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TERMINOLOGY

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Terminology as a discipline

Interdisciplinary, nonautonomous Related to which disciplines? Doubts as to status: theory or methodology

Terminology science, language engineering

Terminology v terminography

Terminology v lexicology

Terminography v lexicography

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SPL – Special Purpose Language/ Specialized Language

as a means of Domain communication: used for

specialized (scientific-technical or professional communication)

Representation of specialized knowledge (i.e. subject-field related or domain)

Access to specialized (subject-field related or domain) information

Unesco Guidelines for Terminology Policies

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Dynamic interaction between domain languages and general language

De-terminologization: specialized terms are incorporated into general language as widely known words

Terminologization: common words become (part of) termsSource: Unesco Guidelines

Marcel Thelen (2002: 195) GTT assumes that there is a strict boundary between language for special purposes and general language and thus between Terminology and Lexicology. The boundary is a fuzzy one general language may be used intentionally as LSP (terminologisation) and LSP may lose its special character and become general language (de-terminologisation).

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Traditional definition of term

ISO 1087 Vocabulary of Terminology (1990:5) defines a term as: designation of a defined concept in a special language by a linguistic expression Note: a term may consist of one or more words [simple v complex

term] or even contain symbols Designation = any representation of a concept Concept = „a unit of thought constituted through abstraction on the

basis of properties common to a set of objects” Terms - ‘depositories of knowledge’ and units with

specific reference in that they “refer to discrete conceptual entities, properties, activities or relations which constitute the knowledge space of a particular subject field” (Sager 1998:261).

Wright and Budin (1997: 325) terminology is the structured set of concepts and their representations in a specific subject field

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General theory of terminology (GTT)

General Theory of Terminology (GTT), the traditional and objectivist approach developed by Eugen Wüster to facilitate communication in specialised fields and eliminate ambiguity. Main principles (Bowker) Main principles: onomasiology (i.e. beginning with the

concept and working towards the term) Clear-cut nature of concepts (concepts have precise limits and

a fixed place within a system of concepts) Univocity (one-to-one relationship between concept and

terms) Synchrony (focusing on current use of concepts and terms

rather than on their evolution)

For a long time regarded as the only right approach (Cabré Castellví)

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Criticism of GTT Criticism of GTT: 1. The concepts to which terms refer are not well-defined,

clear-cut entities. 2. Terms are not context-independent units per se;

heavily context-dependent 3. Numerous terms are polysemic and some are

ambiguous; 4. Terms are subject to variation (synonym, syntactic

transformation, reduction, ellipsis, etc.) 5. Practitioners usu adopt a semasiological approach as

they gather data from specialised corpora and next analyse meaning of extracted terms.

Source: L’Homme, Heid i Sager (2003: 154): Terminology during the past decade (1994-2004)

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Alternative approaches

Socioterminology (Gambier, Guadin) – social dimension of terms

Textual terminology (Bourigault and Slodzian) – corpus linguistics

Communicative theory of terminology (Cabré)

Sociocognitive terminology (Temmerman) definition of concept to be based on prototype theory.

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Classification of terms: Form

Simple v complex Single-word terms Multiword terms / terminological units

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Term formation principles

transparency (vs. opacity); consistency; appropriateness; conciseness (linguistic economy); derivability; linguistic correctness; preference for native language (except in

domains or languages where other traditions exist, for instance the use of Latin or Greek forms in some disciplines).

Source: Unesco Guidelines

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Term-formation methods creating new forms:

derivation; compounding; abbreviated forms;

using existing forms: conversion (change in part-of-speech, sometimes called

recategorization); terminologization (assigning new, frequently analogous or

metaphoric meanings, to existing terms in more or less related fields or GPL words);

Semantic Transfer within a special language; trans-disciplinary borrowing (metaphors);

translingual borrowing: direct loan; loan translation. Source: Unesco Guidelines

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Classification of terms: degree of specialisation

Herbert (1965: v): categories of terms1. Highly technical terms with very specialized meanings2. Semi-scientific or semi-technical words „which have a whole range of

meanings and are frequently used idiomatically… work, plant, load, force” Goodman and Payne (1981: 24)

