The Usage-based Study of Language Learning and Multilingualism

When humans learn languages, are they also learning how to create shared meaning? In The Usage-based Study of Language Learning and Multilingualism, a cadre of international experts say yes and offer cutting-edge research in usage-based linguistics to explore how language acquisition, in particular multilingual language acquisition, works.

Each chapter presents an original study that supports the view that language learning is initiated through local and meaningful communication with others. Over an accumulated history of such usage, people gradually create more abstract, interactive schematic representations, or a mental grammar. This process of acquiring language is the same for infants and adults and across varied contexts, such as the family, the classroom, the laboratory, a hospital, or a public encounter. Employing diverse methodologies to study this process, the contributors here work with target languages, including Cantonese, English, French, French Sign Language, German, Hebrew, Malay, Mandarin, Spanish, and Swedish, and offer a much-needed exploration of this growing area of linguistic research.

Lourdes Ortega is a professor of linguistics at Georgetown Univeristy. She is the author of Understanding Second Language Acquisition and coauthor of Technology-Mediated TBLT: Researching Technology and Tasks.

Andrea Tyler is a professor of linguistics at Georgetown University. She is a coauthor of Language in Use: Cognitive and Discourse Perspectives on Language and Language Learning.

Hae In Park is a doctoral student in the Department of Linguistics at Georgetown University.

Marika Uno is a doctoral student in the Department of Linguistics at Georgetown University.