Abstract

In the 1980s, Elizabeth Bates, Csaba Pléh, Brian MacWhinney, and colleagues formulated a functionalist, usage-based approach to language processing and learning they called the Competition Model. The model viewed linguistic forms as competing during production for the expression of meanings and during comprehension for mapping forms onto meanings. It viewed the language learning as the acquisition of cues for resolving these competitions in real time and adjustments of the strengths of these cues based on their reliability and availability across the language. The model has been tested in over 100 studies of children, adults, second language learners, and people with aphasia in 18 different languages. The studies that Csaba Pléh conducted in this framework with Hungarian played a central role in the elaboration of the theory, because of the way they took advantage of the unique features of Hungarian to test basic claims of the theory. In the last two decades, the theory has been broadened to deal in greater detail with data on language fluency, age-related effects on language learning, and new data from neurolinguistics. This paper will summarize the basic findings from both the classic version of the Competition Model and the newer Unified Competition Model.