1 Usage-Based Linguistics 1
2 Origins of Language 8
2.1．Phylogenetic Origins 9
2.2．Ontogenetic Origins 19
2.3．Children's First Utterances 31
2.4．Summary 40
3 Words 43
3.1．Early Words and their Uses 44
3.2．Processes of Word Learning 58
3.3．Theories of Word Learning 82
3.4．Summary 91
4 Early Syntactic Constructions 94
4.1．The Nature of Constructions 98
4.2．Early Constructional Islands 113
4.3．Marking Syntactic Roles 126
4.4．Summary 140
5 Abstract Syntactic Constructions 144
5.1．Abstract Constructions 146
5.2．Constructing Constructions 161
5.3．Constraining Constructions 175
5.4．Theories of Syntactic Development 181
5.5．Summary 193
6 Nominal and Clausal Constructions 196
6.1．Reference and Nominals 199
6.2．Predication and Clauses 213
6.3．Learning Morphotogy 232
6.4．Summary 241
7 Complex Constructions and Discourse 243
7.1．Complex Constructions 244
7.2．Conversation and Narrative 266
7.3．Summary 279
8 Biological,Cultural,and Ontogenetic Processes 282
8.1．Dual Inheritance 283
8.2．Psycholinguistic Processes of Acquisition 295
8.3．Psycholinguistic Processes of Production 305
8.4．The Development of Linguistic Representations 314
8.5．Summary 320
9 Toward a Psychology of Language Acquisition 323
References 331
Acknowledgments 373
Index 375