Lexico-Semantic Group of English Words for an Elevation of Land as a Means of Representing Types of Knowledge

Abstract

Based on the linguocognitive approach, the article studies the linguistic conceptualization of elevations of land in English. The material was obtained from authoritative English-English dictionaries and the British National Corpus. The aim was to identify peculiarities of linguistic conceptualization of the terrain by means of landscape words forming a lexico-semantic group and denoting an elevation of land. The author performed an etymological and component analysis of the meanings of elements of the lexico-semantic group using dictionary definitions of its lexical constituents, followed by a cognitive interpretation of the semantic components of the latter and a determination of the constitutive cognitive features of the images of the designated objects. It is concluded
that the landscape nouns under study have two-dimensional meaning, which is determined by visual perception: the cognitive content of English nouns denoting an elevation of land represents not only structural knowledge – a form of categorization of information that is a given, existing knowledge representing the experience of all generations – but also phenomenological knowledge arising from sensory (immediate) observation. In addition, the author determined the ability of some of the sensually perceived features of landscape objects in the vertical space (shape, size) to serve as a cognitive basis for metaphorical images, which indicates that such features are of particular importance for the everyday life of British people. The results of this study have theoretical significance and contribute to further development of cognitive linguistics by revealing the cognitive mechanisms of perception, categorization and conceptualization of elevations of land.