The act of naming in language production through the onomasiological salience

Abstract

The act of naming is among the most basic actions of language. Indeed, it is naming something that enables us to communicate about it in specific terms, whether the object named is human or non-human, animate or inanimate. Words die out because speakers refuse to choose them, and words are added to the lexical inventory of a language because some speakers introduce them and others imitate these speakers; similarly, words change their value within the language because people start using them in different circumstances. The basic aim of the research is to find out the principal mechanisms that individual language user takes into account in choosing among existing alternatives of the word in terms of onomasiology and salience phenomenon. The study of onomasiological salience is relatively new, and there are a number of open issues constitute a challenge that may guide the further development of the field. The outcome of this research supports the idea that making onomasiological choices is an epistemologically fundamental feature of language, and focus on onomasiological salience is a focus on what may well be the most fundamental feature of language production.