WORD IMAGEABILITY PARAMETER WITHIN THE PROTOTYPE THEORY

The article is devoted to the problem of studying the theory of prototypes and its relationship with a psycholinguistic parameter, i.e. the imageability of the word. The problem is considered from the point of view of cognitive linguistics and prototypes semantics. Purpose. The article is devoted to identifying a connection between the theoretical concept of the prototype and the imageability of the word as the subjective parameter of the word. Methodology. For the purposes of the study, general scientific methods of analysis and systematization of scientific data were used, as well as elements of the comparative analysis. Results. The results of theoretical analysis and experimental work demonstrate that it is impossible to put an equal sign between the concepts of “prototype” and “representability”. Moreover, an inverse correlation is noted. Practical implications. The results of the work make a certain contribution to experimental psycholinguistics, since they allow us to clarify the interpretation of the results of the procedure of psycholinguistic parameterization of words: the article demonstrates that a word with a high representability index is not always the best representative of the category