People
Ronald W. Langacker (*1942)
School/tradition
- Cognitive Linguistics
Research Interests
- Cognitive Grammar
Notable Ideas
- gestalt psychology
- analogies between linguistic structure and aspects of visual perception
Biography
Ronald W. Langacker is an American linguist and professor emeritus at the University of California, San Diego.
Langacker received his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1966. From 1966 until 2003, he was professor of linguistics at the University of California, San Diego. From 1997 until 1999 he also served as president of the International Cognitive Linguistics Association.
Contribution to Linguistics
Langacker develops the central ideas of Cognitive Grammar in his seminal, two-volume Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, which became a major departure point for the emerging field of Cognitive Linguistics.
Cognitive Grammar treats human languages as consisting solely of semantic units, phonological units, and symbolic units (conventional pairings of phonological and semantic units). Like Construction Grammar, and unlike many mainstream linguistic theories, Cognitive Grammar extends the notion of symbolic units to the grammar of languages.
Central Knowledge
- Langacker assumes that linguistic structures are motivated by general cognitive processes. In formulating his theory, he makes extensive use of principles of gestalt psychology and draws analogies between linguistic structure and aspects of visual perception.
Main Publications
- Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, Volume I, Theoretical Prerequisites. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1987.
- Concept, Image, and Symbol: The Cognitive Basis of Grammar. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1991.
- Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, Volume II, Descriptive Application. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1991.
- Grammar and Conceptualization. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1999.
Categories: People