Cognitive linguistics and synonymy: theory and lexicographic practice

Abstract

This analysis examines how the principles of cognitive linguistics can be related to various issues of synonymous relations in language. The first part of the analysis is dedicated to the principles which are important for the study of synonymy, especially to the encyclopedic perspective on meaning, the prototypical organization of linguistic categories, and the contextual conditioning of the construction of meaning. The second part of the analysis deals with some issues related to dictionaries of synonyms and how the premises of cognitive linguistics can be connected with the structure of the dictionaries of synonyms and the practice of producing them. This paper suggests the necessity of corpus analysis in studying the cognitive foundations of synonymy.