Investigating Iraqi EFL Learners’ Comprehension of Some Senses of the Word‘Sight

In light of cognitive semantics, meaning extension in a language is actually a reflection of itsnatives’ modes of thinking. The different ways of thinking set different correlations between the word’sreferent and both the interlocutors’ inner world and the outside world and hence produce distinct sensesfor that word. It is then essential for the EFL learners to acquire the natives’ modes of thinking in orderto be able of getting the list of meanings related to each lexical item in the target language. Afterreviewing the conceptual process involved in meaning construction, the researcher tries to investigateEFL learners’ comprehension of some senses of the word ‘sight’ in a set of sentences. The qualitativeanalysis of the subjects’ responses shows that the non-native like thinking which involves un-naturalconceptual decoding, shift in domains, and miscorrelation are the main causes of the subjects’ poorcomprehension.Cognitive semantics, meaning extension, conceptualization, sight, metaphor, metonymy, mode ofthinking, correlations, comprehension