Usage-based Language Learning: Linguistic constructions and their learning

Usage-based approaches to language learning hold that we learn constructions (form-meaning mappings, conventionalized in a speech community) from our everyday language use by means of general cognitive mechanisms (exemplar-based, rational, associative learning). An individual’s language system emerges from the conspiracy of these associations over their lifetime of language experience. Here, we first outline various types of linguistic constructions and then we describe the psychological processes of their explicit and implicit learning. Our companion piece (Ellis & Wulff, 2025b) explains how these factors affect the second language acquisition (SLA) of words, phrases, morphosyntax, and syntactic constructions.