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Lexicography

Publication date: 2007-01-01
Pages: 1160 - 1174
ISSN: 9780199738632
Publisher: Oxford university press; Oxford

Author:

Geeraerts, Dirk

Abstract:

© 2007 by Oxford University Press, Inc. All rights reserved. Cognitive linguistics has had a major impact on lexical studies: more than any other recent theory, it has in the last twenty years led to a renewed interest in lexical research. But what about lexicography? What is the relationship between cognitive linguistics and lexicography, the applied linguistic sister discipline of lexicology and lexical semantics? In line with earlier metalexicographical discussions of the relationship between cognitive linguistics and lexicography, this article first describes how the views of lexical semantics developed within cognitive linguistics provide a theoretical framework that is highly congenial to the actual practice of dictionaries-more so, in fact, than the structuralist theories that are sometimes found in the metalexicographical literature. It then presents an overview of suggestions made and initiatives taken to extend lexicographical practices on the basis of ideas linking up with cognitive linguistics, focusing on the FrameNet project. Finally, it discusses prototypicality effects in lexical structure, the intractability of polysemy, and the structured nature of polysemy.