Cognitive Linguistics meets Interactional Linguistics: Language development in the arena of language use

AbstractWe take as our point of departure the usage-based assumption that grammar emerges from language use and briefly review the claims regarding the storage of linguistic experiences and the gradual nature of generalization. We argue that in addition to studying the long-term effects of distributional evidence in the input, the usage-based paradigm should take up related research in pragmatics and cognitive linguistics with a focus on the “online” properties of the situation. By putting interaction center-stage, we can study the development of children’s emerging conversational skills, but also draw on the full richness of the situation, which provides further cues to language learning.