What is it about?
This book brings together leading research on usage-based approaches to language, which view language as something people learn and shape through language they experience and use themselves. The chapters examine how children and adults acquire language, how vocabulary and grammar develop, how interaction and language input influence learning, and why language development differs across individuals, including children with developmental language disorders.
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Why is it important?
Combining diverse disciplinary perspectives and methods, this book offers fresh insights into how authentic language use shapes language acquisition and development. It provides researchers, teachers, and students with a deeper understanding of language development, multilingualism, and the factors that support successful language development.
Perspectives
One of the central ideas in this book is simple: to understand how people acquire their first and maybe additional languages, we need to study language learning as it happens in real-life communicative situations. I hope readers discover how much we can learn about language acquisition and development by studying authentic language use.
Mirjam Weder
University of Basel
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Usage-based Perspectives on Language and Language Acquisition, May 2026, John Benjamins,
DOI: 10.1075/tilar.35.
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