Usage-Based Approaches to Language Acquisition and Processing ─ Cognitive and Corpus Investigations of Construction Grammar

Nick C. Ellis, Ute Römer, and Matthew Brook O'Donnell present a view of language as a complex adaptive system that is learned through usage. In a series of research studies, they analyze Verb-Argument Constructions (VACs) in first and second language learning, processing, and use. Drawing on diverse epistemological and methodological perspectives, they show how language emerges out of multiple experiences of meaning-making. In the development of both mother tongue and additional languages, each usage experience affects construction knowledge following general principles of learning relating to frequency, contingency, and semantic prototypicality. The implications of this work will be of value to students and scholars from a wide range of disciplinary interests in language and learning.

Nick C. Ellis is Professor of Psychology, Professor of Linguistics, and Research Scientist in the English Language Institute at the University of Michigan. His research interests include language acquisition, cognition, emergentism, corpus linguistics, cognitive linguistics, applied linguistics, and psycholinguistics He serves a General Editor of Language Learning.

Ute Romer is an Assistant professor in the Department of Applied Linguistics and English as a Second Language at Georgia State University. Her research interests include discourse analysis, psycholinguistics, syntax, corpus linguistics, and construction grammar, among others. She serves on a range of editorial and advisory boards of professional journals and organizations, and is co-editor of the Studies in Corpus Linguistics book series.

Matthew Brook O'Donnell is a Research Assistant Professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. His research interests include social psychology, communication and media, quantitative social research, pragmatics, syntax, and morphology.