International scientific vocabulary

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International scientific vocabulary (ISV) comprises scientific and specialized words whose language of origin may or may not be certain, but which are in current use in several modern languages (that is, translingually, whether in naturalized, loanword, or calque forms).

Contents

The name "international scientific vocabulary" was first used by Philip Gove in Webster's Third New International Dictionary (1961). [1] As noted by David Crystal, [2] science is an especially productive field for new coinages. It is also especially predisposed to immediate translingual sharing of words owing to its very nature: scientists working in many countries and languages, reading each other's latest articles in scientific journals (via foreign language skills, translation help, or both), and eager to apply any reported advances to their own context.

Instances

According to Webster's Third, "some ISV words (like haploid) have been created by taking a word with a rather general and simple meaning from one of the languages of antiquity, usually Latin and Greek, and conferring upon it a very specific and complicated meaning for the purposes of modern scientific discourse." An ISV word is typically a classical compound or a derivative which "gets only its raw materials, so to speak, from antiquity." Its morphology may vary across languages.

The online version of Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged (Merriam-Webster, 2002) [3] adds that the ISV "consists of words or other linguistic forms current in two or more languages" that "differ from New Latin in being adapted to the structure of the individual languages in which they appear." [4] In other words, ISV terms are often made with Greek, Latin, or other combining forms, but each language pronounces the resulting neo-lexemes within its own phonemic "comfort zone", and makes morphological connections using its normal morphological system. In this respect, ISV can be viewed as heavily borrowing loanwords from Neo-Latin.

McArthur [5] characterizes ISV words and morphemes as "translinguistic", explaining that they operate "in many languages that serve as mediums for education, culture, science, and technology." Besides European languages, such as Russian, Swedish, English, and Spanish, ISV lexical items also function in Japanese, Malay, Philippine languages, and other Asian languages. According to McArthur, no other set of words and morphemes is so international.

It is not always practically relevant, to any concerns except philology and the history of science, which language any particular ISV term first appeared in, as its cognate naturalized counterparts in other languages are effectively coeval with it for most practical scientific purposes, as well as being self-evidently equivalent in surface analysis. This characteristic is corollary to the very nature of science: it is predisposed to immediate translingual sharing of words, as scientists, working in many countries and languages, are perennially reading each other's latest articles in scientific journals (via foreign language skills, translation help, or both), and eager to apply any reported advances to their own context. This theme applies even regardless of whether each instance of scientific exchange is openly collaborative (as in open science) or is driven by espionage or industrial espionage (as for example regarding weapons systems development).

The ISV is one of the concepts behind the development and standardization of the constructed language called Interlingua. Scientific and medical terms in Interlingua are largely of Greco-Latin origin, but, like most Interlingua words, they appear in a wide range of languages. Interlingua's vocabulary is established using a group of control languages selected as they radiate words into, and absorb words from, a large number of other languages. A prototyping technique then selects the most recent common ancestor of each eligible Interlingua word or affix. The word or affix takes a contemporary form based on the control languages. This procedure is meant to give Interlingua the most generally international vocabulary possible. [6]

Words and word roots that have different meanings from those in the original languages

This is a list of scientific words and word roots which have different meanings from those in the original languages.

Word or rootScientific meaningOriginal languageOriginal wordOriginal meaningNotes
andro-, -ander stamen, man Greek ἀνήρ , ἀνδρός man in flowers of flowering plants
gyno-, -gyne carpel, woman Greek γυνή , γυναικός woman
capno- carbon dioxide Greek καπνός smoke
electro- electricity Greek ἤλεκτρον amber via static electricity from rubbing amber
-itis inflammation Greek -ῖτις pertaining to
thorax chest (anatomy)Greek θώραξ breastplate
toxo- poison Greek τόξον bow (weapon) via 'poisoned arrow'. It means 'bow' in Toxodon and 'arc' in isotoxal .
macro-bigGreek μακρός long
In names of biological taxa
-ceras ammonite Greek κέρας horn via resemblance to a ram's horn
-crinus crinoid Greek κρίνος lily extracted from name "crinoid"
grapto- graptolite Greek γραπτός writtenvia resemblance of fossil
-gyrinus labyrinthodont Greek γυρῖνος tadpole
-lestes predator Greek λῃστής robber
-mimus ornithomimid Greek μῖμος mime extracted from name Ornithomimus = 'bird mimic'
-mys rodent Greek μῦς mouse including in Phoberomys
-saurus reptile, dinosaur Greek σαῦρος lizard
-stega,

