Mental lexicon

Mental lexicon is a concept in cognitive science and linguistics that refers to a language user's knowledge of words, the vocabulary and the representation of knowledge about words in minds. The term lexicon (dictionary) should in this context be understood as a metaphor. As is often the case in cognitive science may the concept be used as a reification: It is often believed that the mind is like a computer and that knowledge of words are stored like a dictionary. An alternative view has been suggested by Elman (2004).
 

"Rather than putting word knowledge into a passive storage (which then entails mechanisms by which that knowledge can be ‘accessed’, ‘retrieved’, ‘integrated’, etc.), words might be thought of in the same way that one thinks of other kinds of sensory stimuli: they act directly on mental states. This by no means is to deny that the nature of this interaction is complex or systematic. Indeed, it is in the precise nature of their causal effects that the specific properties of words – phonological, syntactic, semantic, pragmatic, and so forth – are revealed." (Elman, 2004, p. 301).

 

According to this view words do not have meaning. They provide cues to meaning.

 

 

 

 

Literature:

 

Aitchison, J. (2002).  Words in the Mind: An Introduction to the Mental Lexicon. 3rd ed. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing, Incorporated. 

 

Elman, L. J. (2004). An alternative view of the mental lexicon. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8(7), 301-306. http://crl.ucsd.edu/~elman/Papers/elman_tics_opinion_2004.pdf

 

Zechmeister, E. B.; D'Anna, C. A.; Hall, J. W.; Paus, C. H. & Smith, J. A. (1993).  Metacognitive and Other Knowledge about the Mental Lexicon: Do We Know How Many Words We Know? Applied Linguistics, 14(2), 188-206.

 

 

See also: Lexicon (Lifeboat for KO); Linguistic aspects of LIS

 

 

 

 

 

Birger Hjørland

Last edited: 25-10-2006

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