Ronald Langacker, Date of Birth, Place of Birth
TweetRonald Langacker
Professor emeritus in the field of linguistics at the University of California, San Diego.
Date of Birth: 27-Dec-1942
Place of Birth: Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, United States
Profession: linguist
Nationality: United States
Zodiac Sign: Capricorn 
About Ronald Langacker
- Ronald Wayne Langacker (born December 27, 1942) is an American linguist 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.
- He has also made significant contributions to the comparative study of Uto-Aztecan languages, publishing several articles on historical Uto-Aztecan linguistics, as well as editing collections of grammar sketches of under-described Uto-Aztecan languages. Born in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, 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. 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.
- 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 and draws analogies between linguistic structure and aspects of visual perception.
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