On a New Theoretical Conception of Teaching the Lexicon
Keywords:
Mental lexicon, Lexical competence, Comprehension and production, System, LearnerAbstract
This article presents a general theoretical overview of teaching the lexicon. It first examines the traditional conception, which reduces the lexicon to a list of vocabulary items presented in isolation, without highlighting the structural and organizational relations that connect them. It then discusses the modern conception that emerged with the pioneers of contemporary linguistics, in which the lexicon is understood as the mental lexicon: an integrated cognitive structure in which lexical items are organized within a network of phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic relations. The article subsequently addresses several theoretical issues concerning the internal architecture of the mental lexicon, identifying its operating mechanisms and the pathways through which cognitive functions, linguistic processes, and mental rules interact systematically and coherently. This is intended to outline the foundations for developing learners’ lexical competence.
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