The Concept in Lithuanian Scholarly Language

ASTA MITKEVIČIENĖ

Institute of the Lithuanian Language

KEYWORDS: term, concept, corpus, scholarly language, syntagmatic relations, semantic relations, conjunctive usage, contextual synonyms

In definitions of the term term, one most often cannot do without the term concept, since a term is usually defined as the designation of a concept. It can safely be stated that a concept, like a term, is a fundamental concept in terminology (and, of course, a term). In traditional (also known as general) terminology theory, the relationship between a term and a concept formally corresponds to the relationship between a word and its meaning (Kageura 2002: 22)¹.

The main approaches to terminology work are the onomasiological (from concepts to terms) and the semasiological (from terms to concepts). In terminology research following the onomasiological approach, the concept occupies a central place (which also determines the corresponding research findings)². In addition, the concept is one of the most debated categories in terminology, especially among representatives of the so-called Vienna School of Terminology. Despite the attention devoted to the concept of “concept” in terminological works, its essence has still not been fully elucidated (Tatarinovas 2006: 143–144).

Texts are regarded as highly important indirect sources from which information about concepts can be obtained. A concept can be accessed in discourse through its designatum, through a term (Santos et al. 2015: 155, 156, 157). The new theories of terminology (communicative theory of terminology, sociocognitive terminology, frame terminology) give priority precisely to the analysis of texts (Faber Benítez 2009: 120). It has been observed that in Lithuanian

¹ In Lithuanian linguistics, the relationship between word meaning and concept has been discussed by Evalda Jakaitienė (2010: 46–49), Aloyzas Gudavičius (2012), and others.

² The extreme position of the onomasiological approach is to regard terms merely as labels for concepts (Faber Benítez 2009: 111; Kageura 2015: 47, etc.).

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The term concept³ is not avoided in scholarly discourse; it is therefore likely that scholarly texts can tell us more or less about the concept itself, “concept.” This article describes the use of the term concept in scholarly language: the study sought to identify the term’s semantic (contextual) partners and semantic (thematic) environment, and to outline the contours of the concept “concept” on the basis of the term’s usage characteristics. This is a corpus-based study whose principal source is the corpus-based Corpus of Lithuanian Academic Language CorALit (publicly accessible version: http://coralit.lt). The corpus consists of various types of texts in the humanities, social sciences, physical sciences, biomedicine, and technology published in 1999–2009, and contains 9 million words (for more on the corpus, see Usonienė et. al. 2008). Although relatively small and no longer updated for several years, and despite its rather limited search functionality, this corpus is nevertheless a fairly convenient resource for studying contemporary written Lithuanian academic language and terminology.

In the Corpus of Lithuanian Academic Language CorALit, the lemma concept occurs 779 times (in texts from all the academic disciplines mentioned). Thus, this term is more than one and a half times as frequent in the same corpus as the terminology term term, which occurs 447 times (the ratio is shown in Fig. 1). It was also observed that in one of the humanities texts included in the corpus under study, the word concept is used to refer to a word, rather than to express a concept by means of a term—that is, not a scientific or subject-specific concept. In any case, the term concept can probably be regarded as a general academic term, like a method or a theory⁴. Another question is whether concept is a metalanguage unit, like term. In A. Gudavičius’s view, probably not; cf.: “It seems that in linguistics the term concept, denoting the logically ordered result of cognition of the world in consciousness, is entirely unnecessary. <...> The terms concept and concept record the results of cognition: the former in a logical, concentrated form, the latter in a more individualized, holistic form; these terms would belong to the sciences of logic and epistemology” (Gudavičius 2012: 112, 117).

³ On the basis of a 1-million-word morphologically annotated corpus, in the Frequency Dictionary of Written Lithuanian compiled by Andrius Utka (2009), the word concept ranks 572nd (frequency of occurrence – 244). For comparison, the ambiguous term in that dictionary ranks 916th (used 156 times).

⁴ Cf. concept—“a philosophical, logical category denoting a unit of thought content that describes things and phenomena and expresses their essential properties. <...> In mathematical logic, Δ is understood as a logical class; when analyzed in terms of content, it is explained by identifying the essential and general features of the objects that make up the class” (VLE).

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Fig. 1. Frequency ratio in the text between the terms concept and term

After the selected concordance lines containing the term concept were processed using Antconc 3.4.4w⁵, the most frequent adjacent contextual partners of the term under study were identified automatically—those immediately following it (see Fig. 2) or immediately preceding it (see Fig. 3). The figures show that some contextual partners, for example, power and thermofication, probably entered the corpus from the same text. The possibility of data-processing errors cannot be ruled out.

The free word order of Lithuanian in a sentence means that, when examining a concordance, all sentence constituents must be taken into account; it is not enough to focus on a few positions of contextual partners relative to the word under study (Marcinkevičienė 2010: 49). Accordingly, in studying the use of the term concept, the beginning and end of the sentence containing the term of interest were first sought in each 300-character concordance line. The sentences in adjacent concordance lines were reviewed for contextual synonyms of the term under study.

The chosen research method was semantic analysis of word combinations. The method was tested by analyzing the use of the term term (see Mitkevičienė 2016) and met expectations. First, word combinations containing the term concept were identified, and the function of this term was examined (subject, object, attribute, adverbial, or predi-

⁵ See http://www.laurenceanthony.net/software/antconc/.

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Fig. 2. Most frequent words immediately following the term concept in the text

(ative)⁶. Further analysis of the use of the term concept groups word combinations with the term concept according to lexical, semantic, and thematic similarity⁷. The article also discusses the conjunctive use and contextual synonymy of the term concept, which reflect the paradigmatic relations of this term. The frequency of the term concept’s contextual partners is not considered particularly important here—even a single partner of the term under study may be significant if the material being studied contains other partners that are semantically or thematically close to it, with which it would fall into the same group of word combinations.

⁶ The term concept often occurs in more than one combination in a sentence, so the same corpus sentence can illustrate more than one usage pattern of the term under study.

⁷ Remiamasi Vito Labučio semantinių žodžių junginių skirstymu (Labutis 1998), duomenys taip pat tikrinami DLKG. Klasifikuojant atributinius junginius daugiausia vadovaujamasi Laimutės Bunevičiūtės straipsniu (1998).

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Fig. 3. The most frequent words in the corpus immediately preceding the term concept

1. CONCEPT IN TERMINOGRAPHY⁸

1.1. A concept is an object of philosophy, logic, psychology, and other sciences, and is accordingly included in dictionaries in those fields⁹. Lithuanian-language dictionaries of philosophical terms provide the following definitions or explanations of the term concept¹⁰:

⁸ Here, terminography is understood broadly: it encompasses not only dictionaries but also other systematic collections of terminology data (terminology databases, banks, and standards).

⁹ We have no Lithuanian dictionaries of logic. Logic textbooks state: “A concept is a form of thought expressing the essential and general attributes of objects.” (Plečkaitis 2009: 159); “in describing a concept, we shall limit ourselves to noting that a concept is the constituent of thought in which individuals are given together with their attributes” (Bubelis et al. 2012: 99).

¹⁰ Philosophers disagree about the relationship between concepts and meanings (whether concepts are meanings), and also about whether concepts are dependent on language (see CREPh 2000: 159; EPh 2006: 415, 416).

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“one of the forms in which the world is reflected in thought A. M., through which the essence of phenomena and processes is apprehended and their essential features and aspects are generalized <...>” (FŽ 1975);

“presenting something as universal in such a way that it is also imagined as common to many <...>” (FŽ 2002)¹¹.

