Abstract:
The article explains the concept of empirical lexical networks. A comparison is then made between the meanings of the Polish lexeme dom ‘house/home’ as represented in the corpus network Wortschatz (Univeristy of Leipzig) and the experimental network of the Department of Computational Linguistics of Jagiellonian University in Kraków. In both networks, the most vital meanings are ‘the place where the family is’ and ‘the place to live’. Both networks also contain the meaning ‘building’, whereas the meaning ‘institution’ is better represented in the corpus network. The experimental network additionally contains the meaning ‘my shelter’. That network, being characterised by directional internal links, organises subnetworks that explain meanings, e.g. the subnetwork of the meaning ‘the place where the family is’ points to the special role of ‘mother’, which organises the subnetwork that represents that meaning. A comparison of the meanings being identified and explained in subnetworks with the dictionary definitions suggests that research on the network representation of meaning may be useful in lexicography.
