A Cognitive Analysis of the Polysemic Structure of forget

Kanji Matsunaka

Language is an integral part of human cognition. And the word usage is an embodiment of it. The meaning of a word or an expression varies in certain degrees depending on the context and the situation in which it is used. In this paper, I focus on the English word forget, trying to clarify its polysemic structure through its actual usages.

I will clarify the function and the core sense of the English word forget. The core sense of forget can be described as “to get something out of one’s mind.” And I succeeded in discovering its polysemic usages based on this. I found seven objects for the usage of forget. The core sense of the word forget is fundamentally the same all through these seven objects, but its semantic understanding and its translated Japanese words can be strongly changed by the contexts or the situations which surround the word usages.

I strongly believe that the framework of a “core sense”, which is based on the cognitive standpoint, is a great help for describing the polysemic structure of words. I propose that this analysis contributes to an explanation of the human cognition and understanding the meaning of words.