The Terminology Bank of the Republic of Lithuania contains three definitions of the term concept, taken (or adapted) from information and documentation and terminology standards, and from a dictionary of education:

“A unit of knowledge consisting of a unique combination of characteristics.” (LST ISO 5127:2008 Information and documentation. Vocabulary (identical to ISO 5127:2001), see the Terminology Bank of the Republic of Lithuania);

“In terminology, a unit of knowledge consisting of a distinctive combination of characteristics.” (1. Adapted from ISO 1087-1:2000; 2. NATO Standardization Agency Glossary of Terms, AAP-42B, 2011, see the Terminology Bank of the Republic of Lithuania);

“A form of thought that reflects the essential characteristics of an object in consciousness. It is related to an image, a word, and other concepts. A concept is the result of classification, i.e., in comparison and grouping, a concept is distinguished from other images, concepts, and words by its precise definition. An image and a word are its concrete, materialized basis. <...> In the process of teaching and upbringing, everyday concepts are supplemented with scientific knowledge and become scientific (air, water, human being, animal, sun, goodness, fidelity, etc.). Special names for scientific concepts are terms. Some of them are used in everyday life. <...>” (Encyclopedic Dictionary of Education. Ed. Leonas Jovaiša, 2007, see the Terminology Bank of the Republic of Lithuania).

The integrated information system for Lithuanian language and writing resources, raštija.lt, shows that the term concept is included in dictionaries of polytechnic, mathematics, and computer science terminology, and is defined in dictionaries of information and psychology terminology:

“A thought, an idea expressing the common and essential characteristics of an object or phenomenon.” (Trečiokaitė A. Dictionary of Information Terms, 1993, see raštija.lt);

“One of the forms of logical thought—the highest-level generalization. A concept can be concrete or abstract. The most abstract concepts are called categories. <...> Everyday and scientific concepts are distinguished, as are spontaneous and regulated development of concepts <...>.” (Dictionary of Psychology Terms, 1993, see raštija.lt).

The publicly accessible Terminology Database of the Lithuanian Standards Board also contains the definition already cited from LST ISO 5127:2008; there

¹¹ In the supplementary card file of LKŽE (see LKIIŠ), one can find concept defined in the writings of the philosopher Stasys Šalkauskis: “A concept is a product of the intellect and tells us what a thing is and what constitutes its essence.” This is probably one of the earliest definitions of the term.

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an article on the term concept from LST ISO 1087-1:2005 Terminology work. Vocabulary. Part 1: Theory and application (identical to ISO 1087-1:2000) has also been included:

“A unit of knowledge constituted by a unique combination of characteristics.”

In Regina Kvašytė’s Terminology teaching glossary (2005), concept is defined as a term in terminology as follows:

“Any unit of thought reflecting the essential characteristics of an object in the mind and having content (the set of internal and external characteristics) and extension (the set of all objects possessing the characteristics of that concept), expressed by a term, a letter, or another symbol.”

Although the key words in the definitions listed differ¹², it is clear that the concept belongs to the domains of thought or cognition¹³. In the standards cited above, the concept is defined as a unit of cognition or knowledge (in English, unit of knowledge)—in these sources, the concept is understood as an object of practical terminological work. The international terminology standard ISO 704 emphasizes that in terminology, a concept should be viewed not only as a unit of thought but also as a unit of cognition (unit of knowledge) (ISO 704:2009: 3). This approach follows from the understanding that terms belong to specific domains of knowledge. More than one terminologist proposes viewing the concept in terminology as a unit of cognition or knowledge. For example, Ingrid Simonnæs emphasizes that thought is subjective; therefore, it is better to define a concept as a unit of cognition rather than as a unit of thought. This understanding allows the concept to be seen as dynamic—new discoveries drive changes in concepts (Simonnæs 2007: 121).

1.2. The terminology standard LST ISO 1087-1:2005 (see LSDterm) defines the specific terms general concept and individual concept, partitive concept and comprehensive concept, superordinate concept, subordinate concept and coordinate concept, generic concept and specific concept, whose motivating feature reflects the division of concepts according to content, extension, and mutual relations. Some of these terms have also entered the LR terminology bank through other resources.

¹² It may be recalled here that the most content-rich categorial concepts are the ones most often understood and interpreted differently (Gaivenis 2002: 38; see also Keinys 2013: 52).

¹³ Cf. the cited definition of the term concept and the explanation of the word concept in Dictionary of Contemporary Lithuanian and Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language: “an element of the content of thought, expressed by a word or words” (DŽ₆), “a form of human thought reflecting the essential and general characteristics of objects; the result of perception; a logical thought about an object or phenomenon” (LKŽe).

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In R. Kvašytė’s aforementioned terminology glossary, the previously mentioned hyponymic terms generic concept and specific concept are explained, along with two further terms—concept to be defined and defining concept—which designate concepts according to their relationship to a definition.

The compound terms in the Dictionary of Linguodidactics Terms (2012), included in the LR Terminology Bank, stand out; more precisely, their definitions:

abstract concepts – “[g]eneral meanings and concepts (e.g., time, space, quantity, property) and their linguistic expression, which a student needs to know in order to communicate successfully”;

concrete concepts – “[t]he realization of general concepts in a specific situation, the concrete vocabulary of particular topics (e.g., ‘Personal identification’, ‘Trade’, ‘Nature, region’, ‘Leisure time’).”

These closely related terms, designated by antonyms (co-hyponyms), are not only defined unsystematically, but also shift the concept from the sphere of thought to that of language.

Resources included in the raštija.lt information system also contain hyponymic and other compound terms with concept as a component; these terms appear as headwords (including cross-reference terms) in those resources, e.g., definable concept and indefinable concept (mathematics, computer science), logical concept, mathematical concept, basic concept, primary concept and secondary concept, concept in the broad sense and concept in the narrow sense (mathematics). These terms are motivated by the domain or scope of a concept, its relationship to other concepts, or some other essential feature (the terms are not defined, making it difficult to determine the motivating feature precisely). In other compounds, concept is merely a secondary designation—a label for a class of things, e.g., the concept ‘greater than’, the concept ‘less than’, the concept ‘between’, the concept ‘equal to’, the concept ‘follows’, the concept ‘precedes’, the concept ‘successor of’, the concept ‘predecessor of’ (mathematics).

2. CONCEPT – BEARER OF AN ATTRIBUTE AND ATTRIBUTE

2.1. The term concept, according to the Lithuanian Corpus of Scientific Language data, is in most cases an attribute or is itself an attribute. This is because scientific language discusses specific concepts rather than the concept as such in general. The term concept is often used with a specific designation of the concept, with which it forms attributive compounds. In these compounds, concept is characterized by its name (name compounds), or concept is a secondary name for a particular concept, describing that concept

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according to class (secondary-name compounds)¹⁴. Schematically, this can be represented as follows:

NAME + conceptconcept (= CLASS) + NAME

A few examples:

NAME + concept

“At that time, it mostly concentrated on nuclear security issues, while the concept of deterrence was most often examined in the context of the USSR–US nuclear balance.”¹⁵;

“So if we speak of the micro- and macrosocial environment as the fundamental preconditions for human development, it is clear that the concept of the social network is one of the most successful theoretical concepts, opening up the possibility of modelling these preconditions deeply and fundamentally.”;

“The concept of the far field encompasses a system (whole) of natural barriers: the rocks surrounding the repository, whose properties have not been altered by its construction, and the geological formations surrounding the rocks located around the repository.”

concept (= CLASS) + NAME

“The concept of ‘cogeneration’ means the simultaneous production of thermal energy and electrical and/or mechanical energy during the same process [3], while the concept of ‘thermofication’ means the centralized supply of heat (heat only!) from a power plant that produces electricity and heat [5].”;

“Many different concepts and understandings are associated with the concepts of rurality or rural area, for example, sparse (dispersed) population, distance from or absence of cities, dependence on agriculture and other primary economic sectors, traditional cultures, and so on.”;

“As the author of the monograph ‘Romanticism and Art’, William Vaughan, observes, ‘the concept of “romantic/romantical” can be applied to everything that is extraordinary in the modern world’, and he emphasizes that in any era ‘romantic attitudes can be discerned’.”

