Usage‐Based Language: Investigating the Latent Structures That Underpin Acquisition

Abstract

Each of us as language learners had different language experiences, yet somehow we have converged upon broadly the same language system. From diverse, often noisy samples, we have attained similar linguistic competence. How so? What mechanisms channel language acquisition? Could our linguistic commonalities possibly have converged from our shared psychology of learning as applied to the evidence of similar-enough language experience? This article outlines a research program to investigate whether there are sufficient constraints in the dynamics of language to promote robust induction by means of statistical learning over limited samples. It illustrates the approach with regard to English verbs, their grammatical form, semantics, and Zipfian patterns of usage. It explores the emergence of structure from experience using methods from cognitive linguistics, corpus linguistics, learning theory, complex systems, and network science.

Advancing usage-based approaches to L2 studies

“…Taking this step is necessary to bring the usage-based enterprise forward, to bring it beyond the (necessary and) more often-studied components of use and cognition, e.g. frequency, saliency, chunking and the role of the learners' L1 'thinking-for-speaking' patterns in L2 construction learning (e.g., Ellis 2002Ellis , 2003Ellis , 2007Eskildsen and Cadierno 2007;Cadierno 2008;Beckner et al 2009;Ellis and Cadierno 2009;Collins and Ellis 2009;Han and Cadierno 2010;Pavlenko 2011;Ellis, O'Donnell, and Römer 2013) and to begin to take into serious account the fact that both frequency of use and cognitive processes of L2 learning are situated in a social-interactional reality. In fact, considering the usage-based assumption that the concrete experience of the people actually engaged in L2 learning is fundamental to the learning process, with our biographies of L2 use informing and determining our L2 competence, it is a paradox that the nature of the relationship between such concrete biographical history and emergent L2 repertoires remains largely uncharted territory (but see Eskildsen 2011Eskildsen , 2012.…”

Local Patterns to Global Architectures: Influences of Network Topology on Human Learning

“…What latent structures support acquisition [88]? A more formal integration of network science methods with current statistical learning approaches will allow current experimental methods to be “scaled up” to unprecedented levels (see criticisms by [8]).…”

Bridging the Gap

“…From analyses of large usage corpora, we can analyze the latent structures of language and their roles in the associative and cognitive learning of language (N. C. Ellis et al, 2013 ). This is the stuff of cognitive psychology, associative learning theory, and corpus linguistics.…”

“…Diversity is powerfully creative if there is chance of interaction (Darwin, 1859(Darwin, /1928Holland, 1998 ;Page, 2008Page, , 2010. I am encouraged by the multiple perspectives currently represented within usage-based approaches to language (Behrens, 2009 ;Bybee, 2010 ; N. C. Ellis, O'Donnell, & Römer, 2013 ;Robinson & Ellis, 2008 ;Tomasello, 2003 ;Trousdale & Hoffmann, 2013 ). These hold that we learn language while engaging in communication-the "interpersonal communicative and cognitive processes that everywhere and always shape language" (Slobin, 1997 , p. 267).…”