A growing emphasis on statistics in language learning raises the question of whether learning a language consists wholly in extracting statistical regularities from the input. In this paper we explore the hypothesis that the functions of learned constructions can lead learners to use language in ways that go beyond the statistical regularities that have been witnessed. The present work exposes adults to two novel word order constructions that differed in terms of their functions: one construction but not the other was exclusively used with pronoun undergoers. In Experiment 1, participants in a lexicalist condition witnessed three novel verbs used exclusively in one construction and three exclusively in the other construction; a distinct group, the alternating condition, witnessed two verbs occurring in both constructions and two other verbs in each of the constructions exclusively. Production and judgment results demonstrate that participants in the alternating condition accepted all verbs in whichever construction was more appropriate, even though they had seen just two out of six verbs alternating. The lexicalist group was somewhat less productive, but even they displayed a tendency to extend verbs to new uses. Thus participants tended to generalize the constructions for use in appropriate discourse contexts, ignoring evidence of verb-specific behavior, especially when even a minority of verbs were witnessed alternating. A second experiment demonstrated that participants’ behavior was not likely due to an inability to learn which verbs had occurred in which constructions. Our results suggest that construction learning involves an interaction of witnessed usage together with the functions of the constructions involved.