It should be noted that the first type of usage is more frequent in the corpus, especially in cases when concept has no other attribute. Since the analysis

¹⁴ Although concept as a secondary name (apposition) is a subordinate component of the compound, when a compound concept + NAME has a dependent component, the compounds discussed here are those with concept—it is precisely this term that is treated as representative of a secondary-name compound (for more, see Mitkevičienė 2016: 79).

¹⁵ Examples from the corpus have not been edited, except for any proofreading errors noted. As in the corpus, terms are not italicized, although italics were probably used in the original text.

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In corpus material where italics are absent, it is difficult to say whether a particular concept was distinguished in the text in any way at all when it is not set off by quotation marks. If a particular concept is not distinguished in the text, then the second type of compounds appear to be clearer. In the material under study, compounds of the second type are used precisely when a particular concept is named with non-Lithuanian words, e.g.:

“Drawing on M. Foucault, she distinguishes the c o n c e p t of z o ē, meaning ‘the simple, bare fact of life, common to all living beings’, from bios, which denotes ‘a form and way of life’.”

Naturally, names of specific concepts are also replaced by substitutes in the text. This is also evident from the material under study¹⁶.

2.2. The term concept is also used with words or word combinations that name the domain in which the concept is used (DOMAIN + concept), i.e. a field of science or practical activity, a theory, conception, subject matter, and the like, e.g.:

“Matter is a c o n c e p t of n a t u r a l p h i l o s o p h y, applied to describe everything that exists in nature.”;

“New phenomena and s o c i o e c o n o m i c c o n c e p t s are taking hold in the field of Lithuanian literature: productivity, power, strategies, interests, demand, supply, profit, productivity (supposedly, a writer needs to come out with a new novel every three years so that readers do not forget the author’s surname).”;

“A mother’s sensitivity to her baby’s signals is one of the key c o n c e p t s of a t t a c h m e n t t h e o r y, with which the security of the baby’s attachment is associated above all.”

The theory and practice of a given field form two separate domains of a concept (cf. the attributive combinations theoretical concept and practical concept), e.g.:

“Procedural form is one of the key t h e o r e t i c a l c o n c e p t s of criminal procedure law.”

The domain in which a concept is used is specified not only by an attribute of the term concept, but also by a dependent constituent of some concept attribute (in which case the domain name is separated by one or more words from the term concept, which is important when analyzing terms in a concordance), e.g.:

“To describe numerical indicators of surface deformations caused by tectonic movements of the Earth’s crust, one can apply the c o n c e p t s u s e d i n d i f f e r e n t i a l g e o m e t r y to assess the geometric properties of surfaces [1, 2].”

¹⁶ Attributive combinations with pronouns (including numerals) are not examined here, since they do not even seem relevant in the context of the article’s subject matter.

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2.3. ACTION + concept. The attribute of the term concept in the corpus is a participle or verbal adjective. The concept is described by these according to a particular action, e.g.:

“There is no doubt that both the concept ‘body of evidence’ and the concept ‘sufficiency of evidence’ are e v a l u a t i v e c o n c e p t s, which different subjects may assess differently.”;

“The outcomes of cognition in metaphysical epistemology are associated with concepts that c o n v e y the essence of phenomena, and with propositions characterized by universality, historical stability, objectivity, and truth.”;

“The conception of an optimal landscape, as well as of the process of striving toward it—optimization—is associated with numerous fundamental and d e r i v e d c o n c e p t s, which form a widely ramified and intricate philosophical system.”

Having reviewed the different participles and verbal adjectives functioning as attributes of the term concept, one can say that a concept is more often a passive bearer of a property (object) than an active one (subject). A concept is described in terms of:

➢ use (used, began to be used, is used, is utilized),

➢ origin (originated, proposed, being proposed, created, imposed [“from above”], adopted, discovered, recommended, learned),

➢ its position in a system or in the space of usage (widespread, popularized, (un)acceptable, useful, independent, competing, rejecting, derived; presented, included, indicated, found, (not) mentioned, incorporated, slipping out),

➢ human intellectual activity (understood, defined, interpreted, examined),

➢ function (evaluative, summarizing, summarizing, defining, explaining, articulating, typologizing, representing, connecting, conveying KA, mediating),

➢ evaluation (resounding, successful, developed, being conceptualized, reminiscent of KA),

➢ another essential or temporary property (WHAT being, having become WHAT, having WHAT; being interested in WHAT, corresponding).

In one of the corpus sources, the terms concept and term are used imprecisely; consequently, the attributes of the former term became the verbal adjectives extended and composite, cf.:

“Since this term occurs very frequently in the textbook, in some places it is replaced by c o m p o u n d c o n c e p t s ‘public information medium’ or ‘information medium’.”

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2.4. CONTENT + concept. In the corpus of Lithuanian academic language texts, attributes describe the content of a concept. A concept is characterized by attributes such as clear, firm, vague, abstract, more abstract. In terms of scope, concepts are described by attributes general (–), full, comprehensive, all-encompassing; narrowest, broad, too broad, broader; in terms of the relationship between concepts, by analogous, different, opposite, antinomic. A few examples from the corpus:

“Corruption is such a complex phenomenon, and its forms in different countries around the world are so diverse that it is now questionable whether it is even possible to formulate a general, comprehensive concept of corruption.”;

“Indeed, the current version of the Law abandons the direct reference to the abstract concept of state needs, replacing it with a list of specific cases involving the acquisition of surviving immovable property.”;

“Urinary tract infection (UTI) is a broad concept encompassing both the most common microbial diseases of the kidneys and urinary tract (acute and chronic pyelonephritis, cystitis, urethritis, etc.) and conditions in which there is clinically significant bacteriuria (>105/ml), but no signs of infectious disease of the kidneys or urinary tract <...>. ”

A term can have more than one meaning. But what about a concept? In Lithuanian academic language, a concept is also described using the adjectives unambiguous, polysemous, which means that language users regard it as capable of having more than one meaning or sense; this implies that meaning or sense is understood not only as a category of a term, but also of a concept:

“But even choosing one raises a number of problems: there are no unambiguous concepts, its place among other mental phenomena is unclear, etc.”

A. Gudavičius argues that “[w]ith ‘concept’ we designate the cognitive aspect of elements of the world, whereas meaning designates the communicative aspect. In some domains, the content of these aspects may coincide, for example, in the domain of scientific terminology, while in others they may partially coincide” (Gudavičius 2012: 112). Thus, if concept and meaning can coincide in scientific terminology, then a polysemous concept does not exist, just as a polysemous meaning does not exist.

