How cognitive are Persian monolingual dictionaries?

Abstract

This study takes the script and lexical cohesion theories to analyze place noun definitions provided in five Persian monolingual dictionaries. According to the findings, among the lexical semantic relations, hyponymy is the most frequent semantic relation existing in place nouns’ dictionary definitions. Synonymy and meronymy occupy the second and third positions respectively. Out of three main cognitive primitives, i.e., acts, things, and roles, things have been used more in dictionary definitions. According to the findings, Persian monolingual are compatible with cohesion as well as script theories in presenting definitions for place nouns.