Towards a Cognitive Linguistics Account of a Terminological Database 191Auch aus der Perspektive des Lexicographen ist m.E. die Frage der
Aufnahme enzyklopädischer Information ins zweisprachige Fachwörterbuch
nur positiv zu beantworten. (Schaeder and Bergenholtz 1994: 141); The
answer to the question posed by the lexicographer, whether the
encyclopedic information should be included in the bilingual specialised
dictionary should be always positive, translation mine.The RLT follows the cognitive assumptions by adopting specific
macrostructural solutions related to the arrangement of the entries. The
fact that it is a computer operated tool gives a variety of possibilities. The
'get the full list' option, as discussed, is the basic search option, where the
users are provided with a list of all the entries, arranged in an alphabetical
way, with the first item acting as the headword. Notably, however, there
are other mechanisms organising the macrostructure of the RLT and they
fit in with the cognitive hypothesis that the systemic character of the
language is a reflection of the systemic structure of the extralinguistic
reality, be it – according to the cognitive linguists (e.g. Evans and Green
2006: 14) – our conceptual system or its discipline-specific manifestation
in the form of our legal system.
Law may be viewed as being based on a network of abstract constructs
and as a collection of systematically arranged legal provisions. Language
is in fact law. The relatedness between the systemic structure of language
and in our case the systemic categorisation of terms and the systemic
nature of the legal system (whether as an abstract construct or as a set of
norms) is claimed to follow the cognitive approach along the same lines,
as language patterns are believed to be reflected in the structure of our
conceptual systems (Evans and Green 2006: 14). Both human conceptual
systems and the legal systems we live in are assumed to belong to the
extralinguistic zone which interacts with our linguistic expression. Law in
its codified form is said to have emerged from natural law which – in turn
- arises out of our social and moral norms, and thus out of the way we
perceive reality as well as value and categorise specific concepts, these
being arbitrarily related to specific terms, along the Saussurean model
(Seidler, Groszyk, Malarczyk, PieniąĪek 2001: 105-108). Hence, our legal
system may be said to make up part of our conceptual system. The
categorisation of legal terms may be said to reflect the extralinguistic,
legal conditionings. Figure 3 below illustrates the mechanism of entering a
search option for the retrieval of a list of entries according to the domain
they are affiliated to.