Lexical Meaning in Biblical Hebrew and Cognitive Semantics 89 a polyseme? Should only a basic reading be defined, or should each sense be defined? How inclusive should such a definition be? Should a minimum context be assumed, or should the meaning potential in any context be described? In cognitive semantic circles it has been established that the relationships between polysemes tend to display similarities across cultures, e.g. “thought mapping” is based on similarity from the concrete to more abstract in the case of metaphorical extensions (the fruit of my work, the foot of the mountain), based on a relation of contiguity in the case of metonymy (he drank the whole bottle) as well as specialization (corn = maize (USA) / wheat (England) / oats (Scotland)) and generalization (fruit as the seed-bearing part of a plant) of the sense of a basic reading. These insights make the definitions of the prototypical or basic reading of a lexical item attractive, since sense distinctions can then be made on the basis of the above-mentioned extensions. However, Allwood rightly points out some of the pitfalls of such an approach (24). In my view the most problematic aspect of such an approach is that tracking the mappings, which can be complicated in the case of multiple mappings and extensions, does not necessarily shed light on the way a particular mapping has become con- ventionalized. Allwood suggests that “the basic unit of word meaning is the ‘meaning potential’ of the word” (25). In other words, this is the unit that needs to be defined. “The meaning potential is all the information that a word has been used to convey either by a single individual or, on the social level, by the language community” (26). The content of the meaning potential of a word does not distinguish between linguistic and encyclopaedic information. When a word is used, one or more aspect of its meaning potential are activated and the activation takes place “in a context which creates certain conditions for its activation, with these conditions determining the way in which the potential is activated. The result of an activation is normally a structured partial activation of the potential” (27). An example in Biblical Hebrew is the generic word for saying, viz. rma. In contexts where the content of saying is a question, its potential as a word of asking is activated (28). The same can be said of rbd. In a context of promising, that part of its meaning potential may be activated (29). The process in which a “structured partial activation” of a (24) J. ALLWOOD, “Meaning Potential and Context: Some Consequences for the Analysis of Variation in Meaning”, Cognitive Approaches to Lexical Semantics (H. CUYCKENS – R. DIRVEN – J.R. TAYLOR) (Berlin 2003) 39-41. (25) ALLWOOD, Meaning Potential and Context, 43. — According to W. Cruse and D.A. Croft, “Each lexical item (word form) is associated with a body of conceptual content”. They refer to it as “purport”. Purport “is part of the raw material contributed by the word to processes of construal of an interpretation” (Cognitive Linguistics, 100). (26) J. Allwood remarks: “Meaning potentials are thus a result of conventionalizations of semantic operations meeting contextual requirements” (Meaning Potential and Context, 50). For Croft and Cruse “purport is some function of previous experience of (construed) occurrences of the word in specific situations (Cognitive Linguistics, 101)”. (27) ALLWOOD, Meaning Potential and Context, 43. — Cruse and Croft describe such an instance of activation (i.e. word meaning) as “a perspective of our knowledge of the world, as seen through the concept profiled by the word” (Cognitive Linguistics, 30). (28) Cf. Gen 3,11; 33,5 and Exod 3,13. (29) 1 Kgs 9,5; Jos 1,3; 14,10; 22,4. In contrast, cf. Deut 19,8.