HYPONYMY OF ENGLISH COGNITIVE VERBS

Abstract

The paper provides the analysis of the hyponymic relations in terms of the onomasiological approach to the lexico-semantic fields and endocentric series. Lexicometric properties of the hyponymic relations of English cognitive verbs are studied based on WordNet Vocabulary Helper heuristic resource. It enables conducting the analysis in the direction from a hyperonym to its hyponyms, which echoes with the reconstruction of the conceptual structure. In this respect, further application and elaboration of the suggested methodology appears topical.
Hyponymy of verbs is scarcely studied in linguistics. It has been observed that the nature of verbal hyponymy proves to be different from the nominal one, as verbal hyponymy, or troponymy after C. Fellbaum and G. Miller, is based on the manner of action relation between the lexemes. Thus, it requires special attention and novel methods and sources apart from traditional dictionaries.
WordNet as a conceptual thesaurus and a large lexical database has been designed to assist multiple applications involving vocabulary as a system and is well applicable to the study of paradigmatic lexical relations. Among the advantages of the methodology based on WordNet is taking into consideration vast polysemy of the lexical items. It enables tracing narrowing of the categorial cognitive verbal meaning without getting sidetracked.
As a result of this study, the ways of endocentric series modelling are suggested, the peculiarities of the verbal hyponymy are defined, the quotient of the hyponymy of English cognitive verbs is calculated, the cases of autohyponymy are identified, as well as the future prospects are delineated.