There has been a great deal of interest in how generalizations and exceptions are represented and processed, but scant attention has been paid to the following question: do exceptional cases affect generalizations during learning? Here we suggest that they do. Novel words were paired with one of two preceding “classifiers.” Each <classifier+word> was assigned a unique image. Most words for one classifier were paired with images from a generalization semantic category, whereas a subclass of exception words were paired with images from a second category. All words for the second classifier appeared with a third baseline category. After initial exposure, participants used a computer mouse to choose one of two images for each <classifier+word>, in a design repeated over 8 blocks. With deviation over time toward the lure as the dependent measure, results showed that competition led to suppression of a generalization in the context of exceptions, suggesting that the generalization itself was affected by learned exceptions.