As Talmy (1988, page 165) puts it, "we take a sentence (or other portion of discourse) to evoke in the listener a particular kind of experiential complex, here to be termed a 'cognitive representation.'"
linguistic terms may not in the first place describe or represent meanings as such, but rather serve as triggers for activating concepts of human experience, which are far richer and more flexible than any lexical entry or formalization could possibly represent.