All-Russian academic journal
“Issues of Cognitive Linguistics”
Author: E.G. Beliaevskaya
Abstract:
Cognitive approach to language units is based on the assumption that their semantics is a complex two-level structure where the general semantic content (known in structural linguistics as the «meaning» of a unit) is structured by an idealized cognitive model or an otherwise called conceptual construct which might be brought out for demonstration by means of «conceptual analysis». Existing research papers present the results of conceptual analysis, i.e. the presentation of mental structures underlying the meaning of language units, but hardly ever give the procedural description of how they were obtained. As a consequence, conceptual analysis applied by different scholars does not yield similar (or confirmed) results and the mental structures worked out tend to be highly variable. The present paper gives an outline of a six-step procedure which helps to discover conceptual constructs underlying the meanings of a polysemantic word. Illustrated by the English language material, the procedure might be applicable to other languages as well.
Pages: 5-14