Table of Contents

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
Zoltán Dörnyei

Chapter 11: If language is a complex adaptive system, what is language assessment? 249-268
Robert J. Mislevy & Chengbin Yin

Subject Index 268-275                                                   

About the Author

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.

Reviews

"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)