LEXICOGRAPHIC REPRESENTATION OF CONCEPTS AS A REFLECTION OF EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT
The article describes sets of lexical meanings included in the dictionary entries as linguistic representations of the concepts ‘SOUL ' and ‘BREAD ' in the context of the temporal dynamics of their contents over a period of 200 years. The dictionary is considered as a sum of our knowledge about the world formed in the process of cognition. It allows us to see the dynamic aspect of the evolution of language and thinking and its reflection in the explanatory zone of the dictionary entry. As a result, changes, which have different communicative significance in the conceptual content of the word and indicate the dynamic process of the lexical content, have been revealed. This dynamic process is predominantly inherent in the periphery of a concept. The results of analysis of idioms, sayings and proverbs in the illustrative zone of the dictionary entries demonstrate the character of the evolution of language and thinking in the explanatory dictionary. As a rule, they reflect nuclear conceptual features, which are represented by the basic lexical meanings. Peripheral meanings are usually not reflected in proverbs and sayings.