Language as a Complex Adaptive System [Paperback]

• Explores a new approach to studying language as a complex adaptive system, illustrating its commonalities across many areas of language research
• Brings together a team of leading researchers in linguistics, psychology, and complex systems to discuss the groundbreaking significance of this perspective for their work
• Illustrates its application across a variety of subfields, including languages usage, language evolution, language structure, and first and second language acquisition

What a breath of fresh air! As interesting a collection of papers as you are likely to find on the evolution, learning, and use of language from the point of view of both cognitive underpinnings and communicative functions.   Michael Tomasello, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

Language is a complex adaptive system: Position paper. 
‘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)

A usage-based account of constituency and reanalysis (Clay Beckner & Joan Bybee).

The speech community in evolutionary language dynamics (Richard A. Blythe & William A. Croft).

Linking rule acquisition in novel phrasal constructions (Jeremy K. Boyd, Erin A. Gottschalk, & Adele E. Goldberg).

Constructing a second language: Analyses and computational simulations of the emergence of linguistic constructions from usage (Nick C. Ellis & Diane Larsen-Freeman).

A usage-based approach to recursion in sentence processing (Morten H. Chl£q