USAGE-BASED AND FORM-FOCUSED LANGUAGE ACQUISITION: The associative learning of constructions, learned attention, and the limited L2 endstate

Cognitive Linguistics proposes that First Language Acquisition (L1A) involves the acquisition from language usage of constructions that map linguistic form and function. In this view, competence and performance both emerge from the dynamic system that is the frequency-tuned conspiracy of memorized exemplars of use of these constructions, with competence being the rationally integrated sum of prior usage and performance being its dynamic contextualized activation. L1A tunes the ways in which learners attend to language.