Konceptualizacja kategorii prawo w polszczyźnie. Model sieciowy struktury semantycznej

Abstract

Definitions of the category law in dictionaries of Polish language already from the time of Old Polish language suggest that we deal with a complex conceptual structure, the basis of which are certain areas of human physical and social experience and knowledge resulting from mental processing of this experience. In the article I present a process of developing this category of coneept in the Polish language using propertiesc of the so called network model, that is a scheme proposed by R. Langacker for describing semantic structure of polisemie category. According to this model the meaning of a polisemie category can be presented as a system of nodes of an extensive network that are joined by similarity relations (extensions based on metonymy and metaphor) as well as relations between the seheme and its concretizations resulting from noticing what different meanings have in common. The polisemy of a word law that resulted from the process of extending initial meaning connected with concrete contexts of expressions in use to include new meanings (and yet indieating some family similarities in the chains of consecutive transformations) originating in result of placing other domains on initial domains that profile (that is distinguish, expose into the foreground) specified aspeets of meaning. The process of profiling reflects the mechanism of conceptualization (creating concepts) mirrored at onomasiological level. Linguistic units, that is structures which originated in the process of reinforcing a certain cognitive path, designate an element being profiled but at the same time they are knots of access to the base, that is entire network of concepts which have common conceptual base; they are somehow presupposed by a certain expression making an element of interpretation frame for the element being profiled by a predicate; therefore, a network model of the category law covers semantic substructures of the meanings of guilt and court as well.