APA Dictionary of Psychology

in linguistics and psycholinguistics, a theory of grammar in which the constituent units are derived from general cognitive principles, such as associative memory, categorization, and so on, rather than from autonomous linguistic principles. This assumption that language is an integral part of cognition runs counter to the theory of the task specificity of language. [introduced in 1987 by U.S. linguist Ronald W. Langacker (1942–  )]