Nick Ellis is Research Scientist in the English Language Institute, Professor of Psychology, and Associated Faculty in the Centre for the Study of Complex Systems at the University of Michigan. His research interests include language acquisition, cognition, corpus linguistics, cognitive linguistics, psycholinguistics, and emergentism. He is the author of more than 130 scientific papers and chapters and has edited books on Implicit and Explicit Learning of Languages (1994), Handbook of Spelling: Theory, Process and Intervention (John Wiley, 1994, with Gordon Brown), and Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition (2008, with Peter Robinson). He served as editor of Language Learning from 1998–2002 and is currently the general Editor. Diane Larsen-Freeman is Professor of Education, Professor of Linguistics, and Research Scientist at the English Language Institute of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her books include: Discourse Analysis in Second Language Research (1980), The Grammar Book (co-authored with Marianne Celce-Murcia, 1983; 1999), Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching (1986; 2000), An Introduction to Second Language Acquisition Research (co-authored with Michael Long, 1991), Teaching Language: From Grammar to Grammaring (2003), and Complex Systems and Applied Linguistics (co-authored with Lynne Cameron,  2008). From 1980- 1985, Dr. Larsen-Freeman was Editor of the journal Language Learning.

"Readers of this book are certain to gain a great sense of increased understanding, not only of the workings of language but also of current research innovations within the Emergentist paradigm. All ten of the papers are clearly written so that those with little previous exposure to this type of work will be easily engaged and be able to follow the evidence and arguments presented." (The Linguist List, 7 December 2010)

• Editorial and Dedications v-viiNick C. Ellis & Diane Larsen-FreemanChapter 1:  Language is a complex adaptive system: Position paper 1-26  ‘The Five Graces Group' Clay Beckner, Richard Blythe, Joan Bybee, Morten H. Christiansen, William Croft, Nick C. Ellis, John Holland, Jinyun Ke, Diane Larsen-Freeman, & Tom SchoenemannChapter 2: A usage-based account of constituency and reanalysis 27-46Clay Beckner & Joan BybeeChapter 3: The speech community in evolutionary language dynamics  47-63Richard A. Blythe & William A. CroftChapter 4: Linking rule acquisition in novel phrasal constructions 64-89Jeremy K. Boyd, Erin A. Gottschalk, & Adele E. GoldbergChapter 5: Constructing a second language: Analyses and computational simulations of the emergence of linguistic constructions from usage 90-125Nick C. Ellis & Diane Larsen-FreemanChapter 6: A usage-based approach to recursion in sentence processing 126-161Morten H. Christiansen, & Maryellen C. MacDonaldChapter 7: Evolution of brain and language 162-186P. Thomas SchoenemannChapter 8: Complex adaptive systems and the origins of adaptive structure: what experiments can tell us 187-205Hannah Cornish, Monica Tamariz,  & Simon KirbyChapter 9: Meaning in the making: meaning potential emerging from acts of meaning 206-229Christian M.I.M. MatthiessenChapter 10: Individual differences: Interplay of learner characteristics and learning environment 230-248 Zoltán DörnyeiChapter 11: If language is a complex adaptive system, what is language assessment? 249-268Robert J. Mislevy & Chengbin YinSubject Index 268-275