-stege

 stegocephalian Greek στέγη roof via their cranium roofs as fossils
-suchus,
-champsus		 crocodilian Ancient
Egyptian		 σοῦχος ,
χάμψα 		Quoted by ancient Greek authors as Egyptian words for 'crocodile'
theriumusually mammal Greek θηρίον beast, animal
Names of bones
femur thighboneLatin femur thigh Classical Latin genitive often feminis
fibula (a leg bone)Latin fībula brooch tibia & fibula looked like a brooch and its pin
radius (an arm bone)Latin radius spoke
tibia shinboneLatin tībia flute via animal tibias modified into flutes
ulna (an arm bone)Latin ulna elbow, cubit measure
Other
foetus / fetusunborn babyMedical Latin fētus (var. foetus )As 1st/2nd decl. adjective, 'pregnant'
As 4th decl. noun, 'the young of animals'

Words and word roots that have one meaning from Latin and another meaning from Greek

This is a list of scientific words and word roots which have one meaning from Latin and another meaning from Greek.

Word or rootScientific meaning
from Latin		ExampleLatin wordLatin meaningScientific meaning
from Greek		ExampleGreek wordGreek meaningNotes
alg- alga alga alga seaweed pain analgesic ἄλγος pain
crema- burn cremation cremāre to burn (tr.)hang, be suspended cremaster κρεμάννυμι I hang (tr.)

Other words and word roots with two meanings

This is a list of other scientific words and word roots which have two meanings.

Word or rootScientific meaning 1ExampleOriginOriginal meaningScientific meaning 2ExampleOriginOriginal meaningNotes
uro- tail Uromastyx Greek οὐρά tail urine urology Greek οὐρῶurine
mento-the mind mental Latin mēns the mind(of the) chin mentoplasty Latin mentum chin

Other differences

Another difference between scientific terms and classical Latin and Greek is that many compounded scientific terms do not elide the inflection vowel at the end of a root before another root or prefix that starts with a vowel, e.g. gastroenteritis; but elision happens in gastrectomy (not *gastroectomy).

The Greek word τέρας (τέρατο-) = "monster" is usually used to mean "monster (abnormal)" (e.g. teratology, teratogen), but some biological names use it to mean "monster (enormous)" (e.g. the extinct animals Teratornis (a condor with a 12-foot wingspan) and Terataspis (a trilobite 2 feet long)).

Haplology

A feature affecting clarity in seeing a scientific word's components is haplology, i.e. removing one of two identical or similar syllables that meet at the junction point of a compound word. Examples are:

See also

Lists

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dictionary</span> Collection of words and their meanings

A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged alphabetically, which may include information on definitions, usage, etymologies, pronunciations, translation, etc. It is a lexicographical reference that shows inter-relationships among the data.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Interlingua</span> Constructed language

Interlingua is an international auxiliary language (IAL) developed between 1937 and 1951 by the American International Auxiliary Language Association (IALA). It is a constructed language of the "naturalistic" variety, whose vocabulary, grammar, and other characteristics are derived from natural languages. Interlingua literature maintains that (written) Interlingua is comprehensible to the billions of people who speak Romance languages, though it is actively spoken by only a few hundred.

A lexicon is the vocabulary of a language or branch of knowledge. In linguistics, a lexicon is a language's inventory of lexemes. The word lexicon derives from Greek word λεξικόν, neuter of λεξικός meaning 'of or for words'.

Lexicology is the branch of linguistics that analyzes the lexicon of a specific language. A word is the smallest meaningful unit of a language that can stand on its own, and is made up of small components called morphemes and even smaller elements known as phonemes, or distinguishing sounds. Lexicology examines every feature of a word – including formation, spelling, origin, usage, and definition.

A morpheme is any of the smallest meaningful constituents within a linguistic expression and particularly within a word. Many words are themselves standalone morphemes, while other words contain multiple morphemes; in linguistic terminology, this is the distinction, respectively, between free and bound morphemes. The field of linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology.

