METAPHOR AS A MODEL OF COGNITION AND CONVENTIALIZA-TION OF A MEANING
Despite the large number of studies on the problems of polysemy, scientists have not come yet to a consensus if a person operates in the course of words use within the lists of meanings or whether polysemous words are represented by their invariant abstract cores. The unsolved problem of polysemous words functioning predetermines the relevance of research in this area. The article presents an attempt to describe the ways of metaphorical meanings storing and functioning in the lexicon. Mechanisms that provide quick access to the language signs without having to scan lists of meanings are described in the article. A hypothesis has been put forward that the use of a lexical invariant, as the meaningful core of the word, allows to carry out an effective search of metaphorical meanings in the process of communication. The lexical invariant acts as a general cognitive model of perception and understanding of polysemous words semantics. The results of the invariant-component analysis of the lexical invariants are presented. The lexical invariants act as effective substitutes for the entire content of a concept or a word, freeing the mind from the need to scan the entire spectrum of meanings, in accordance with the principle of linguistic economy. The article presents the results of a psycholinguistic experiment aimed at identifying the ways of metaphorical meanings representation in the lexicon, in particular, at verifying the cluster-invariant structure of polysemous words. The results of the study proved that a native speaker does not need to store expanded definitions when operating with the meanings of words, and a minimum set of features is sufficient for identifying their meanings