Gries Stefan Th., Divjak Dagmar (eds.) Frequency Effects in Language: Volume 1. Frequency Effects in Language Learning and Processing

Mouton de Gruyter, 2012. — 243 p. — (Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs [TiLSM] 244.1). — ISBN 978-3-11- 027405-9.One of the basic tenets of cognitive linguistics, which sets it apart from most other linguistic theories, is the conviction that language is a dynamic system that emerges from language use. Such a usage-based view on language attributes a central role to the notion of frequency. Fre-quency plays a crucial role in the emergence, processing, and change of virtually every type of language structure. Furthermore, the central role of frequency underscores the nature of linguistics as an empirical science and relates it more to neighboring disciplines, facilitating much needed cross-fertilization: the development of exemplar-based and probabilistic psycholinguistic models of representation and processing has provided robust psycholinguistic underpinnings from which to derive testable predictions. The first volume is concerned with a variety of more general questions that arise once a usage-based perspective is taken more seriously. Given the different papers, we divided this volume in four different parts plus one general introduction.What can we count in language, and what counts in language acquisition, cognition, and use? Are effects of word frequency effects of context of use? An analysis of initial fricative reduction in Spanish What statistics do learners track? Rules, constraints and schemas in (artificial) grammar learning Relative frequency effects in Russian morphology
Frequency, conservative gender systems, and the language-learning child: Changing systems of pronominal reference in Dutch
Frequency Effects and Transitional Probabilities in L1 and L2 Speakers’ Processing of Multiword Expressions
You talking to me? Corpus and experimental data on the zero auxiliary interrogative in British English...The predictive value of word-level perplexity in human sentence processing: A case study on fixed adjective-preposition constructions in Dutch