Cognitive approaches to grammar are theories of
grammar
In linguistics, grammar is the set of rules for how a natural language is structured, as demonstrated by its speakers or writers. Grammar rules may concern the use of clauses, phrases, and words. The term may also refer to the study of such rul ...
that relate grammar to mental processes and structures in
human
Humans (''Homo sapiens'') or modern humans are the most common and widespread species of primate, and the last surviving species of the genus ''Homo''. They are Hominidae, great apes characterized by their Prehistory of nakedness and clothing ...
cognition
Cognition is the "mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, ...
. While Chomsky's theories of generative grammar are the most influential in most areas of
linguistics
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 ...
, other theories also deal with the cognitive aspects of grammar.
The approach of
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American professor and public intellectual known for his work in linguistics, political activism, and social criticism. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a ...
and his fellow
generative grammar
Generative grammar is a research tradition in linguistics that aims to explain the cognitive basis of language by formulating and testing explicit models of humans' subconscious grammatical knowledge. Generative linguists, or generativists (), ...
ians is that of an autonomous mental faculty that it is governed by mental processes operating on mental representations of different kinds of symbols that apply only within this faculty.
Another cognitive approach to grammar is that which is proposed by proponents of
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 ...
, which holds that grammar is not an autonomous mental faculty with processes of its own, but that it is intertwined with all other cognitive processes and structures.
[{{Cite book , last=Green , first=Vyvyan Evans, Melanie , url=https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781315864327/cognitive-linguistics-vyvyan-evans-melanie-green , title=Cognitive Linguistics: An Introduction , date=2018-10-24 , publisher=Routledge , isbn=978-1-315-86432-7 , location=New York , doi=10.4324/9781315864327, s2cid=232710602 ] The basic claim here is that ''grammar is conceptualization''. Some of the theories that fall within this paradigm are
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 ...
,
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 ...
, and
word grammar Word Grammar is a theory of linguistics, developed by Richard Hudson since the 1980s. It started as a model of syntax, whose most distinctive characteristic is its use of dependency grammar, an approach to syntax in which the sentence's structure i ...
.
References
Grammar
Cognitive science