2.5. EVALUATION + concept. The attribute of the term under study also expresses various other evaluations of the concept beyond those discussed above. Often, the value of the concept and its place among other concepts are simply described (both in a particular field and in a specific study or text). This is evident from attributes such as principal, key, fundamental, essential, textbook, foundational, important, most important, more significant, relevant, popular, “fashionable,” specific, etc., for example:

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“The basic concepts are presented with minimal mathematization, with most attention devoted to revealing the physical essence of the phenomena under discussion and the models used to explain them.”;

“The essence of the paradox is that in the global field of economics this is a textbook concept, yet the ‘average’ Lithuanian has never heard of it.”;

“In Lithuania, numerous laws and other legal acts are in force that are not only intended for a specific social group but are also often properly understood almost exclusively by that group, owing to the various specialized concepts used in such laws, and because only a group of people with specialized knowledge understands why a law is being amended or repealed in the first place, and what the point of that is.”

A concept is also characterized according to its complexity (elementary, unproblematic, modest, “pompous”; dual, complex (cf. composite), multidimensional; synthetic), according to its position in space (static, dynamic), suitability ([analytically] inaccurate, [politically] incorrect), and various other characteristics (symbolic, critical, etc.), for example:

“Therefore, instead of the endlessly ‘pompous’ concept of ‘globalization’ (sometimes ‘universalization’ is used with the same meaning), lawyers much more often use more modest concepts and speak of the ‘internationalization’ of law.”;

“The unit of observation, which is the direct unit of coding, was chosen to be a symbolic concept (meaning), whose ‘physical’ expression is a word (its lexical form) or a word combination (their lexical forms).”

2.6. TIME + concept.

In Lithuanian scholarly language, a concept is characterized in terms of time. This is evident from the combinations of the term concept with the adjectives new, old, ancient, modern and in compound combinations, for example:

“Perhaps the world has changed so dramatically over the past fifty years that, out of habit, we continue to use old concepts to describe a reality to which they are entirely unsuited.”;

“The state’s information space is a modern concept whose emergence should be associated with the processes of the information revolution and globalization.”;

“In ancient times, laws were very cruel to children—infanticide and abandonment were tolerated; according to the concepts of society at that time, a child’s life was worthless.”

2.7. PLACE + concept.

A specific (or more specific than the conceptual space) place in the research material is expressed by compound phrases—through the attribute of an action-based description of the term concept. This place of the concept is a specific text or type of text, for example:

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“The concept construction product used in the Directive refers to any product that is manufactured and intended to be permanently incorporated into construction works”;

“The concepts often found in pre-war Lithuanian periodicals—national spirit, national movement, civic activity, national unity, etc.—show the universal spread of a worldview attributed to a young national society.”

The only simplex attributive phrase found in the corpus in which the place of a concept can be discerned is intellectual concept, cf. the broader context:

“On the other hand, words denote things directly not in their absolute form, but as far as these things have already been apprehended by the intellect and have intellectual concepts representing them.”

Here we are already speaking of the primary—abstract—place of the concept, while its appearance in a text is its secondary, specific place.

2.8. AUTHOR + concept. A concept is described in terms of its author relatively rarely. Alongside tendencies in expression, this may also be because the author of a concept is often unknown or is not important in scholarly discourse. A concept is described in terms of either an individual (more often) or a collective author, for example:

“Drawing on R. Barthes’s concept, we can say that the pigeon is the punctum that pierces P. Sūskind’s protagonist, unsettling the project of a peaceful life he has created”;

“The concept ‘criminal personality’ of scholars in Western European countries and the USA is not widely used”;

“The child’s activity was not limited or constrained by the experimenter concept, i.e. the content of the apparatus of research categories.”

The last example shows that the author is not only the creator of a concept, but also its user. A concept is described in terms of authorship not only in simplex phrases, but also in compound phrases or chains of phrases, for example:

“The beginning of the use of value criteria to conceptualize Europe’s role in international politics is considered to be the concept of civil power, used 30 years ago by François Duchêne (1972)”;

“It is appropriate to discuss rhetorical discourses on creative freedom in the public sphere by drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s elaborated concept of the field (champ).”

The corpus phrases show that a concept can be created, used, developed, proposed, presented, interpreted, and so on by someone.

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2.9. LANGUAGE + concept. Only a few attributes of a concept describe it in terms of language. This is natural, since scientific concepts, as units of cognition or knowledge, are generally not associated with a specific language. However, as stated in the international terminology standard adopted by Lithuania, „[n]evertheless, they are influenced by the social and cultural background, which often determines a different division of reality into concepts“ (LST ISO 1087-1:2005). It is not surprising that the examples of this usage found come from texts in the social sciences and humanities:

„In some cases, ethnicity is indeed the equivalent of the concept “nationality” in Lithuanian, Russian, and many other Eastern European languages.“;

„From a scholarly perspective, however, it is nevertheless held that the notion of image derives from the Latin concept “imago”, which has two meanings – “imitarī” (to imitate) and “aemulor” (to strive for something) (Rebel, 1998).“

There is reason to suspect that in the latter example the term concept has been confused with the term term or word.

2.10. OBJECT + concept. A concept is also, though rarely, characterized by object, for example, ideological, territorial, spatial, special-category, of things. The broader context:

„In examining interwar periodicals, attention was first paid to how the history of Prussian Lithuania Minor was treated in the press of that period, and which territorial concepts were used to describe it.“;

„Attempts to base the study of legal texts exclusively on the analysis of the grammatical statements composing them proved unsuccessful. Therefore, since the twentieth century, legal scholars have used the concept of a legal norm—a special-category concept—to describe the smallest constituent part of law, distinguished by its autonomy.“

2.11. Concepts (= POSSESSOR) + POSSESSED THING. A concept as possessor has (or does not have) various things—internal and external. On the basis of the material examined, these possessed things are as follows:

➢ elements or parts of the concepts themselves: content, meaning, sense, nuances, frameworks, boundaries, part, in part polysemy (cf. *has many meanings) and ambiguity,

➢ elements of expression: designation, name, sign, formulation, definition¹⁷ (definition),

¹⁷ Sometimes, within a phrase expressing the same relation, relations of possession are more prominent; at other times, object relations are. Each time, the context must be taken into account. Nevertheless, the distinction is not always clear.

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➤ persons: author, creator, supporter (cf. AUTHOR + concept combinations in the model),

➤ space: place, context, semantic field, field of meanings, thematic area,

➤ matters related to mental activity: comments, questions, research strategies, treatment,

➤ matters of usage and history: tradition of use, genesis, historical memory,

➤ various other matters: derivative, equivalent, reflection, aspect, prism, relation, interconnection, advantage, etc.

Some examples of context:

“Nevertheless, the conception of these personality types presented by Carl G. Jung (1936), the author of the concepts of introversion and extraversion, makes equally convincing the hypothesis that introverted traits are associated with greater maternal sensitivity.”;

“Such a definition does not provide a clear formulation of the concept of fallow land, according to which actual areas of fallow land could be recorded.”;

“However, this should be examined in the context of other concepts inseparable from the latter, namely the resilience of geosystems (Armand, 1983; Kyprijanova, 1983; Sviržev, 1983).”;

“‘Criminogenic personality’ is a derivative of the concept ‘criminal’s personality’ and reflects the characteristics of a subject capable of committing a crime, including a repeat offense [6, p. 68].”

