Modern Lexicographic Interpretation of Psychic Vocabulary: A Standard Explanatory Dictionary

Abstract

   This article describes the lexicography of psychic vocabulary in a diachronic aspect. For a long time, synonymic chains were the most common way of its interpretation, examples being a more recent lexicographic invention. However, both methods are concept-oriented. Unfortunately, neither of them solved the problems of a dictionary aimed at intercultural relations. The current globalization and informatization triggered non-traditional interpretations that describe not the concept, but a prototypical situation, which is associated with it. This study introduces several principles of interpreting the psychic vocabulary. These principles relate to the language, semantics, parameters, and structure of the semanteme. The approach is based on the connection between language and perception. For instance, the psychic vocabulary encodes the reaction of the heart as an organ ( love, rage, serenity, peace, disgust ). Therefore, the psychic vocabulary is different from the abstract vocabulary (good, evil, justice, democracy ), which does not encode bodily reactions. The author believes that the seme ‘heart’ is implicitly present in the semantic structure of the psychic vocabulary. Scientific literature features the lexeme of  heart in comparative, conceptual, and metaphorical aspects, but not as an implicit component. Thus, the denotative space of the psychic vocabulary is a complex cognitive construct structured as ‘assessment / reaction of the heart / desire’, represented by the archisemes of feelings, emotions, and states. Words united by these archisemes demonstrate different valency, word-building, and pragmatic properties. In terms of the structure of the psychic polysemy, feelings and traits have the potential to develop the meaning of states, and words that denote physiological states generate figurative meanings of mental states.