"In celebration of Language Learning's 60th anniversary in 2008, the journal hosted a conference at the University of Michigan on the theme of "Language as a Complex Adaptive System."."

The "five graces group" / (Clay Beckner, Richard Blythe, Joan Bybee, Morten H. Christiansen, William Croft, Nick C. Ellis, John Holland, Jinyun Ke, Diane Larsen-Freeman, and Tom Schoenemann) -- Language is a complex adaptive system: position : paper A usage-based account of constituency and reanalysis / Clay Beckner and Joan Bybee --The speech community in evolutionary language dynamics / Richard A. Blythe and William A. Croft -- Linking rule acquisition in novel phrasal constructions / Jeremy K. Boyd, Erin A. Gottschalk, and Adele E. Goldberg -- Constructing a second language: analyses and computational simulations of the emergence of linguistic, constructions from usage / Nick C. Ellis and Diane Larsen-Freeman -- A usage-based approach to recursion in sentence processing / Morten H. Christiansen and Maryellen C. MacDonald -- Evolution of brain and language / P. Thomas Schoenemann -- Complex adaptive systems and the origins of adaptive structure: what experiments can tell us / Hannah Cornish, Monica Tamariz, and Simon Kirby Christian M.I.M. Matthiessen -- Meaning in the making: meaning potential emerging from acts of meaning / Zoltan D'Ornyei -- Individual differences: interplay of learner characteristics and learning environment if language is a complex adaptive system, what is language assessment? / Robert J. Mislevy and Chengbin Yin.