2.12. Concepts (= OBJECT) + ACTION / STATE or ACTION / STATE + to / from a concept. A concept is, at the core of attributive combinations, the object of an action or state¹⁸. The term under discussion is used in attributive combinations with verbal nouns: use (usage), application; understanding, conception, interpretation, treatment; disclosure, analysis, views (on); definition, characterization, (ex)planation, clarification; inclusion, distinction, confusion, substitution, separation (from), extension, reorganization, identification, conceptualization; creation, formation; possession, etc. (on the concept as an object, see Chapter 3), e.g.:

“More precisely, through this replacement of concepts, anthropology rejected an ethnocentric approach, since the use of concepts such as tribe indicates a strong separation of oneself from the people being studied; that is, in the broadest sense, it points to the existence of a divide between modern society and so-called primitive society.”;

¹⁸ Combinations whose main constituents are verbal nouns are interpreted in different ways in Lithuanian linguistics (for a fuller discussion, see Pakerys 2006). Here they are classified as attributive combinations.

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“Because the regulated length of a journal article does not allow the full analysis of the study to be presented, this paper will be limited to: the concept of the family, the diversity of its forms, and the territorial distribution of the number, size, and composition of families in 1989–2001”;

“The imprecise definition of the concept caused considerable confusion both among researchers and among those taking part in the discussion.”;

“The second, perhaps no less significant, is, we believe, the separation of the concept of ethnic group from the concepts of race and tribe, which were used before the Second World War.”

2.13. Concepts (= SUBJECT) + ACTION / STATE. In the depths of attributive compounds, a concept is also the subject of an action or state. The principal constituents of such compounds are abstract nouns definition, scope, capacity, breadth; origins, development, change; identity, differences; diversity, confusion, complexity, and so on (the concept as subject is discussed in greater detail in Chapter 4). The context of the compounds under discussion:

“In this case, the definition of the concept of ‘primary content interests’ needs to be clarified.”;

“The origins of the concept of a social network date back to around 1930 and are associated with the work of Moreno, Lewin, and Heider, when people’s interpersonal relationships began to be analyzed, represented with symbols, and depicted graphically.”;

“The reason is the complexity and breadth of the concept of quality, which are determined by the great diversity of quality objects and the abundance of quality factors and the problems they cause.”

2.14. Concepts (= COMPONENT) + DERIVATIVE. Most often occurring only once, attributive compounds of this model show that concepts form tangible entities (an index, a glossary, a reference book—that is, concepts have linguistic expression) as well as abstract ones (a system, a combination), for example:

“At the end is a list of the literature used, modified excerpts from which make up this booklet; a glossary of concepts and an index.”;

“In writing this book, I relied on the system of concepts and symbols recommended by IUPC and IUPAC, used SI units of measurement for various calculations, and endeavored to use Lithuanian terminology approved in the latest scientific dictionaries.”

There are only a few attributive compounds of other models, so they are not discussed here. It may only be noted that concepts, like terms, are a cause of debate.

The term concept (lemmatized) is represented in a generalized manner in attributive compounds in Fig. 4. The arrows in the diagram point to the main constituent of the compound.

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Fig. 4. Term in concept* attributive constructions

3. CONCEPT – OBJECT

3.1. A concept, like a term, is an object of use. In Lithuanian scholarly language, the term concept is used with the forms of the verbs (continue to) use, stop using, use once, (apply), use, make use of, for example:

“The concept of ‘harmonization’ (approximation) has long been used in many contexts to describe all these processes, as has the new concept of ‘compatibilization.’”;

“The concept of a dwarf is applied to them in its broadest sense, that of a small person from a fairy tale.”;

“According to R. Ingarden, aesthetics, like other sciences, can use concepts only once their intuitive givenness has been obtained.”

According to the corpus, concepts are used more often than they are employed or applied (use* is about 6 times more frequent than apply* and 10 times more frequent than employ*).

3.2. In the corpus under study, a concept is an object of thought, cognition, or perception. In addition, the concept is exploited in the corpus as an object of research, which is not characteristic of the term term. This can be seen in object constructions with the verbs reflect on, understand, fail to understand, see ‘perceive’; regard, treat, identify, distinguish, fail to differentiate, associate, (con)nect, interpret, conceptualize, delve (into); as well as examine, investigate, study, analyze, reveal, derive. A few examples in a broader context:

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“I believe that direct acquaintance with the ideas of the different schools mentioned above (as well as with various textbooks on chemical thermodynamics and physical chemistry) enabled me to reflect more comprehensively on and better understand the fundamental concepts and principles of thermodynamics.”;

“Works of this kind were similar in that they treated the concepts of Polishness and Lithuanian-ness very broadly and liberally.”;

“Farmers’ cooperation has nothing to do with ‘collectivization,’ although some people equate these concepts.”;

“At that time, it focused mainly on nuclear security issues, while the concept of deterrence was usually examined in the context of the USSR–US nuclear balance.”

A concept is an object on which one relies, by which one is guided, and which one employs (collocations with the verbs employ, rely on, be guided by).

3.3. A concept, like a term, is an object that is sought and found or obtained. This is evident from the term concept’s object collocations with forms of the verbs detect, discover, (not) find, choose, obtain, revive, etc., for example:

“It is unlikely that we will discover the very concept of identity in the written texts, but in terms of their subject matter, the studies do in fact analyze individual aspects of this phenomenon.”;

“The idea of modernization and its development in the analysis of the evolution of interpersonal relations revive the concept of intimacy, setting it against social normativity.”

The term concept’s collocations with the verbs propose, (not) present, acquaint with, introduce, etc., show that a concept is an object of giving. A concept is also an object that enters a particular space—science, a field, a theory, and so on (concept is used with the verbs introduce, include, assign, adopt, accept). A concept can also be barred from entering that space or expelled from it: not accept, avoid, reject, banish, remove, for example:

“The Law on the Prevention of Corruption of the Republic of Lithuania does not provide a definition of corruption, but it lists corruption-related offences.”;

“The concept of the roentgen as a unit of ionizing radiation was then introduced.”;

“When the Law on the Civil Service of the Republic of Lithuania was adopted in 1999 [4], the concept of ‘official’ was abandoned, but the wording of Article 8, paragraph 4, of the Law on Collective Agreements and Contracts was not amended.”

Within that space, the concept is legitimized. This is evident from object collocations with forms of the verbs recognize, legitimize, establish, optimize, substantiate.

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The number of concepts in a given space is limited, but only to some extent; cf. the collocates of the term concept suffice, make do. Examples from a broader context:

“Publications by Easterners are often rejected by Western journals not only because of analytical methods unfamiliar to ‘Westerners’, but also because of differences in terminology: the concept of humus is widely used in Eastern countries, whereas Westerners tend to prefer the concepts of soil organic carbon (SOC) and soil organic matter (SOM).”;

“A concept essentially analogous to economic activity is also established in Article 2, Paragraph 7 of the Law on Personal Income Tax, namely the concept of individual activity, which, in the authors’ view, is a form of economic activity carried out by a natural person as used in the Law on Personal Income Tax.”

Concepts are also modified in one way or another—collocations with the verbs (ex)tend, expand, develop, supplement, adjust, (re)fine are found in the academic language corpus. The semantics of these collocations show that the scope (extension) or content (intension) of concepts may be modified¹⁹:

“We will show below that, from the perspective of knowledge-based activity, the concept of a company’s activity is extended by new dimensions and encompasses all areas of activity.”;

“Later, this concept was refined: it means being able, from a height of 160 cm (the height of the device), to see the adjacent post at least 56 cm below its top (Fig. 1).”

