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

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Lingui ...

and

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

emeritus ''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...

at the

University of California, San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Insti ...

. 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 c ...

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 the ...

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

Uto-Aztecan languages Uto-Aztecan, Uto-Aztekan or (rarely in English) Uto-Nahuatl is a family of indigenous languages of the Americas, consisting of over thirty languages. Uto-Aztecan languages are found almost entirely in the Western United States and Mexico. The na ...

, 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. The population was 44,678 at the 2020 census. The city forms the core of the United States Census Bureau's Fond du Lac Metropolitan Statistical Area, which includes all o ...

, Langacker received his Ph.D. from the

University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Unive ...

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 The International Cognitive Linguistics Association (ICLA) is a linguistics association that sponsors conferences, major journals and books for relevant research in the field of linguistics. It is involved in the publication of research, a website a ...

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 that emerged in the early twentieth century in Austria and Germany as a theory of perception that was a rejection of basic principles of Wilhelm Wundt's and Edward ...

and draws analogies between linguistic structure and aspects of visual perception. In 2020, Langacker contributed to the volume, entitled ''Usage-based Dynamics in Second Language Development'' to honour

Marjolijn Verspoor Marjolijn Verspoor (born 1952) is a Dutch linguist. She is a professor of English language and English as a second language at the University of Groningen, Netherlands. She is known for her work on Complex Dynamic Systems Theory and the applicat ...

's work in applied linguistics.

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. The population was 21,150 at the 2020 census. Stanford is an unincorporated area of ...

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 was among the presses officiall ...

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

Berlin Berlin is Capital of Germany, the capital and largest city of Germany, both by area and List of cities in Germany by population, by population. Its more than 3.85 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European U ...

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

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 B ...

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

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

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

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print book ...

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

, 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