Классификации терминосистем

Classifications of Terminological Systems ВЛАДИМИР ЛЕЙЧИК A. S. Pushkin State Institute of the Russian Language In his well-known article “Types of Terminological Systems and the Grounds for Distinguishing Them” (Golovin 1981), B. N. Golovin examines classifications of terminological systems on the basis of the following features: 1) the relation of terms to areas of human labor activity; 2) the relation of terms to the professional subdivisions of each of these areas; 3) the relation of terms to scientific fields, schools, and methods; 4) the relation of terms to personal systems of scientific views or concepts. In addition, B. N. Golovin identified the linguistic features of terms themselves as a basis for dividing systems, and also divided terminological systems into “codified” and free systems. These grounds for classifying terminological systems remain relevant to this day; however, current advances in terminology studies make it possible to develop further the problem of classifying sets of terms and to improve the list of grounds for distinguishing them and setting them apart from one another. It may be thought that the first and principal basis for classifying terminological systems is the cognitive nature of each one: terms represent cognition and knowledge in a particular field. It is important that terminology initially takes shape spontaneously and gradually, as knowledge accumulates, and can be presented in an ordinary dictionary of terms (or, more precisely, pre-terms), arranged alphabetically. This recording of a set of terms, which is purely descriptive (that is, terminology), is later, under certain conditions, transformed into a terminological system, in which objective connections between terms, their hierarchy, and generic-specific and associative relations are made explicit. The transformation of terminology into a terminological system becomes possi- 10 Владимир Лейчик | Классификации терминосистем ble when a theory is formulated that describes and explains regularities in a given specialized field (for example, D. I. Mendeleev’s discovery of the periodic system of chemical elements led to the terminological system incorporating previously known names of elements such as gold, iron, copper, and then being constructed according to a single principle: mendelevium, francium, etc.). When two or more theories are developed in this field, more than one terminological system takes shape; these may contain the same terms, but with different meanings (the term mass in Newtonian physics and in Einsteinian physics). It should be noted that B. N. Golovin did not distinguish between terminology and terminological systems, and held that “terminology is systematic, first and foremost, because the world is systematic...” (Golovin 1981: 4). Modern science does not accept this proposition and holds that cognitivism is anthropocentric: it is humans who introduce (varying) order into their understanding of the regularities of the objective and subjective worlds. Hence the possibility of creating individual, author-specific terminological systems (for example, L. Hjelmslev’s glossematics terminological system). Modern science recognizes the content principle as the second basis for classifying terminological systems. As a result of cognitive processes, more than 200 languages for special purposes—functional languages within each developed national language—had taken shape by the twentieth century; these functional languages represent systems of knowledge in individual fields of science, technology, production, economics, and social relations, using terms as one of their lexical classes and as embodiments of general specialized concepts in a given field. Languages for special purposes are dynamic and develop as knowledge deepens and is refined and as the scientific and pragmatic purposes of their use change. In turn, modern science regards terms not as static but as dynamic entities (signs), developing in content, form, and function alongside the aforementioned languages, and sometimes outpacing them (so-called predictive terms such as quark; this term was coined before the discovery of the corresponding hypothetical particle). In principle, terminological systems coincide in structure with languages for special purposes; however, in some cases terminological systems may represent complex fields (ecology, etc.) (Vergitina 2006), or Terminologija | 2008 | 15 11 narrower, specific systems of specialized concepts (terrorism, drug trafficking) (Arkhipova 2006). The third basis for constructing a classification of terminological systems is the linguistic basis. Being words or phrases in a given natural language and differing from common lexical units only in their special function, terms, according to contemporary scholars, possess all the features of lexical units: semantics, word-formation and morphological structure, motivation, variation of all kinds (Slozhenikina 2005), and the presence of synonyms, antonyms, paronyms, etc. The only difference is that these features may manifest themselves in distinctive ways and to varying degrees (for example, in V. P. Danilenko’s view, antonymy is even more developed in the sphere of terms than in common vocabulary, while word-forming morphemes—in particular, in the language of chemistry and, accordingly, in chemical terms—have a very fine-grained classification: sulfurous, sulfide, sulfurous (lower oxidation state), sulfurous (still lower oxidation state)). In any case, the presence in terms of a natural-language substrate (Leichik 1986), alongside a logical superstrate and terminological essence, makes it possible to consider terms as part of the overall vocabulary of any natural language. The point is that, in addition to the purely linguistic features of sets of lexical units, terminological systems also exhibit specific features that distinguish them from ordinary lexical-semantic groups (LSGs): more developed syntagmatics—there are more multiword terms than single-word terms; stricter hierarchy, realized in generic-specific relations; and extensive use of sign-symbols, sign-indices, and others. This does not mean, however, that terms are now considered, as they were 50 years ago, special words; rather, they are words serving a special function, as G. O. Vinokur wrote in his well-known article. The linguistic basis for classifying terminological systems was embodied in a specific method of constructing terminological systems according to four possible principles: 1) the principle of translating terminological systems (translated terminological systems), whereby a set of terms is constructed by analogy with the same set in another natural language (aviation terms in different languages based on seafaring terms, initially in German: ship – air- 12 Владимир Лейчик | Классификации терминосистем ship, vessel crew – aircraft crew, aboard