Usage-Based Second Language Acquisition

Presenters: Nick Ellis

T1TFC3

Usage-based approaches to language learning hold that we learn constructions (form-function mappings, conventionalized in a speech community) from language usage by means of general cognitive mechanisms (exemplar-based, rational, associative learning). The language system emerges from the conspiracy of these associations. Although frequency of usage drives learning, not all constructions are equally learnable by all learners. Even after years of exposure, adult second language learners focus more in their language processing upon open-class words than on grammatical cues. I present a usage-based analysis of this phenomenon in terms of fundamental principles of associative learning: Low salience, low contingency, and redundancy all lead to form-function mappings being less well learned. Compounding this, adult acquirers show effects of learned attention and blocking as a result of L1-tuned automatized processing of language. I review a series of experimental studies of learned attention and blocking in second language acquisition (L2A). I describe educational interventions targeted upon these phenomena. Form-focused instruction recruits learners’ explicit, conscious processing capacities and allows them to notice novel L2 constructions. Once a construction has been represented as a form-function mapping, its use in subsequent implicit processing can update the statistical tallying of its frequency of usage and probabilities of form-function mapping, consolidating it into the system.

Lecture_1 Usage-based approaches to language acquisition
Lecture_2 Learning words
Lecture_3 Learning morphology
Lecture_4 Learning multi-word constructions
Lecture_5 Language cognition


Readings
Ellis, N. C. & Wulff, S. (2020). Usage-based approaches to L2 acquisition. In VanPatten, B., Keating, G. D., & Wulff, S. (Eds.), Theories in Second Language Acquisition: An introduction. (pp. 63-82). New York & London: Routledge. download
Ellis, N. C. (2019). Essentials of a theory of language cognition. Modern Language Journal, 103, 39–60. download
Ellis, N. C. (2022) Second language learning of morphology. Journal of the European Second Language Association, 6(1), 34–59. download

Keywords: Second Language Acquisition, Morphosyntax, Psycholinguistics, Usage-Based Linguistics, Learning, Lexicon

Presenters

Nick Ellis

University of Michigan

Nick Ellis is an Emeritus Professor of Psychology, Professor of Linguistics, and Research Scientist in the English Language Institute at the University of Michigan. His research interests include second language acquisition, cognition, psycholinguistics, corpus linguistics, and emergentism and complex adaptive systems. Books on these themes include: Implicit and Explicit Learning of Language (Academic, 1994), Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition (Routledge, 2008, with Peter Robinson), Language as a Complex Adaptive System (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009, with Diane Larsen- Freeman), and Language Usage, Acquisition, and Processing: Cognitive and Corpus Investigations of Construction Grammar (Wiley-Blackwell, 2016 with Ute Römer & Matt Brook O’Donnell). He received the Distinguished Scholarship and Service Award from the American Association of Applied Linguistics in 2019. He served as General Editor of Language Learning from 2006 to 2020. https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/nickellis/