The term concept occurs in object collocations with the verbs distinguish, separate, not dissociate [from], contrast, juxtapose, compare, as well as (re)group and systematize. This means that relationships between concepts are established; they are classified or otherwise distinguished from other concepts, for example:

“Social adaptation, or adaptation in society, can be explained in two ways in relation to biological adaptation, by distinguishing the concepts of passive and active adaptation (Fig. 2).”;

“To seek to separate and contrast the concepts of the Lithuanian and Lithuania (i.e., historical Lithuania, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania), so that modern Lithuanians could be presented as alien to the ‘true’ Lithuania <...>. ”

The term concept forms object collocations with forms of the polysemous verb replace. The broader context shows that a concept is replaced by a term, another concept, or some phenomenon. It does not seem logical for a concept to be replaced by a term or some phenomenon, that is, something belonging to a different level; thus, this use of the term concept is imprecise, for example:

¹⁹ In logic, the oppositions between the extension and the intension of a concept are distinguished (see Bubelis et al. 2012: 99); in terminology, these are called the extension and intension of a concept (see Gaivenis 2002: 28; Kvašytė 2005; cf. Šalkauskis 1991: 25).

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“In his view, industrial society replaces the former closed feudal estate with the concept of an open class.”

In one of the humanities sources in the corpus, the context indicates that the word stands in for the concept. This usage reflects both the linguistic and the philosophical understanding of the concept:

“Thus, by directly denoting things, words replace the concepts of these things as equally direct signs of those things.”

3.4. In Lithuanian scholarly language, the concept is understood as an instrument. Combinations with forms of verbs such as describe, characterize, (ex)press, name show that the concept (like the term) is considered a means of expression, e.g.:

“The form of musical space structures can be described using concepts employed in geometry.”;

“The concept of deagrarianization is most often expressed by the trend of a decline in the number of people employed in agriculture <...>.”;

“Therefore, this position would most accurately be called the synthetic concept of ‘serious-funny.’”

In all these cases, the term concept can be replaced by the term term. The concept is also understood as an instrument of one kind or another for intellectual activity. Used in the instrumental case, the term concept forms combinations with verbs such as define, operate, conceptualize, substantiate, mark, represent, know, and others. Examples from a broader context:

“The latest Church documents (the ‘Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy’ of the Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, as well as sections of this document printed in the June–August 2003 issues of Church News) define the concept of a pious practice as private or public expressions of Christian piety which, although not part of the liturgy, harmonize with it—that is, accord with its spirit, norms, and rhythm.”;

“Although it sounds rather vague, this concept is in fact an attempt to conceptualize anew the problem of the power of ideas in international politics, formulated earlier in international relations studies and still widely discussed.”;

“In other words, words denote entities that have already been marked and represented by concepts.”

As an instrument, the concept is used in the corpus under study with quite a variety of verbs, but relatively few object-type combinations of this kind occur in it.

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3.5. Like the term, the concept is an object of linguistic activity. The contextual partners of the term concept show that the aim of linguistic activity is to reveal the content of a concept (((ex)plain, explain, (un)define, describe, discuss, state) or its name (name), e.g.:

“The concept of a document is sometimes not explained even when criminal codes, for example the Criminal Code of the Kingdom of Spain and the Criminal Code of the Federal Republic of Germany, contain special chapters devoted to explaining the principal concepts used in criminal law.”;

“Here the concept of abduction is described inseparably from the concept of appropriation.”;

“In pursuit of the goals of fostering correct Lithuanian among engineers, the authors gave priority to Lithuanian when naming concepts.”

A concept is not only an object of linguistic activity, but also, more generally, an object of expression. This can be supported by the concept’s collocations with the verb forms (un)formulate, leave unexpressed, explicate, denote²⁰.

“J. Black also formulated the very important concept of heat capacity and was the first to measure the heat capacities of some materials, as well as their heats of vaporization and fusion.”;

“On the other hand, through the latter, words also denote concepts.”

An atypical use in the corpus of the object-oriented term concept with the verb translate. Two examples of this usage were found:

“It should be noted that in the official Lithuanian translation of this Directive [4], the concept “cogeneration” was incorrectly translated from English using the concept “thermofication” instead of “cogeneration”.”;

“After Johann Georg Sulzer and Heinrich Christoph Koch translated these concepts from Latin into German and adapted them to the reality of the art of sound—the practice of composing and analyzing music—the following German equivalents resulted: Anlage (“plan”) – Ausführung (“execution”) – Ausarbeitung (“elaboration”).”

This usage shows that a concept is understood as an object of translation, which contradicts the very understanding of a concept as an element of thought or cognition, rather than of language. The broader context shows that concept is used here in place of the term term or word.

²⁰ Bassey Edem Antia emphasizes (singles out as one of the criteria for concepts) that a concept can exist without symbols (whether linguistic or non-linguistic), although they are necessary for communication (Antia 2000: 82).

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3.6. Concept – result. The term concept is used in object constructions with the verbs to create, “to coin,” to invent, although such usage is only occasional. Nevertheless, it is significant that a concept is understood as a creation (artifact), e.g.:

“We ourselves invented the concept of ‘purpose’: there is no purpose in reality...”

The corpus also yielded further instances of the object use of the term concept, but only the most typical, frequent, and relevant to this study are discussed here. The concept as an object is depicted in Fig. 5.

Fig. 5. The term concept* in object constructions

4. CONCEPT – SUBJECT

4.1. First of all, as a subject, a concept encompasses something (constructions with the verb to encompass, and, once each, with not to include and not to cover, see Fig. 2). In a context wider than the word combination, the scope of the concept (extension) is described. Such a description helps ensure successful scientific communication. A few examples of usage:

“The concept of sorption encompasses many different retention processes and mechanisms whereby radionuclides bind to the surface of rocks or to the surfaces of other materials, such as clay minerals, which may be present on fracture surfaces.”;

“The concept of the near field encompasses the radioactive waste package, the repository together with the engineered barriers surrounding the waste containers, and the repository’s cl-

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with sealing elements, also includes part of the rocks surrounding the burial ground (disturbed zone).”;

“Moreover, the second concept of corruption does not include corruption in the private sector.”

4.2. The term concept is used in subject constructions with verbs (not have, acquire, and lose forms—the concept is a possessor and recipient²¹. The broader context shows that a concept has meaning, senses (cf. also is polysemous), a place, an aspect, a tradition, elements, etc.; it has or acquires meaning, has no place or meaning, or loses popularity, for example:

“The concept of ‘Lithuanian security’ per se has no meaning without specific subjects with whom it is created or against whom it is directed.”;

“The concept of fallow land has specific meanings in various fields.”;

“The concept of instinct lost popularity and, with few exceptions (e.g., Gnepp, 1977), ceased to be applied to humans for many reasons (see Viliūnas, 2005).”

It was unexpected that a connotation, which is usually considered an element of a linguistic unit, was attributed to a concept. The broader context gives the impression that this is a consequence of affectation:

“Moreover, this concept has temporal connotations: it is a moment, an instant.”

