Frequency Effects in Language Learning and Processing

One of the basic tenets of cognitive linguistics, which sets it apart from most other linguistic theories, is the conviction that language is a dynamic system that emerges from language use. Such a usage-based view on language attributes a central role to the notion of frequency. Fre-quency plays a crucial role in the emergence, processing, and change of virtually every type of language structure. Furthermore, the central role of frequency underscores the nature of linguis-tics as an empirical science and relates it more to neighboring disciplines, facilitating much needed cross-fertilization: the development of exemplar-based and probabilistic psycholinguistic models of representation and processing has provided robust psycholinguistic underpinnings from which to derive testable predictions. The first volume is concerned with a variety of more general questions that arise once a usage-based perspective is taken more seriously. Given the different papers, we divided this volume in four different parts plus one general introduction.

Stefan T. Gries, University of California, USA;

Dagmar Divjak, University of Sheffield, UK.