Qué significa "conocer" una palabra : la complejidad de la competencia léxica

Abstract

Based on the research in Linguistics and Psycholinguistics, this article offers an approach to what lexical competence, that is, the knowledge of the words of a language, might be. The topic is considered,firstly,from a hgeneral point of view: which levels of lexical knowledge can be distinguished, and how lexical competence can be defined. Then, the article focuses on two aspects: 1) which is the structure of word meaning and, 2) how words are connected, in the language as well as in the speaker's mind.