The usage-based model of language acquisition assumes that language is learned by its usage. General cognitive processes, especially analogical reasoning ability, are assumed to lead to the understanding of words and grammatical structures. It has been argued that the time of language or auditory deprivation children with cochlear implants (CIs) often experience early in life, might affect both their language and their cognitive abilities. Children with CIs have disadvantages in terms of language acquisition as they start receiving language input later than peers with typical hearing (TH), and the perceptual quality of the input is reduced. However, they might have additional difficulties in language acquisition if their analogical reasoning ability is negatively influenced by the language or auditory deprivation early in life. The results found in this thesis show that the language delays often seen in children with CIs are not explained by differences in analogical reasoning ability. Results indicate that analogical reasoning ability has a limited influence on language acquisition for the tested age-group. However, language abilities affect the performance on analogical reasoning tasks which are either verbal or can be supported by verbal strategies. This needs to be taken into consideration when comparing analogical reasoning ability of children with CI sand children with TH. In addition, the results from this thesis indicate that the structure of the mental lexicon is associated with the communication skills of children with CIs. The structure of the mental lexicon is most likely influenced by the amount of language input a child receives. The main implication of the results is that emphasis should be put on reducing the duration of language deprivation and to improve the quality of the language input for children with CIs.

This eleventh edition was developed during the encyclopaedia's transition from a British to an American publication. Some of its articles were written by the best-known scholars of the time and it is considered to be a landmark encyclopaedia for scholarship and literary style.

"The first half of this book examines the commercial, social, and political implications of American monolingualism. The second half of the book explores the techniques and tools that a working professional can use to acqure functional skills in a new language."--Back cover.

This revised second edition is a comprehensive overview of why we speak the languages that we do. It covers language learning imposed by political and economic agendas as well as language choices entered into willingly for reasons of social mobility, economic advantage and group identity.

What causes a language to be the way it is? Some features are universal, some are inherited, others are borrowed, and yet others are internally innovated. But no matter where a bit of language is from, it will only exist if it has been diffused and kept in circulation through social interaction in the history of a community. This book makes the case that a proper understanding of the ontology of language systems has to be grounded in the causal mechanisms by which linguistic items are socially transmitted, in communicative contexts. A \textit{biased transmission} model provides a basis for understanding why certain things and not others are likely to develop, spread, and stick in languages. Because bits of language are always parts of systems, we also need to show how it is that items of knowledge and behavior become structured wholes. The book argues that to achieve this, we need to see how causal processes apply in multiple frames or ``time scales'' simultaneously, and we need to understand and address each and all of these frames in our work on language. This forces us to confront implications that are not always comfortable: for example, that ``a language'' is not a real thing but a convenient fiction, that language-internal and language-external processes have a lot in common, and that tree diagrams are poor conceptual tools for understanding the history of languages. By exploring avenues for clear solutions to these problems, this book suggests a conceptual framework for ultimately explaining, in causal terms, what languages are like and why they are like that.}