1. Technical terms: „those for which there is a congruity of concept between all scientists, whatever the language used… In each case, the properties or characteristics can be enumerated to define the object in an unambiguous manner”

2. Nontechnical terms Hoffmann (1985: 126-127): specialised vocabulary

1. Subject specific vocabulary2. Non subject-specific vocabulary (words with special reference which are used

in more than one domain)3. General vocabulary (perceived to be special simply because they appear in the

text) Trimble and Trimble (1978): categories of terms

1. Highly technical terms: terms unique to a particular domain2. Bank of technical terms „from which all disciplines can draw”3. Subtechnical terms: „common words that have taken on special meanings in

certain scientific and technical fields” (control, operation, current, ground, flux); general language words that have taken on special meanings in certain fields

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Degrees of terminologicality

Thelen: term/word boundary is fuzzy L’Homme, Heid i Sager (2003): Defining the ‘term’:

distinction between terms and words “From a linguistic point of view, at least, terms behave like words” (2003: 154); determinologization research by Meyer and Macintosh shows that “the dividing line between terms and words is blurred and that lexical units travel from one area of usage to another”. (154)

Shelov’s degrees of terminologicality: the more information is needed to understand a lexical item, the more „terminological” this lexical item is.

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Specialized meanings

Terms – referents: GTT defines terms as linguistic units that refer to concepts. This view is challenged by a number of authors who see “terms as lexical units that convey specific meanings”. Kocourek terminological senses as other possible sense a word can acquire and accepts that some senses can be considered exclusively from the point of view of a specialized domain. Cabre specialzed meanings that are activated under specific communicative circumstances. Temmerman terms as units of understanding. L’Homme et al. 2003:156

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Cabre’s integrated approach: Communicative Theory of Terminology

Two assumptions

1. “terminology is simultaneously: a set of needs, a set of practises to resolve these needs, and a unified field of knowledge” “terminology presupposes a need for all the activities related to the representation and transfer of

specialised knowledge … terms, in their widest sense, are the units which most efficiently manipulate the knowledge of a particular subject.”

“terminology is a set of applications in as far as it allows the development of products specifically intended to satisfy needs. ... A terminological application must be oriented towards the solution of specific needs...”

Terminology is a discipline and as such it is an organised set of basic essentials about an object of knowledge.

2. “the elements of terminology are the terminological units” [semasiological approach which challenges GTT’s claim that the object of terminology are concepts] “the central object of terminology are terminological units” “MULTIFACETED TERMINOLOGICAL UNITS are at one and the same time units of

knowledge, units of language and units of communication. Based on this approach, the description of a terminological units must necessarily cover these three components: a cognitive component, a linguistic component and a social component.”

“this triple composition of terminological units does not show them to be different from other units of language such as words or lexical units in general usage.”

“The specificity of terminological units in contrast to other units of the same structural level (words) and the same mode of meaning resides in the fact that they fulfil restricted conditions in each of their cognitive, grammatical and pragmatic constituent components.”

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Cabre’s CTTFrom the perspective of their cognitive component, they fulfil, among others, the following conditions:a. they depend on a thematic context;b. they occupy a precise place in a conceptual structure;c. their specific meaning is determined by their place in this structure;d. this meaning is explicitly fixed;e. this meaning is considered as a property of the unit;f. they are fixed, recognised and disseminated with the help of the expert community. From the perspective of their linguistic component, they fulfil, among others, the following conditions:a. they are lexical units, either through their lexical origin or a process of lexicalisation;b. they can have lexical and syntactic structure;c. as lexical structures they exploit all the devices of word formation and the processes of acquiring new units;d. formally, they may coincide with units belonging to general discourse;e. regarding word class, they occur as nouns, verbs, adjectives or adverbs or nominal, verbal, adjectival or

adverbial structures;f. they belong to one of the broad semantic categories: entities, events, properties or relations; these

categories with their own subcategories do not necessarily exclude each other and should therefore be rather considered as semantic values;

g. their meaning is discreet within a special subject;h. their meaning is extracted from the set of information of a lexical unit;i. their syntactic combinability is restricted on the basis of the combinatory principles of all lexical items of a

language. From the perspective of their communicative component, they fulfil, among others, the following

conditions:a. they occur in specialised discourse;b. formally, they adapt to this type of discourse according to their thematic and functional characteristics;c. they share specialised discourse with units belonging to other iconic or symbolic systems;d. they are acquired through a learning process and hence are handled by specialists in their field;e. they are basically denotative (which does not exclude connotations).