4.3. A concept changes or simply occupies a certain position in space—the term concept is used with forms of intransitive verbs appear, arise, find oneself, intrude, slip out, intertwine, not disappear, take root, gain ground, prevail, overlap, etc., for example:

“This concept provided the basis for the emergence of the concept of ‘criminogenic personality’.”;

“At the center of his theory was the concept of Weltanschauung or vision du monde (‘worldview’), adopted from Lukács.”;

“The concept of ‘civic power’ has not disappeared from contemporary EU integration studies either.”

Incidentally, a concept not only changes position but also changes:

“The concept of digital cartography is changing rapidly as technology develops and the scope of application of digital cartographic data expands.”

4.4. A concept performs certain functions or incidental actions. This is evident from the group of subject constructions with transitive verbs (indicate, determine (limits) (cf. not limit, not constrain), orient, illustrate,

²¹ Object constructions with the verbs assign, grant were also found, in which the concept is the recipient.

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to mean, to mark, to help (explain), to mediate, to provide (information); to form (a basis), to encourage (to arise), to produce, to raise (difficulties), to interest, etc., although with the same verb, the corpus most often yielded only one collocation each, for example:

“The concept of a stranger denotes a person who is nearby (in terms of physical distance) but does not belong to the environment or the group of other people within it.”;

“The concept of ‘learning’ in this case refers not to coercive teaching, but to acquiring skills in the immediate creative process, which will continue after completing studies and beginning a professional career.”;

“This concept denotes the importance of live microbial cells, which are an essential component of an effective probiotic.”

The fact that the term concept is used with the verbs express and describe (cf. also the definition of concept given in Chapter 1 in the information dictionary and in Romanas Plečkaitis’s logic textbook) again confirms the claim that a concept is sometimes understood as a matter of expression:

“This concept expresses Europe’s ability to promote its fundamental values beyond the EU’s borders by peaceful means.”

4.5. The concept undergoes various states related to the relations between concepts or to the relation of a concept to other elements: differs, is related, coincides, is associated, and so on, for example:

“It is not empirical facts that differ, but models of understanding them, concepts, and images.”;

“The concept of procedural justice is related not to the outcomes of a decision, but to the characteristics of the decision-making process.”;

“The concepts of information system architecture and structure often coincide, but architecture focuses more on the informational and communicative relationships among system components and on how these relationships are organized (the so-called architectural style).”

The same corpus shows that the term is used in collocations with the stative verb fit. The research material generally does not discuss whether a concept is (in)appropriate—the only collocation found was concepts are unsuitable, and the broader context of this same collocation shows that the concept is assigned the characteristics of a term:

“It should be noted that the concepts ‘cogeneration technologies’ (in the English text) and ‘termofikacinės technologijos’ (in the Lithuanian text) used in the title of Annex I to the Directive are unsuitable for denoting the various technological equipment mentioned in this annex.”

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4.6. A concept is something – it has (or has had, or may have) a qualitative property²². This can be seen from model combinations such as concept + [is] / is not / becomes / remains PROPERTY. This property characterizes the concept according to a feature of its content (broad, clearer, empty, relative, incomplete²³, similar), time (new), or some other evaluative feature (relevant, one of the main ones, uncommon, popular, successful), for example:

“The concept of usage is very broad; in our linguistics, its understanding and role in the standardization process have changed over time.”;

“The concept of social exclusion may be clearer from the perspective of social structures, where certain systems can be distinguished <...>.”;

“As Alderson et al. argue, the concept of validity is relative and incomplete—the more different types of validity are identified, the more valid the test is (Alderson 1995, 171).”

4.7. A specific (precisely, a specific) concept or concepts are something (Y): model – X concept + [is] / is not / becomes Y. That something (Y) is simply an element, part, beginning or a similar highly abstract thing, or something more concrete—a work, combination, abstraction, metaphor, and so on. Nevertheless, identical combinations occur only once each in the corpus. A few examples:

“The last three concepts are a product of geopolitical imagination.”;

“Such bodies do not actually exist in nature; this concept is merely an abstraction.”;

“The concepts of the second group are artificial constructs derived from the fundamental philosophical categories of the first group, not yet universally recognized, but capable of having meaning or a specific interpretation within a narrow scientific field.”

4.8. There are almost no subjective combinations that would denote the existence of a particular concept or concepts (cf. the corresponding subjective combinations with the term term (Mitkevičienė 2016: 98)²⁴):

“But even choosing one raises quite a few problems: there are no unambiguous concepts, its place among other mental phenomena is unclear, and so on.”

²² In subjective and predicative combinations, a thing’s property is associated with the thing at the time of the speech act, whereas in attributive combinations it is not oriented with respect to the speech act (Bunevičiūtė 1998: 32).

²³ An objective nuance can be discerned.

²⁴ A concept may have no term, but not vice versa. The nature of a concept is extralinguistic (Roche 2015: 129). Naming a concept is the first step toward its becoming established as a socially useful or suitable unit (Sager 1990: 22).

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The concept is also used in the corpus under study as a predicative (pattern: X + [is] / is considered a concept) or an adverbial (of place (established alongside concepts), manner (explained through concepts), or cause (clear from the concepts)—almost always in a prepositional or comparative construction). This use of concept is not discussed further in this article.

The subject use of the term concept is shown in Fig. 6.

Fig. 6. The term concept* in subject combinations

5. C O N J U N C T I V E U S E

Using the program Antconc 3.4.4w, it was established that the most frequent contextual partner of concept* (with no intervening words) in the corpus under study is the word and (51 occurrences, 40 of them following concept)²⁵.

Although the word and does not function as a conjunction in every instance, it helps in automatically identifying some instances of the conjunctive use of the term concept. This study was limited to the following patterns: concept* and, and concept*, as well as concept* and, and concept*. In the corpus under study, the term concept is linked by a coordinating relation to words or word combinations forming such loose groups as:

²⁵ Obviously, the results of a lemmatized concordance would likely be different. It should be added that the word and is also the most frequent collocate of term* in the same corpus.

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➤ term, symbol, definition, formulation – names of expression units;

➤ method, theory, rule, principle, problem, model, variable, norm, etc. – general scientific terms or other nouns with highly abstract meanings;

➤ conception²⁶, image, idea, myth, etc. – names of various mental constructs;

➤ its dimensions, features, etc. – labels for parts or aspects of a concept.

A few examples:

“The Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, adopted at the 1972 UNESCO General Conference, established the concepts and terms of cultural and natural heritage in international law for the first time.”;

“Family policy problems and concepts are characterized by uncertainty.”;

“It is hardly possible to assess unambiguously the results of the transformation of Ukraine’s post-Soviet political regime using the concepts and conceptions characteristic of the ‘transitology’ paradigm, that is, as a successful or unsuccessful democratization.”²⁷

6. C O N T E X T U A L S Y N O N Y M Y

The most obvious contextual synonym of the term concept in the material under study is term. This is especially evident when these terms occur in the same or adjacent sentences, for example:

“Although the concept of ‘context’ is interpreted in various ways, in psychology the basis for understanding this term is most often a clear distinction between stimulus and environment (Davies, 1988; Lochart, 1988; Thomson, 1988).”;

“The term ethnicity leaves room (and even obliges one) to interpret the phenomenon itself with its nuances. Therefore, in the author’s view, the concept of ethnicity has certain advantages in analytical studies.”;

“In the introduction, the author explains the main terms used in the work, for example, the concept of discourse, which refers to the analysis of spoken language or to a range of themes or utterances associated with the same content, forming the intertextual ‘conversation’ of a communicative community.”;

“The term ‘thermodynamics’ was proposed and first used by W. Thomson—Lord Kelvin (W. Thomson – Lord Kelvin), in place of the concept of the mechanical theory of heat used until then by R. Clausius (R. Clausius).”

