Cognitive Grammar
The Basic Idea
Does “the dog is behind the ball” mean the same thing as “the ball is in front of the dog”? Most people would say so. Perhaps you picture an adorable puppy on the left and a tennis ball on the right, and you think to yourself “Yeah, the puppy is in the same place regardless.”
Through the lens of cognitive grammar, however, these two phrases are not the same. While they may discuss the same situation, they are cognitively different.
Cognitive grammar is one of the major approaches to structure and meaning in grammar and linguistics.1 The idea is that language is grounded in general cognitive processes. Knowing a language is knowing a network of symbolic units where sounds are paired with meanings. Essentially, cognitive grammar is exactly what it sounds like: it reduces all grammar into cognitive concepts, focusing on the minds of speakers.
Linguists are no different from any other people who spend more than nineteen hours a day pondering the complexities of grammar and its relationship to practically everything else in order to prove that language is so inordinately complicated that it is impossible in principle for people to talk.
– Ronald Langacker, linguist and pioneer of cognitive grammar