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Cabre’s CTT Cabre’s reconciliation THEORY OF DOORS – “this model attempts

to represent the plural, but not simulatenous, access to the object; and in such a way that, whether starting from the concept or the term or the situations, the central object, ther terminological unit, is directly addressed”

At the core of the knowledge field of terminology we, therefore, find the terminological unit seen as a polyhedron with three viewpoints: the cognitive (the concept), the linguistic (the term) and the communicative (the situation).

multidimensionality of terminological units Special knowledge is synthesized in a terminological unit But this is a subject dealt with by discourse analysis in which

specialised discourse is defined as a set of negotiated interactions, which can be recognised by means of markers consisting of lexical or morphological units, graphic elements and/or the placing of information. These interactions lead to the fixation of meaning in the full awareness of the linguistic, thematic and situational context of each designation. This fixation of special meanings, as we have seen above, is one of the conditions of special knowledge. It is consolidated through the compilation of glossaries which fix the meaning of a unit by means of a definition, an explanation or picture, or, alternatively, through discursive methods in the formof metalinguistic discourse, reformulations”

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Conceptual relations

Terminology management organisation of concept systems ; connections between related concepts within specific subject fields

HIERARCHICAL connections

NONHIERARCHICAL connections

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Conceptual relations

1. Hierarchical relations superordinate, subordinate, coordinate concepts hyperonym, hyponym, co-hyponym broader, narrower, related term Generic-specific2. Partitive relations part-whole; Meronymic

relations whole-part3. Sequential relationship temporal (spring,

summer, fall, winter); spacial (arrangement of keys on a computer keyboard)

4. Associative relationships (pragmatic/thematic relationships): cars highways, garages, passengers, service stations; judge court

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Denominative variation in terminologyFreixa 2006

GTT bi-univocal comprehension of terms; variation is an exception, not researched

Denominative variation: „one and the same concept has different denominations; this is not just any formal variation, but is restricted to variation among different denominations, i.e., lexicalised forms, with a minimum of stability and consensus among the users of units in a specialised domain”; synonymy Nominal value v. par value of share Umowa kredytowa v umowa kredytu v umowa o

kredyt

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Classification of causes of variation

I. Dialectal Caused by different origins of the authors.

II. Functional Caused by different communicative registers.

III. Discursive Caused by different stylistic and expressive needs of the authors.

IV. Interlinguistic Caused by contact between languages.

V. Cognitive Caused by different conceptualisations and motivations.

Source: Freixa 2006: 52

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Self-variation v hetero-variation

Self-variation: the same specialist may express the same idea or name a concept in different ways

Hetero-variation: different specialists may also express the same idea in different ways

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Typology of causes of variationFreixa 2006: 69

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Recent advances in terminology

1. Use of corpora: “the increasing use of voluminous corpora and computer applications to find terms and relevant information on them has considerably enriched our understanding of the linguistic behavior of terms”

2. the need to expand the notion of term beyond nouns + verbs, adjectives

3. “another topic of repeated attention is the place of terms within phrasemes or collocations...”

4. corpus studies importance of studying lexico-semantic relationships, such as the relation holding between a specialized verb and its nominalization, between a noun and a relational adjective, or between a term and other types of derivatives.

L’Homme et al. (2003: 156)

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Specialized lexical combinations

Term v phraseology v multi-word terms phrases frequently have a complex structure with multiple layers of embedding, ‘phrases within phrases’ (Biber et al. 2007:97) protokół z przesłuchania świadka

SLC, collocations, phraseologisms, prefabricates, phrasemescompany terms keep

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Collocations in GPL v Specialized lexical combinations (L’Homme)

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