Language as a Complex Adaptive System - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 144433400X ISBN 13: 9781444334005

Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009

Synopsis

• 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

About this title

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.

From the Back Cover

In celebration of Language Learning's 60th anniversary in 2008, the journal hosted a conference at the University of Michigan on the theme of "Language as a Complex Adaptive System." Leading researchers in linguistics, psychology, and complex systems discussed the path-breaking significance of this perspective for their work, demonstrating that an understanding of language learning can only come about from such interdisciplinary, integrated inquiry. The papers in this volume summarize this new approach and illustrate it as it applies to language usage, structure, and change, sociolinguistics, cognitive linguistics, anthropology, language evolution, first language acquisition, second language acquisition, psycholinguistics and language processing, language education, individual differences, and language testing.

Edition details

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 144433400X
• ISBN 13: 9781444334005
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288
• Editor: Ellis Nick C.