Cognitive Methods in Historical Semantics
The article deals with the problem of semantic change of words in a broad historical perspective. Different linguistic conceptions representing onomasiological and semasiological approaches to the word's meaning are considered. The notion of the «temporal structure of the concept» proposed by the Begriffsgeschichte-studies (history of conceps) is very helpful to synthesize these approaches. The article proposes an analysis of the history of the word “society” within the cognitive models (G. Lakoff) which show the semantic changes of the word.