Chapter Eight
190
Further insights into cognitive principles vindicated
in the RLT
In an attempt to demonstrate how cognitive linguistics principles are
reflected in the structure of the RLT, reference needs to be made to the
claims made in the literature of the subject as regards the links between the
said discipline and lexicography in general.
The main claim here is that the cognitive framework, especially lexical
semantics viewed from the cognitive perspective, is said to provide a basis
for lexicographic practice in general or – as Geeraerts (2007: 1661) puts it
- cognitive framework provides 'vindications' for what is done in the field
of general lexicography (Geeraerts 2007, Geeraerts 1990, Hanks 1994,
Swanepoel 1992). Specifically, the most readily quoted, relevant
principles referring to the conception of the lexical semantic structure are:
(1) prototypicality affecting the lexical structure (Geeraerts 2007: 1661),
(2) intractability of polysemy and its structured nature (Geeraerts 2007:
1661), and (3) taking account of the metaphorically and metonymically-
conditioned conceptual structures (Kövecses and Csábi 2014). From the
practical point of view, this means that dictionaries and databases are: (a)
to apply specific definitional techniques, by employing specific inclusion
criteria (prototypical features), (b) to account for the conceptualisation
mechanisms leading to the construal of secondary senses (including the
metaphorically and metonymically derived senses), and (c) to achieve
proper categorisation of the data.
On the level of specialist lexicography and law-related lexicography in
particular, the cognitively salient aspects of lexical semantic structure in
reference to bilingual dictionaries, have received less academic attention.
Here, for example, the application of cognitive semantics is made by
reference to the issue of incorporating encyclopedic information in the
definition of the dictionary entries:
Denn dieses im enzyklopädischen Bereich angesiedelten Informationen
können bei der Übersetzung im Hinblick auf die Wahrung der inhaltlichen
Invarianz zwischen ausgangs- und zielsprachilem Text von entscheidender
Bedetung sein. Für den Wörterbuchbenutzer könnte der Zugang zu dieser
Information z.B. bei der Übersetzung von Gerichtsakten eine wesentliche
Hilfe darstellen; [...] (Schaeder and Bergenholtz. 1994: 145-146); The
information placed in the encyclopedic area may have decisive role in
translation for the purpose of preserving the content invariance between the
source and target text. Access to this information could be helpful for a
dictionary user, for example, in the process of translation court briefs,
translation mine.