Usage-based models of language: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 13:49, 8 February 2023

Revision as of 12:25, 18 March 2023

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The term ''usage-based'' was coined by [[Ronald Langacker]] in 1987.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Serafima Gettys, Patricia Bayona, Rocío Rodríguez|title=From a Usage-Based Model to Usage-Based Instruction: Testing the theory|url=http://ijehd.cgrd.org/images/vol4no2/6.pdf|journal=International Journal of Education and Human Developments|volume=4|pages=50}}</ref> Usage-based models of language have become a significant new trend in linguistics since the early 2000s.<ref name="Mengden2014" /> Influential proponents of usage-based linguistics include [[Michael Tomasello]], [[Joan Bybee]] and [[Morten H. Christiansen|Morten Christiansen]].

Together with related approaches, such as [[construction grammar]], [[emergent grammar]], and language as a [[complex adaptive system]], usage-based linguistics belongs to the wider framework of [[evolutionary linguistics]]. It studies the lifespan of linguistic units (e.g. words, suffixes), arguing that they can survive language change through frequent usage or by participating in usage-based generalizations if their syntactic, semantic or pragmatic features overlap with other similar constructions.<ref name="Christiansen&Chater_2008">{{cite journal | last1=Christiansen | first1=Morten H. | last2=Chater | first2=Nick | date=2008 | title=Language as shaped by the brain | journal=Behavioral and Brain Sciences | volume= 31| issue=315 | pages=489–558 | doi=10.1017/S0140525X08004998 | pmid=18826669 | url=https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/168484/1/download10.pdf | access-date=2020-12-22 }}</ref> There is disagreement as to whether the approach is different from [[memetics]] or essentially the same.<ref name="Blackmore_2008">{{cite journal | last=Blackmore | first=Susan | date=2008 | title=Memes shape brains shape memes | journal=Behavioral and Brain Sciences | volume= 31| issue=315 | pages=513 | doi=10.1017/S0140525X08005037 | url=https://www.academia.edu/3444108/Memes_shape_brains_shape_memes | access-date=2020-12-22 }}</ref>

== Disciplinary roots ==

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=== Schmid's Entrenchment-and-Conventionalization model ===

Hans-Jörg Schmid's "Entrenchment-and-Conventionalization" Model offers a comprehensive recent summary approach to usage-based thinking.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Schmid|first=Hans-Jörg|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1139239358|title=The dynamics of the linguistic system : usage, conventionalization, and entrenchment|date=2020|isbn=978-0-19-254637-61|edition=First|___location=Oxford|oclc=1139239358}}</ref> In great detail and with reference to many sub-disciplines and concepts in linguistics he shows how usage mediates between entrenchment, the establishment of linguistic habits in individuals via repetition and associations, and conventionalization, a continuous feedback cycle which builds shared collective linguistic knowledge. All three components connect linguistic utterance types with their respective situative settings and extralinguistic associations.

== Frequency explanation ==

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By these means repeated sequences become more fluent. Within a chunk, sequential links are graded in strength based on the frequency of the chunk or perhaps the transitions between the elements of a chunk. A construction is a chunk even though it may contain schematic slots, that is, the elements of a chunk can be interrupted.

Memory storage requires links to connect idiomatic phrases together. In chunking, repeated sequences are represented together as units which can be accessed directly.<ref>{{cite journal |doi=10.1017/S0272263100014698 |title=Sequencing in SLA |year=1996 |last1=Ellis |first1=Nick C. |journal=Studies in Second Language Acquisition |volume=18 |pages=91–126 |hdl=2027.42/139863 |s2cid=17820745 |hdl-access=free }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Newell |first1=Allen |title=Unified Theories of Cognition |___location=Cambridge |publisher=MIT Press |date=1990 |isbn=9780674921016}}</ref> Through this, repeated sequences are more frequent. Sequential links are assessed in strength based on the frequency of the chunk or transitions between elements within a chunk. Additionally, the individual elements of a chunk can link to elements in other contexts. The example of ‘drive someone crazy’ forms a chunk, however items that compose it are not analyzable individually as words that occur elsewhere in cognitive representation. As chunks are used more frequently, words can lose their associations with exemplars of the same word. This is known as [[de-categorialization]].

== See also ==