The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics Part 55. In the past decade, Cognitive Linguistics has developed into one of the most dynamic and attractive frameworks within theoretical and descriptive linguistics The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics is a major new reference that presents a comprehensive overview of the main theoretical concepts and descriptive/theoretical models of Cognitive Linguistics, and covers its various subfields, theoretical as well as applied. | 510 RICHARD HUDSON Figure . A network illustrating polysemy homonymy synonymy and variability All these mismatches can be illustrated in a single word ONE. a. Polysemy or homonymy It means either 1 contrasting with 2 or people as in One shouldn t reveal one s feelings . b. Synonymy In the second of these meanings it is synonymous with you which in turn is polysemous. c. Inherent variability Regardless of meaning it has two pronunciations which in England are wAn in the South and won in the North . These two pronunciations compete in the speech of those like me who have migrated southwards. Each of these pronunciations is also available for another word won or wan. These relationships are most easily shown as a network such as figure where no one grouping takes priority as the basis for organizing the information. Even when applied to the lexicon the Network Postulate is controversial in comparison with the surprisingly widespread view that the lexicon is organized just like a conventional dictionary but without the alphabetic order . In this view the lexicon is a list of lexical items or lexical entries each of which combines a single meaning a word class and a single form . Jackendoff 1997 109 Radford 1997 514 . The trouble with this view is that it creates a host of pseudo questions about the boundaries between the supposed lexical items for example Do the two meanings of one belong to the same lexical item or to different items What about the two pronunciations It is never defended explicitly against the network view which probably indicates a lack of interest in these questions rather than a denial of the network view. In contrast the literature on psycholinguistics commonly presents evidence for the network view which is now taken as uncontroversial Aitchison 1997 . At the other end of the spectrum of views Word Grammar claims that all linguistic knowledge has the same basic network architecture. The later sections of this article will show how .
