ABSTRACT
This chapter aims is to explore current understandings of language knowledge in more detail. A usage-based understanding considers language to be first and foremost a sociocultural resource for taking action. Morpheme is a conventional grammatical term used to refer to the smallest unit of meaning in a language. The constructions that comprise our individual language knowledge are not fixed grammatical systems, based on universal rules that were once latent in our minds. Language as a complex adaptive system (CAS) involves the following key features: The system consists of multiple agents interacting with one another. The structures of language emerge from interrelated patterns of experience, social interaction, and cognitive mechanisms. The usage-based understanding of language has changed the way the user understand the concept of competence, a term often used to refer to language knowledge. To capture current usage-based understandings of language, the term translanguaging has been coined.
