Whereas dictionary design has traditionally been guided by the results of dictionary use research, recent approaches in lexicographic research are strictly user-centred. We support the idea of integrating empirical cognitive evidence into this type of research, thus fruitfully exploiting it for both, the selection (and subsequently presentation) of lexical data and the acquisition of such data from corpora. Focusing on the extraction of semantic relations to be illustrated in electronic learners ’ dictionaries, we analyse the results of two behavioural experiments on the production as well as the perception of semantic relations. The main goal of the experiments was to determine which relations are cognitively salient in speakers ’ minds. With the objective of developing a method to automatically extract cognitively salient semantic relations from corpora, we describe and discuss findings of the first analyses conducted on composite part relations. In future this might serve as a basis for the elaboration of new strategies aimed at enriching lexical databases and dictionaries.