whole, whereas specifics refer more to individual items in a category. I tested 50 4- and 5-year-olds in one of 2 conditions in which they were taught a novel category using either generic noun phrases or specific noun phrases. Cross-classification was revealed when children choose the same item for both a familiar category question and a novel category question. Children were found to cross-classify about equally using both generic phrases and specific phrases.