THE THEORY BEHIND THE PRACTICES OF TREATING SYNONYMS IN ENGLISH-LANGUAGE DICTIONARIES: A CRITICAL ASSESSMENT.

This paper analyzes the representation of synonymy in English dictionaries of synonyms and thesauri with the aim of revealing and comparing their theoretical views of this phenomenon as well as a critical assessment of their practices as reflections of these views. The theoretical foundation of the analyzed reference works is determined according to two aspects: the scope of the notion of synonymy and the relation between synonymy and polysemy. The results have shown that the selected lexicographic resources are based on near-synonymy exhibiting two types - the one with a narrower and the one with a broader scope. However, the narrower understanding of near-synonymy leads to more systematic and consistent compilation of synonym sets with a clear structure. Moreover, synonymy and polysemy are viewed in two ways: as independent lexical phenomena or as interrelated phenomena, inseparable from each other. It has been concluded that the recognition of synonymy-polysemy interplay results in the proper treatment in the case of a polysemous word since its entry contains several synonym sets, each corresponding to its different sense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]