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Cognitive grammar
 
 
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Cognitive grammar is a cognitive approach to language
Language

A language is a form of symbol communication in which elements are combined to represents something other than themselves. Language can also refer to the use of such systems as a general phenomenon....
 developed since 1976 by Ronald Langacker
Ronald Langacker

Ronald W. Langacker is an American Linguistics and professor emeritus at the University of California, San Diego. He is best known as one of the founders of the cognitive linguistics movement and the creator of Cognitive grammar....
. 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 linguistics

In linguistics and cognitive science, cognitive linguistics refers to the school of linguistics that understands language creation, learning, and usage as best explained by reference to human cognition in general....
. Cognitive grammar treats human languages as consisting solely of semantic units, phonological units, and symbolic units (conventional pairings of phonological and semantic units).






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Cognitive grammar is a cognitive approach to language
Language

A language is a form of symbol communication in which elements are combined to represents something other than themselves. Language can also refer to the use of such systems as a general phenomenon....
 developed since 1976 by Ronald Langacker
Ronald Langacker

Ronald W. Langacker is an American Linguistics and professor emeritus at the University of California, San Diego. He is best known as one of the founders of the cognitive linguistics movement and the creator of Cognitive grammar....
. 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 linguistics

In linguistics and cognitive science, cognitive linguistics refers to the school of linguistics that understands language creation, learning, and usage as best explained by reference to human cognition in general....
. 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

The term construction grammar covers a "family" of theories, or models, of grammar that are based on the idea that the primary unit of grammar is the grammatical construction rather than the atomic syntax unit and the rule that combines atomic units, and that the grammar of a language is made up of taxonomy of families of constructions....
 (developed by Langacker's student Adele Goldberg
Adele Goldberg (linguist)

Adele Eva Goldberg is a researcher in the field of linguistics. Since 2004, she has been a Professor in Linguistics, and an associated faculty in Psychology at Princeton University....
), 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

Gestalt psychology or gestaltism is a theory of mind and brain that proposes that the operational principle of the brain is holism, parallel, and analog, with self-organizing tendencies; or, that the whole is different from the sum of its parts....
 and draws analogies between linguistic structure and aspects of visual perception.