Terminology

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Terminology is a group of specialized words and respective meanings in a particular field, and also the study of such terms and their use; [1] 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. [2] 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.

Contents

Terminology is a discipline that systematically studies the "labelling or designating of concepts" particular to one or more subject fields or domains of human activity. It does this through the research and analysis of terms in context for the purpose of documenting and promoting consistent usage. Terminology can be limited to one or more languages (for example, "multilingual terminology" and "bilingual terminology"), or may have an interdisciplinarity focus on the use of terms in different fields.

Overview

The terminology discipline consists mainly of the following aspects:

Types of terminology

A distinction is made between two types of terminology work:

Ad hoc terminology is prevalent in the translation profession, where a translation for a specific term (or group of terms) is required quickly to solve a particular translation problem.

Nomenclature comprises types of terminology especially having to do with general ontology, applied ontology, and taxonomy (categorizations and classifications, such as taxonomy for life forms, taxonomy for search engines, and so on).

Terminology as a discipline

A terminologist intends to hone categorical organization by improving the accuracy and content of its terminology. Technical industries and standardization institutes compile their own glossaries. This provides the consistency needed in the various areas—fields and branches, movements and specialties—to work with core terminology to then offer material for the discipline's traditional and doctrinal literature.

Terminology is also then key in boundary-crossing problems, such as in language translation and social epistemology. Terminology helps to build bridges and to extend one area into another. Translators research the terminology of the languages they translate. Terminology is taught alongside translation in universities and translation schools. Large translation departments and translation bureaus have a Terminology section.

Science

Terminology science is a branch of linguistics studying special vocabulary.

The main objects of terminological studies are special lexical units (or special lexemes), first of all terms. They are analysed from the point of view of their origin, formal structure, their meanings and also functional features. Terms are used to denote concepts, therefore terminology science also concerns itself with the formation and development of concepts, as well as with the principles of exposing the existing relations between concepts and classifying concepts; also, with the principles of defining concepts and appraising the existing definitions. Considering the fact that characteristics and functioning of term depend heavily on its lexical surrounding nowadays it is common to view as the main object of terminology science not separate terms, but rather the whole terminology used in some particular field of knowledge (also called subject field).

Terminological research started seventy years ago and was especially fruitful at the last forty years. At that time the main types of special lexical units, such as terms proper, nomens, terminoids, prototerms, preterms and quasiterms were singled out and studied.[ further explanation needed ]

A nomen, or a nomenclature unit, is a name of a single notion or a certain unit of mass production, [3] e.g. prefix dis-; Canon 550D; UA-24; etc.

Terminoids, or jargon terms, are special lexical units which are used to name the phenomena that are absolutely new and whose concepts are not interpreted in a monosemantic way. E.g., Salmon Day, mouse potato, etc. [4]

Prototerms are special lexemes that appeared and were used in prescientific times. [5]

Preterms are a special group of lexemes which is represented by special lexical units used as terms to name new scientific notions. They are represented by a vast descriptive pattern, e.g. business process reengineering, management by walking about, etc. [6]

The main principles of terminological work were elaborated, terminologies of the leading European languages belonging to many subject fields were described and analysed. It should be mentioned that at the former USSR terminological studies were conducted on an especially large scale: while in the 1940s only four terminological dissertations were successfully defended, in the 1950s there were 50 such dissertations, in the 1960s their number reached 231, in the 1970s – 463 and in the 1980s – 1110.

As the result of development and specialising of terminological studies, some of the branches of terminology science – such as typological terminology science, semasiological terminology science, terminological derivatology, comparative terminology science, terminography, functional terminology science, cognitive terminology science, historical terminology science and some branch terminology sciences – have gained the status of independent scientific disciplines.

Terminological theories

Terminological theories include general theory of terminology, [7] socioterminology, [8] communicative theory of terminology, [9] sociocognitive terminology, [10] and frame-based terminology. [11]

See also

Related Research Articles

The following outline is provided as an overview and topical guide to linguistics:

Lexicography is the study of lexicons and the art of compiling dictionaries. It is divided into two separate academic disciplines:

A lexeme is a unit of lexical meaning that underlies a set of words that are related through inflection. It is a basic abstract unit of meaning, a unit of morphological analysis in linguistics that roughly corresponds to a set of forms taken by a single root word. For example, in English, run, runs, ran and running are forms of the same lexeme, which can be represented as RUN.

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.

In information science, an ontology encompasses a representation, formal naming, and definitions of the categories, properties, and relations between the concepts, data, or entities that pertain to one, many, or all domains of discourse. More simply, an ontology is a way of showing the properties of a subject area and how they are related, by defining a set of terms and relational expressions that represent the entities in that subject area. The field which studies ontologies so conceived is sometimes referred to as applied ontology.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Glossary</span> Alphabetical list of terms relevant to a certain field of study or action

A glossary, also known as a vocabulary or clavis, is an alphabetical list of terms in a particular domain of knowledge with the definitions for those terms. Traditionally, a glossary appears at the end of a book and includes terms within that book that are either newly introduced, uncommon, or specialized. While glossaries are most commonly associated with non-fiction books, in some cases, fiction novels sometimes include a glossary for unfamiliar terms.

