In celebration of Language Learning's 60th anniversary in 2008, the journal hosted a conference at the University of Michigan on the theme of "Language as a Complex Adaptive System." Leading researchers in linguistics, psychology, and complex systems discussed the path-breaking significance of this perspective for their work, demonstrating that an understanding of language learning can only come about from such interdisciplinary, integrated inquiry.

The articles in this volume summarize this new approach and illustrate it as it applies to language usage, structure, and change, sociolinguistics, cognitive linguistics, anthropology, language evolution, first language acquisition, second language acquisition, psycholinguistics and language processing, language education, individual differences, and language testing.

"What a breath of fresh air! As interesting a collection of papers as you are likely to find on the evolution, learning, and use of language from the point of view of both cognitive underpinnings and communicative functions."--Michael Tomasello, Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology

Table of Contents: * Editorial and Dedications (Nick C. Ellis & Diane Larsen-Freeman). * Language is a complex adaptive system: Position paper. ‘The Five Graces Group' (Clay Beckner, Richard Blythe, Joan Bybee, Morten H. Christiansen, William Croft, Nick C. Ellis, John Holland, Jinyun Ke, Diane Larsen-Freeman, & Tom Schoenemann) * A usage-based account of constituency and reanalysis (Clay Beckner & Joan Bybee). * The speech community in evolutionary language dynamics (Richard A. Blythe & William A. Croft). * Linking rule acquisition in novel phrasal constructions (Jeremy K. Boyd, Erin A. Gottschalk, & Adele E. Goldberg). * Constructing a second language: Analyses and computational simulations of the emergence of linguistic constructions from usage (Nick C. Ellis & Diane Larsen-Freeman). * A usage-based approach to recursion in sentence processing (Morten H. Christiansen, & Maryellen C. MacDonald). * Evolution of brain and language (P. Thomas Schoenemann). * Complex adaptive systems and the origins of adaptive structure: what experiments can tell us (Hannah Cornish, Monica Tamariz, & Simon Kirby). * Meaning in the making: meaning potential emerging from acts of meaning (Christian M.I.M. Matthiessen). * Individual differences: Interplay of learner characteristics and learning environment (Zoltán Dörnyei). * If language is a complex adaptive system, what is language assessment? (Robert J. Mislevy & Chengbin Yin).