Compiling a cognition-based thematic monolingual lexicon

This study falls within the scope of cognitive lexicography which uses cognitive linguistic theories in lexicographic practice. The main objective of the study is to create a cognition-based monolingual thematic lexicon. The lexicon tests the validity of using cognitive linguistics, which uses language to reveal the human perception of a concept, in defining controversial multidisciplinary concepts. To that end, violence is selected as a case study and FrameNet is recruited as a cognitive linguistic resource. Cambridge Smart Thesaurus and WordNet are used as secondary resources to FrameNet. English TenTen corpus is employed to authenticate the findings before placing them in the lexicon. A twelve-frame lexicon is the result of the study. The constructed lexicon linguistically includes more than 250 violence-expressing word senses, defined and placed within their violence-associated frames. Some frames are cited from FrameNet without modification, while others are conceptually and linguistically modified. More important, some violence-specific frames are newly-reported. Evidently, studying how physical violence is linguistically expressed displays how the concept is structured in the human cognition. Thus, an empirical cognition-based definition of violence is suggested. This meets the challenge of the multiple sociological, psychological, political and criminological definitions. Moreover, a comprehensive definition of violence is recommended to include both its associated frames and expressing words.