Lecture 1.

The Subject of General Terminology, its

objectives and methods.

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Plan:
The theory of term and terminology, its main
problems of investigation.
Terminology and lexicology
Grammatical structure of terminology.
The historical background of terminology.
A term and an everyday word.

The notion of term has a double nature.

There are two basic approaches to the definition of a
term:
nominative (Lotte)
descriptive (Vynokur)
In general linguistics term is a word, wordcombination which has its special meaning expressing
professional and scientific notions.
Terminology is a totality of terms in the certain branch
of linguistics with well-established norm and
insignificant exceptions.

The main tasks of this discipline are:

to analyze the role of a terminology in common.
to determine the place of a term in the system of the

language.
to investigate semantic peculiarities in comparable
common words.
to analyze grammatical organization in simple and
compound terms.
to investigate specific features of term combinations and
phraseological phrases.
to create recommendations for optimal usage of terms in
the process of scientific communication.
to elaborate the principles of terms selection or lexicographic work.

The problems of terminological investigation:

Terminology is only

a component part
of linguistics.
Terminology forms
autonomous section
of lexicon in the
native language
having little in
common with the
literary language.

Terminology is not a language in the least, it is

a system of artificial science.

Terminology is closely connected with

lexicology, grammar.

Terminology is connected with nonlinguistic:

mathematical logics, statistics, and arithmetic.

Lexicology and terminology.

If lexicology deals with all the words of a
language, terminology only focuses on the
words belonging to either specific field (such
as physics, chemistry, an anthropology) or to a
professional activity (such as business,
industry, sports,etc). The domain of lexicology
and terminology, then, do not coincide: the
domain of lexicology is wider. Lexicology
deals with the study of words, whereas
terminology deals with terms.

Terminology

deals with:

terms in order to establish a reference to concepts of

the real world. Terminology does not explain terms

within the framework of theoretical linguistics, nor
does it pretend to describe the terminological behavior
of experts.
The compilation of terminology used to consist
largely of collecting the words and phrases considered
to be specific to a certain domain and bringing them
together to form glossaries, with or without
definitions or information how or where the
information was gathered.

Grammatical structure of terminology.

Akhmanova, Grachto,
Kubriakova: it is
necessary to have a
distinct idea of the terms
containing in
terminological
dictionaries. The opinions
on this issue are rather
controversial. Some
scholars think the noun to
be a universal means for
rendering all categories of
terminological notions.

In other linguists opinions in the context different

parts of speech can function as terms. It is
important to bear in mind that a noun has the
highest degree of nomination, while other parts of
speech can be included into the system of
terminological lexis as autonomous terms.

Verbs, nouns and adjectives in terminology.

The verb can be included to the terminology
as a grammatical category if we take into
account its word-building relationship( the
words with the same roots). Adjectives are
considered to be dependant terms. There are
adverbs used in terminological sense: e.g.
antilexographically
.
Thus , we can make a conclusion that nouns
take the first place in term usage.

Different parts of speech in terminology.

Verbs
with narrow and
special meaning:
e.g. to discharge

to map

to imply

Adjectiv
es
Autonomous
dual-converse
-
radiant

Nouns
inequality

Unit set

subtree

connective

The historical background of terminology.

The history of terminology is directly connected

with the history of science, technology, culture,
arts, professional activity. The development of
agriculture, crafts, emergency of textiles,
development of technology, science led to the
growing and development of socialprofessional and scientific terminology, to the
formation of the first opinions concerning the
term nature in grammatical science and the
terminology place in the language system.

Outstanding linguists and scholars who made some

contributions to the development of terminology.
In connection with the state reforms of Peter I a

large amount of translated literature appeared and

foreign terminological borrowings got into the
Russian language.
The creation of the first terminological systems of
physics, chemistry, mechanics, astronomy is
connected with the name of Lomonosov M. V.
In 1931 D.S. Lottes article The next task of
scientific-technical terminology emerged.
G.O. Vynokyrs essay About some word-building
phenomena in Russian technical terminology had
played a great role in terminological development.

A term and an everyday word.

The origin of the term is

complicated and multi-stage

process.
A term is a result of the
science abstraction process
and is a complete stage by
itself to one or another
special research.
A term is a unit with similar
linguistic characteristics used
in a special domain.

A word is a unit described

by a set of systematic
linguistic characteristics and
has a property of referring to
an element in reality.
From this standpoint, a
word of a special subject
field would be a term:
thermometer- an instrument
used to measure temperature.

Literature and sources.

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

6.

.. .
. : , 1998.
.., .., ..
. . .: , 1989. 246 .
..
. ., 1981. 344 .
.. .
, 1987. 200 .
.. (
). . , 1988.
160 .
Terminology- Theory and method. Edited by Olga Akhamanova and
Galina Agapova. MGU, 1974. - 206 p.