A Lexical Pragmatic Account of Lexical Synonymy Construction

This paper proposes a lexical pragmatic model in explaining lexical synonymy, based on Chinese language evidence. It can be observed from the analysis that lexical synonyms perform the non-specificity nature, such as non-specified structures, spontaneity and negligence of irrelevant contents characteristic in different communicative situations. The paper argues that linguistic underdeterminacy is the essential cognitive basis to lexical synonymy, which should be considered as a kind of extemporaneous pragmatic relation that is constructed online and derived through constructing ad hoc categories by pragmatic inferential mechanism.