Entre conceitos e conce(p)tos: uma proposta teórico-metodológica na interface entre a onomasiologia, a lexicografia e a semântica lexical cognitiva

Abstract

The present dissertation aims at presenting a theoretical-methodological proposal inserted in the interface between onomasiology, Cognitive Lexical Semantics and Lexicography. Onomasiology designates a method for lexical research in which one starts from a concept, which can be an idea, a thought, an abstract scheme, arriving then at the linguistic forms linked to this concept. Onomasiology is always linked to another concept, that of semasiology. While onomasiology starts from a more abstract content to, then, reach linguistic form level, semasiology makes the reverse process: it starts from the linguistic form and go towards the meaning (or meanings). This evidences the relation with Lexicography, since the traditional model of dictionary we know follows a semasiological perspective, of list of words arranged alphabetically. In this work, we consider, therefore, an onomasiology-oriented Lexicography, which, in turn, is in an interface with Cognitive Lexical Semantics. Cognitive Lexical Semantics can be characterized as a subfield of Cognitive Semantics, which, in turn, is part of the general framework of Cognitive Linguistics. Cognitive Linguistics places Semantics as the central point of all linguistic description, based on the hypothesis that language in its entirety is the fruit of conceptualization. For Cognitive Semantics, the semantic structure is the conceptual structure itself. One of the main theories that follow this view is Charles J. Fillmore’s Frames Semantics, according to which the meaning of a word is determined by the frame that it evokes. In this sense, we consider that frames postulate an onomasiological perspective, since they designate concepts, or pieces of a conceptual structure, that evoke words. As a methodological framework, we chose Corpus Linguistics, which guided the compilation of two corpora, a support corpus and a processable corpus, the later collected automatically through the tool Sketch Engine. The support corpus aimed at providing the understanding of the domain we chose to illustrate our proposal, which is the culinary of Italian immigration in the region of Serra Gaúcha. The processable corpus, in turn, enabled the extraction of wordlists and the analyzes using Sketch Engine features. The data analysis was based on three phases: the first one was based on the support corpus and aimed at a recognition of the domain, allowing the creation of a conceptual map of the immigration cuisine. The second phase started from this map, creating, first, a broad proposition of frames. From frame level, the lexical units were studied. In this phase of the analysis, the resources of Sketch Engine were used, which made it possible to perceive that the data of the processable corpus confirmed the understanding of the domain from the support corpus. In the third phase of the analysis, we discussed how the articulation between Cognitive Lexical Semantics, through Frames Semantics, and onomasiology can contribute to the development of onomasiological dictionaries. The research showed that frame theory contributes to onomasiology through the proposition of an internal structure of concepts enriched by encyclopedic knowledge, in addition to enabling more dynamic representations at both the frames level and the lexical units level.