Nomenclature is a system of names or terms, or the rules for forming these terms in a particular field of arts or sciences. The principles of naming vary from the relatively informal conventions of everyday speech to the internationally agreed principles, rules and recommendations that govern the formation and use of the specialist terminology used in scientific and any other disciplines.

Semantic similarity is a metric defined over a set of documents or terms, where the idea of distance between items is based on the likeness of their meaning or semantic content as opposed to lexicographical similarity. These are mathematical tools used to estimate the strength of the semantic relationship between units of language, concepts or instances, through a numerical description obtained according to the comparison of information supporting their meaning or describing their nature. The term semantic similarity is often confused with semantic relatedness. Semantic relatedness includes any relation between two terms, while semantic similarity only includes "is a" relations. For example, "car" is similar to "bus", but is also related to "road" and "driving".

Cognitive semantics is part of the cognitive linguistics movement. Semantics is the study of linguistic meaning. Cognitive semantics holds that language is part of a more general human cognitive ability, and can therefore only describe the world as people conceive of it. It is implicit that different linguistic communities conceive of simple things and processes in the world differently, not necessarily some difference between a person's conceptual world and the real world.

In philosophy, the term formal ontology is used to refer to an ontology defined by axioms in a formal language with the goal to provide an unbiased view on reality, which can help the modeler of domain- or application-specific ontologies to avoid possibly erroneous ontological assumptions encountered in modeling large-scale ontologies.

Linguistic categories include

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ISO/TC 37</span> Technical committee within the International Organization for Standardization

ISO/TC 37 is a technical committee within the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) that prepares standards and other documents concerning methodology and principles for terminology and language resources.

In digital lexicography, natural language processing, and digital humanities, a lexical resource is a language resource consisting of data regarding the lexemes of the lexicon of one or more languages e.g., in the form of a database.

Meaning–text theory (MTT) is a theoretical linguistic framework, first put forward in Moscow by Aleksandr Žolkovskij and Igor Mel’čuk, for the construction of models of natural language. The theory provides a large and elaborate basis for linguistic description and, due to its formal character, lends itself particularly well to computer applications, including machine translation, phraseology, and lexicography.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to knowledge:

The Integrational theory of language is the general theory of language that has been developed within the general linguistic approach of integrational linguistics.

NPU terminology is a patient centered clinical laboratory terminology for use in the clinical laboratory sciences. Its function is to enable results of clinical laboratory examinations to be used safely across technology, time and geography. To achieve this, the NPU terminology supplies:

OntoLex is the short name of a vocabulary for lexical resources in the web of data (OntoLex-Lemon) and the short name of the W3C community group that created it.

In linguistics, specifically the sub-field of lexical semantics, the concept of lexical innovation includes the use of neologism or new meanings in order to introduce new terms into a language's lexicon. Most commonly, this is found in technical disciplines where new concepts require names, which often takes the form of jargon. For example, in the subjects of sociology or philosophy, there is an increased technicalization in terminology in the English language for different concepts over time. Many novel terms or meanings in a language are created as a result of translation from a source language, in which certain concepts were first introduced.

References

  1. ↑ The two meanings given by the Concise Oxford English Dictionary (in their entirety) are: "terms used in an art etc." and "science of proper use of terms".
  2. ↑ a word or expression that has a precise meaning in some uses or is peculiar to a science, art, profession, or subject. "Term". Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary . Merriam-Webster. Retrieved 2018-06-25.
  3. ↑ Канделаки Т. Л. Значения терминов и системы значений научно-технических терминологий // Проблемы языка науки и техники. Логические, лингвистические и историко-научные аспекты терминологии. — Москва, Наука, 1970.
  4. ↑ Хаютин А. Д. (1972) Термин, терминология, номенклатура (учебное пособие). — Самарканд, 1972.
  5. ↑ Гринев С. В. Основы лексикографического описания терминосистем: Дис. … док. филол. наук. — М., 1990.
  6. ↑ Лейчик В. М. Некоторые вопросы упорядочения, стандартизации и использования научно-технической терминологии // Термин и слово. — Горький, 1981.
  7. ↑ Wüster, E. (1979). Einführung in die allgemeine Terminologielehre und terminologische Lexikographie. Teil 1-2. Springer-Verlag.
  8. ↑ Gaudin, F. (1993). "Socioterminologie: propos et propositions épistémologiques". Le Langage et l'Homme. 28 (4). Intercommunications: 247–257.
  9. ↑ Cabré, M.T. (1999). La terminología: representación y comunicación.
  10. ↑ Temmerman, R. (2000). Towards new ways of terminology description: the sociocognitive-approach. John Benjamins.
  11. ↑ Faber, P.; Montero, S.; Castro, M.R.; Senso, J.; Prieto, J.A.; León, P.; Márquez C.; Vega, M. (2006). "Process-oriented terminology management in the domain of Coastal Engineering". Terminology. 12 (2). John Benjamins Publishing Company: 189–213. doi:10.1075/term.12.2.03fab.

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