Hand in Hand or Separate Ways: Navigation Devices and Nesting of Metonymic BODY PART Multiword Expressions in Monolingual English Learners’ Dictionaries

Abstract

Abstract Despite a long history of research into phraseology and its practical applications, the representation of multiword expressions (henceforth MWEs) in dictionaries still remains unsettled. The paper singles out and investigates the lexicographic treatment of one thematically related group of MWEs, those that contain nominal forms of body part names. Body part MWEs have been chosen for the present study because they constitute a fairly homogenous group, as many of them are related by means of metonymic motivation, and are therefore expected to be treated in a fairly consistent way. The study examines and evaluates the representation of body part MWE in monolingual English learners’ dictionaries online from the perspective of cognitive linguistics. It focuses primarily on the arrangement of semantically related MWEs in the dictionary microstructure, and attention is also paid to navigation devices used to nest metonymically motivated body part MWEs. The paper proposes solutions that could be adopted in lexicographic practice so that semantic links between related body part MWEs become more apparent in the entry structure.