Language as a Complex Adaptive System

"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)

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 19982002 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.

Editorial and Dedications v-vii Nick C. Ellis & Diane Larsen-Freeman Chapter 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 Schoenemann Chapter 2: A usage-based account of constituency and reanalysis 27-46 Clay Beckner & Joan Bybee Chapter 3: The speech community in evolutionary language dynamics 47-63 Richard A. Blythe & William A. Croft Chapter 4: Linking rule acquisition in novel phrasal constructions 64-89 Jeremy K. Boyd, Erin A. Gottschalk, & Adele E. Goldberg Chapter 5: Constructing a second language: Analyses and computational simulations of the emergence of linguistic constructions from usage 90-125 Nick C. Ellis & Diane Larsen-Freeman Chapter 6: A usage-based approach to recursion in sentence processing 126-161 Morten H. Christiansen, & Maryellen C. MacDonald Chapter 7: Evolution of brain and language 162-186 P. Thomas Schoenemann Chapter 8: Complex adaptive systems and the origins of adaptive structure: what experiments can tell us 187-205 Hannah Cornish, Monica Tamariz, & Simon Kirby Chapter 9: Meaning in the making: meaning potential emerging from acts of meaning 206-229 Christian M.I.M. Matthiessen Chapter 10: Individual differences: Interplay of learner characteristics and learning environment 230-248 Zoltn Drnyei Chapter 11: If language is a complex adaptive system, what is language assessment? 249-268 Robert J. Mislevy & Chengbin Yin Subject Index 268-275