²⁶ Nespecialiojoje vartosenoje žodis samprata laikomas sąvokos sinonimu (žr. SinŽ 2002).

²⁷ Word forms connected by a coordinating relation are considered coordinate constructions by some linguists, but not by others (see Holvoet et al. 2003: 177; Bielinskienė 2010: 16–19 for more details).

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Although the reason for such synonymy is probably aesthetic (to avoid monotony and repetition), the authors of the texts do not take into account that the requirement to avoid monotony in a text does not apply to terms (see Župerka 1983: 39).

The use of the term term in place of the term concept may be understood as metonymy (sign metonymy [the sign in place of the thing signified] or thing metonymy [a concrete name in place of an abstract one]²⁸). But how can the opposite phenomenon be explained—when concept takes the place of a term? Apart from the aesthetic reason, this is probably best explained by extralinguistic factors such as the confusion or failure to distinguish terms, imprecision, and lack of care in expression (incidentally, the same reasons may explain the use of a term in place of a concept).

The examples below clearly support the view that the term concept is used not in its terminological sense—in context, it is assigned the characteristics of a term (or word), for example:

“Some concepts of traditional heritage terminology are discussed.”;

“Finding a middle ground between the terms spreading in an unstoppable stream from literature published in English and the concepts proposed by Lithuanian linguists is no easy task.”;

“In general, the need for specialization and specialists (these concepts are used here in their general-language sense, not the sense defined by codes and laws) is a constant feature of life today.”;

“From a lexical perspective, the formation of this concept is less closely related to the nature of land use; for example, in the Dictionary of Contemporary Lithuanian (Dabartinės..., 1972), dirvonas is defined as follows: ‘dirvonas—a neglected, uncultivated, overgrown field.’”

Synonymy is traditionally considered a category of linguistics, a phenomenon involving units of language. According to the data from the corpus under study, synonymy is characteristic of concepts; compare:

“In the Lithuanian press before the war, the concepts ‘nationality,’ ‘national spirit,’ and ‘national character’ are used synonymously.”

Here again, the property of a term is attributed to a concept. On the other hand, this usage could be justified by the notion of synonymy in logic—“a relation of equivalence between two or more expressions” (Plečkaitis 2009: 278), but in that case concepts would have to be considered expressions.

²⁸ Apie šias metonimijų grupes plačiau žr. Koženiauskienė 1999: 223–224. Juozas Pikčilingis (1975: 255–258) skyrė „tai, kas apibrėžčiau, vietoj to, kas ne taip apibrėžta“ ir „simbolis vietoj simbolizuojamojo“.

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Thus, although terms in scientific discourse should be used precisely, carelessness in expression and affectation distort the use of a term and may even lead to determinologization.

CONCLUSIONS

1. The general scientific term concept, traditionally considered a term of logic and philosophy, is used in texts in the humanities, social sciences, physical sciences, biomedicine, and technology, and is included in terminology dictionaries in various fields.

2. In Lithuanian scientific language, the term concept has attributes and is itself an attribute; it is also used as an object or subject, and rarely as a predicative or adverbial.

3. As an attribute, the term concept is characterized in terms of name, space, action, content property, another evaluative property, time, place, author, language, object, and so on. As an attribute, the term concept is a secondary designation and also a possessor and a component; at a deeper level, it is an object or subject of an action or state, and so on.

4. Object-based combinations show that a concept is an object of use, thought, cognition, and perception, as well as of research, linguistic activity, and expression. It is sought, found, obtained, given, introduced or removed, legitimized, changed, or otherwise acted upon. In addition, a concept is also a result and an instrument—not only of intellectual activity but, according to the data from the corpus studied, also of expression. In this way, properties of a term are attributed to a concept.

5. As a subject, a concept encompasses, has, or receives something; changes or takes up a position in space; performs functions or incidental actions; experiences various states; is something or someone; and, rarely, simply exists.

6. The conjunctive use of the term concept shows that the collocates of this term are names of units of expression (including the term term), general scientific terms and other nouns with abstract meanings, names of mental constructs, and designations of parts or aspects of concepts.

7. The terms concept and term are used in scientific language not only conjunctively but also as contextual synonyms. The use of the term term in place of concept can be explained by metonymy. Contextual synonymy of terms is justified only when precision and clarity are not compromised.

8. Inaccuracies in the use of terms in texts distort research findings; therefore, the actual meanings of those terms and the concepts they designate cannot be inferred solely from their use in texts.

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MAIN SOURCE

CorALit – Corpus of Lithuanian Academic Language (Corpus Academicum Lithuanicum) – http://coralit.lt (accessed 2017-07-10).

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THE CONCEPT IN ACADEMIC LITHUANIAN

The paper deals with the usage of the fundamental term of terminology sąvoka ‘concept’ in academic Lithuanian. The research is aimed at establishing the semantic (contextual) partners of this term and its thematic field and to provide an outline of the concept ‘concept’ according to the usage of the term designating it. This is a corpus-based research, the source of which is Lietuvių mokslo kalbos tekstynas CorALit (Corpus of Academic Lithuanian CorALit) (publicly available at http://coralit.lt). The main methodology of research is semantic analysis of phrases with sąvoka. Conjunctive usage and contextual synonymy of the term sąvoka which reflect paradigmatic relations of this term were also analysed.

The lemma sąvoka was found in the corpus of academic Lithuanian CorALit 779 times. It is present in texts from all five fields – the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, biomedical sciences and technological sciences. In this corpus the term sąvoka is one and a half times more frequent than the terminology term terminas ‘term’.

In academic Lithuanian the term sąvoka has attributes and is an attribute itself, it is also used as an object or subject and only sometimes as a predicative or adverbial modifier.

Attributes describe term sąvoka according to name, space, action, content feature, other evaluating feature, time, place, author, language, object, etc. As an attribute term sąvoka is a secondary name, also a possessor or constituent and more deeply – object or subject of an action or a state, etc.

As can be judged from objective phrases a concept is an object of usage, thinking, cognition and perception as well as research, linguistic activities and expression. It is being looked for, found, obtained, given, introduced or eliminated, legitimatized, changed or some other actions are performed in its respect. Besides that, a concept is a result as well as an instrument – not only of an intellectual activity, but also, according to the data of the corpus researched, an instrument of expression. Thus, the features of a term are ascribed to a concept.

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A concept as a subject includes, has or receives something, it changes something or experiences a change, takes place in space, performs a function or random actions, is in various states, is of some quality or is something, and rarely – simply exists.

It can be observed from the conjunctive usage of sąvoka that its correlates are units of expression (including the term terminas), general terms of science and other abstract nouns, names of mental formations and parts or aspects of a concept.

The terms sąvoka and terminas are used in academic Lithuanian not only in conjunction, but also as contextual synonyms. The usage of terminas instead of sąvoka could be seen as metonymy. Contextual synonymy of terms can be justified only if it doesn’t affect precision and clarity.

Inaccurate usage of terms in texts distorts the results of research; therefore conclusions about the true meanings of terms and concepts named using these terms cannot be drawn solely on the basis of term usage in texts.

Received 2017-10-16

Asta Mitkevičienė

Institute of the Lithuanian Language

P. Vileišio g. 5, LT-10308 Vilnius

Email: [email protected]

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