Ontological taxonomy as a means to inventory the elements of the semantic metalanguage of cognitive analysis (based on E. V. Rakhilina’s monograph Cognitive Analysis of Object Names (Semantics and Collocations))

Abstract

In this work, I address the problems of inventorying the semantic metalanguage used in cognitive analysis to describe the meaning and collocation characteristics of object names. I establish correlations between elements of the semantic metalanguage to explain the meanings of linguistic units and speech sections in E. V. Rakhilina’s monograph Cognitive Analysis of Object Names (Semantics and Collocations) (Rakhilina 2010). I focus on the units of the semantic metalanguage, i. e. words and phrases denoting phenomena of reality. Such words and phrases comprise the lexicon of the metalanguage used in the semantic reflection of the author of semantic descriptions. The inventory of the semantic elements follows the alphabetical clustering principle. The ‘ontological taxonomy’ covers clusters, at the apex of which are the denominations of fragments of the world (reality) reflected by the internal aspect of linguistic units. These denominations are expressed by nouns with generic meanings: ‘object’, ‘container’, ‘surface’, etc. For brevity, I focus only on the third element — the ontological taxonomy. The result of the study — the ontological taxonomy of the researcher’s metalanguage — is presented in the appendix in the form of a dictionary.

Keywords

• ontological taxonomy
• semantic metalanguage
• cognitive analysis
• colloca-tions