Ronald Wayne Langacker (born December 27, 1942) is an American

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

and

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other tertiary education, post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin ...

emeritus ''Emeritus/Emerita'' () is an honorary title granted to someone who retires from a position of distinction, most commonly an academic faculty position, but is allowed to continue using the previous title, as in "professor emeritus". In some c ...

at the

University of California, San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego in communications material, formerly and colloquially UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California, United States. Es ...

. He is best known as one of the founders of the

cognitive linguistics Cognitive linguistics is an interdisciplinary branch of linguistics, combining knowledge and research from cognitive science, cognitive psychology, neuropsychology and linguistics. Models and theoretical accounts of cognitive linguistics are cons ...

movement and the creator of

cognitive grammar Cognitive grammar is a cognitive approach to language developed by Ronald Langacker, which hypothesizes that grammar, semantics, and lexicon exist on a continuum instead of as separate processes altogether. This approach to language was one of t ...

. He has also made significant contributions to the comparative study of

Uto-Aztecan languages The Uto-Aztecan languages are a family of native American languages, consisting of over thirty languages. Uto-Aztecan languages are found almost entirely in the Western United States and Mexico. The name of the language family reflects the common ...

, publishing several articles on historical Uto-Aztecan linguistics, as well as editing collections of grammar sketches of under-described Uto-Aztecan languages.

Life

Born in

Fond du Lac, Wisconsin Fond du Lac () is a city in Fond du Lac County, Wisconsin, United States, and its county seat. It is located at the southern end of Lake Winnebago and had a population of 44,678 at the 2020 census. The city forms the core of the Fond du Lac met ...

, Langacker received his Ph.D. from the

University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC, U of I, Illinois, or University of Illinois) is a public land-grant research university in the Champaign–Urbana metropolitan area, Illinois, United States. Established in 1867, it is the f ...

in 1966. From 1966 until 2003, he was professor of linguistics at the

. From 1997 until 1999 he also served as president of the International Cognitive Linguistics Association.

Career

Langacker develops the central ideas of

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 Construction grammar (often abbreviated CxG) is a family of theories within the field of cognitive linguistics which posit that constructions, or learned pairings of linguistic patterns with meanings, are the fundamental building blocks of human ...

, and unlike many mainstream linguistic theories, cognitive grammar extends the notion of symbolic units to the grammar of languages. Langacker further assumes that linguistic structures are motivated by general cognitive processes. In formulating his theory, he makes extensive use of principles of

gestalt psychology Gestalt psychology, gestaltism, or configurationism is a school of psychology and a theory of perception that emphasises the processing of entire patterns and configurations, and not merely individual components. It emerged in the early twent ...

and draws analogies between linguistic structure and aspects of visual perception.

Partial bibliography

*''Foundations of Cognitive Grammar'', Volume I, Theoretical Prerequisites. Ronald W. Langacker.

Stanford, California Stanford is a census-designated place (CDP) in the northwest corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States. It is the home of Stanford University, after which it was named. The CDP's population was 21,150 at the United States Census, ...

Stanford University Press Stanford University Press (SUP) is the publishing house of Stanford University. It is one of the oldest academic presses in the United States and the first university press to be established on the West Coast. It is currently a member of the Ass ...

, 1987. . *''Concept, Image, and Symbol: The Cognitive Basis of Grammar''. Ronald W. Langacker.

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

& New York:

Mouton de Gruyter Walter de Gruyter GmbH, known as De Gruyter (), is a German scholarly publishing house specializing in academic literature. History The roots of the company go back to 1749 when Frederick the Great granted the Königliche Realschule in Be ...

, 1991. , . *''Foundations of Cognitive Grammar'', Volume II, Descriptive Application. Ronald W. Langacker.

, 1991. . *''Grammar and Conceptualization''. Ronald W. Langacker.

& New York:

, 1999. . *''Cognitive Grammar: A Basic Introduction''. Ronald W. Langacker. New York:

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the publishing house of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world. Its first book was printed in Oxford in 1478, with the Press officially granted the legal right to print books ...

, 2008. . *''Investigations in Cognitive Grammar (Cognitive Linguistics Research)'' Ronald W. Langacker.

& New York:

, July 15, 2009

Quotes/examples

* "After I ran over the cat with our car, there was cat all over the driveway." (Concept, Image, and Symbol: The Cognitive Basis of Grammar, p. 73) * "I can think of a unicorn with daisies growing out of its nostrils, but I don't need a name for it."

Relevant literature

*Bennet, Phil. 2014. "Langacker’s cognitive grammar." ''The Bloomsbury Companion to Cognitive Linguistics'', ed. by Littlemore, Jeannette, and John R. Taylor, eds., 29-48. Bloomsbury Publishing

References

External links

Ronald Langacker's UCSD faculty pageInternational Cognitive Linguistics Association
{{DEFAULTSORT:Langacker, Ronald W. 1942 births Living people People from Fond du Lac, Wisconsin University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign alumni Linguists from the United States American cognitive scientists American Mesoamericanists Linguists of Mesoamerican languages University of California, San Diego faculty 20th-century Mesoamericanists Linguists of Uto-Aztecan languages