Abstract

This paper presents a general overview of cognitive synonymy from the cognitive perspective. It is concerned with the issues of lexical synonymy. The linguistic description is given on the semantic and pragmatic level. Cognitive synomys have been defined as lexical units whose senses are the same in certain contexts and cognitive synonymy is presented on the scale of synonymity. The scale involves the notion of absolute synonymy , cognitive synonymy and near-synonymy . Furthermore, cognitive synonyms imply propositions with equivalent truth values. In addition, the distinction between cognitive and associative meaning, which affects the notion of cognitive synonymy, is analysed