A thesaurus, sometimes called a synonym dictionary or dictionary of synonyms, is a reference work which arranges words by their meanings, sometimes as a hierarchy of broader and narrower terms, sometimes simply as lists of synonyms and antonyms. They are often used by writers to help find the best word to express an idea:

...to find the word, or words, by which [an] idea may be most fitly and aptly expressed

An international auxiliary language is a language meant for communication between people from all different nations, who do not share a common first language. An auxiliary language is primarily a foreign language and often a constructed language. The concept is related to but separate from the idea of a lingua franca that people must use to communicate. The study of international auxiliary languages is interlinguistics.

In linguistics, a calque or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal word-for-word or root-for-root translation. When used as a verb, “to calque” means to borrow a word or phrase from another language while translating its components, so as to create a new lexeme in the target language. For instance, the English word skyscraper has been calqued in dozens of other languages, combining words for "sky" and "scrape" in each language, as for example Wolkenkratzer in German, arranha-céu in Portuguese, grattacielo in Italian, and gökdelen in Turkish.

Terminology is a group of specialized words and respective meanings in a particular field, and also the study of such terms and their use; the latter meaning is also known as terminology science. A term is a word, compound word, or multi-word expression that in specific contexts is given specific meanings—these may deviate from the meanings the same words have in other contexts and in everyday language. Terminology is a discipline that studies, among other things, the development of such terms and their interrelationships within a specialized domain. Terminology differs from lexicography, as it involves the study of concepts, conceptual systems and their labels (terms), whereas lexicography studies words and their meanings.

Etymology is the scientific study of the origin and evolution of a word's meaning across time, including its constituent phonemes and morphemes,. It is a subfield of historical linguistics, philology, and semiotics, and draws upon comparative semantics, morphology, pragmatics, and phonetics in order to construct a comprehensive and chronological catalogue of all meanings that a morpheme, phoneme, word, or sign has carried across time.

The Greek language has contributed to the English lexicon in five main ways:

In linguistics, an internationalism or international word is a loanword that occurs in several languages with the same or at least similar meaning and etymology. These words exist in "several different languages as a result of simultaneous or successive borrowings from the ultimate source". Pronunciation and orthography are similar so that the word is understandable between the different languages.

Neoclassical compounds are compound words composed from combining forms derived from classical languages roots. Neo-Latin comprises many such words and is a substantial component of the technical and scientific lexicon of English and other languages, via international scientific vocabulary (ISV). For example, Greek bio- combines with -graphy to form biography.

Esperanto and Interlingua are two planned languages with different approaches to the problem of providing an International auxiliary language (IAL). Esperanto has many more speakers; the number of speakers is c. 100,000-2,000,000. On the other hand, the number of speakers is c. 1,500 for Interlingua, but speakers of the language claim to be able to communicate easily with the c. 1 billion speakers of Romance languages, whereas Esperanto speakers can only communicate among each other.

In morphology and lexicography, a lemma is the canonical form, dictionary form, or citation form of a set of word forms. In English, for example, break, breaks, broke, broken and breaking are forms of the same lexeme, with break as the lemma by which they are indexed. Lexeme, in this context, refers to the set of all the inflected or alternating forms in the paradigm of a single word, and lemma refers to the particular form that is chosen by convention to represent the lexeme. Lemmas have special significance in highly inflected languages such as Arabic, Turkish, and Russian. The process of determining the lemma for a given lexeme is called lemmatisation. The lemma can be viewed as the chief of the principal parts, although lemmatisation is at least partly arbitrary.

Medical terminology is a language used to precisely describe the human body including all its components, processes, conditions affecting it, and procedures performed upon it. Medical terminology is used in the field of medicine.

English prefixes are affixes that are added before either simple roots or complex bases consisting of (a) a root and other affixes, (b) multiple roots, or (c) multiple roots and other affixes. Examples of these follow:

References

  1. ↑ McArthur, Tom (editor), The Oxford Companion to the English Language. Oxford University Press, 1992.
  2. ↑ Crystal, David, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. Cambridge University Press, 1995.
  3. ↑ The online version is available by subscription.
  4. ↑ "International scientific vocabulary." Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged. Merriam-Webster, 2002. Accessed July 11, 2006.
  5. ↑ McArthur, Tom, "Asian Lexicography: Past, Present, and Prospective", Lexicography in Asia (Introduction). Password Publishers Limited, 1998. Accessed January 17, 2007.
  6. ↑ Gode, Alexander, Interlingua: A Dictionary of the International Language . New York: Storm Publishers, 1951.
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