a vessel – aboard an airliner); 2) the principle of relying on the resources of the respective natural language – lexical, word-formation, and syntactic patterns are used to construct terms and the terminological system as a whole, including in multiword terms; this does not preclude borrowing from other languages or drawing on international terms (the medical terminological system with native Russian terms such as stomach, heart and international terms such as tuberculosis, pneumonia); 3) the principle of terminologizing common vocabulary (restructuring, glasnost); 4) the principle of combining terminological systems when forming complex fields (soils, crop yields, and entrepreneurial activity in the agribusiness system – in the terminological system of agricultural economics) (Ordokova 2003). In addition, a linguistic or, more precisely, logical-linguistic basis for classifying terminological systems is their division into terminological systems consisting mainly of single-word terms or multiword terms. Practice shows that there are very few of the former: single-word terms occur mainly in “older” terminological systems, constructed on the basis of relying on their own resources or on the terminologization of common words. In fact, these are, for the most part, elements of terminological systems in fields of universal interest: meteorology (⟪What is the weather like today?⟫), medicine-anatomy, trade; such terminological systems use specialized, widely known words (black ice – icy conditions; hand – fracture; groats – flour⟪). In all modern languages for special purposes, terminological systems consisting of multiword terms predominate, and the number of words included in these terms may, according to scholars’ estimates, range from two to fifteen, depending on the field of knowledge and/or activity. It should be recalled that B. N. Golovin and representatives of his school called these extended constructions speech terms and believed that over time they are shortened in various ways and turn into brief language terms. Recently, the viewpoint on these units has changed. First, it has been confirmed that in many fields, multiword terms remain multiword- Terminologija | 2008 | 15 13 terms (these are mostly technical sciences and fields of activity: electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, as well as some humanities). Second, it has been shown that among the constructions mentioned, one must distinguish multiword terms from combinations of two or more terms that function jointly and form stable units. Thus, in the state standard for terms characterizing rotating electrical machines, such multiword expressions as the following were standardized: Time constant of the change in transient electromagnetic quantities along the longitudinal axis with the armature winding of a synchronous machine short-circuited (GOST 17154–71). Quite apart from the fact that this construction contains at least five terms that partially overlap (with individual words omitted to avoid repetition), these are stable combinations denoting objects and their features, which is highly typical of certain fields of knowledge and, consequently, of terminological systems at the present stage of the development of science, engineering, and technology. Linguistic classification of terminological systems, including classification based on identifying the predominance of single-word or multiword terms in a given system, is extremely important for analyzing and rationalizing methods in terminology studies (Leychik 2002). Finally, another basis for classifying terminological systems, related to the preceding one, is their division into “codified” and free systems, in B. N. Golovin’s terms. In contemporary terms, this concerns terminological systems that can and should be standardized, ordered, harmonized (in short, unified), and systems for which these operations are not essential. Clearly, any form of unification contributes to improving terminological products, but in certain cases this is not so important (particularly in the social sciences and humanities), whereas in other cases it is necessary. The types of classification of terminological systems listed above do not exhaust the range of such classifications. The monograph Terminology Studies mentions others (Leychik 2007: 118–138), in particular sociolinguistic classification, as well as classification by the composition of terms in terms of their linguistic structure and logical features. At the same time, what has been said in this article briefly characterizes the contemporary 14 Владимир Лейчик | Классификации терминосистем state of the problem in comparison with 1981, when the aforementioned article by B. N. Golovin was published. As we can see, the scholar foresaw much of what would shape terminology studies as an independent scientific discipline. The further development of this discipline, based on the cognitive approach and its incorporation into the theory of languages for special purposes, makes it possible to refine the propositions of the article and B. N. Golovin’s concepts more generally (see, for example, several articles in the proceedings of the 2006 conference The Scholarly Legacy of B. N. Golovin and Current Problems of Contemporary Linguistics (The Scholarly Legacy of B. N. Golovin... 2006). CONCLUSIONS В развитие статьи Б. Н. Головина «Типы терминосистем и основания их различения» (1981) на базе современных концепций терминоведения предлагаются четыре главные классификации терминосистем: когнитивная, содержательная, лингвистическая, нормативная. ЛИТЕРАТУРА Архипова И. А. 2006: Экстра- и интралингвистические особенности формирования и развития немецкого подъязыка служб безопасности на материале терминологии терроризма и наркобизнеса. Автореферат канд. дис., Омск. Веригитина И. В. 2006: Терминология системного комплекса научных экологических знаний. деривационно-семантический аспект. Автореферат канд. дис., Краснодар. Головин Б. Н. 1981: Типы терминосистем и основания их различения. – Термин и слово. Межвузовский сборник, Горький, 3–10. ГОСТ 17154-71, 1971: Машины электрические вращающиеся. Характеристики, расчетные параметры и режимы работы. Термины и определения. Издание официальное. Изд-во стандартов, Москва. Лейчик В. М. 1986: О языковом субстрате термина. – Вопросы языкознания 5, 87–97. Лейчик В. М. 2002: Термины-фразеологизмы в ряду номинативных словосочетаний терминологического характера. – Научно-техническая информация. Сер.2, №12, 33–37. Лейчик В. М. 2007: Терминоведение: Предмет, методы, структура. Изд. третье, Москва. Научное наследие Б. Н. Головина и актуальные проблемы современной лингвистики. Материалы научной конференции. – Изд-во Нижегородского гос. ун-та им. Н. И. Лобачевского, Нижний Новгород, 2006. Ордакова Ф. М. 2003: Основные принципы формирования отраслевой терминологии. – Актуальные проблемы английской лингвистики и лингводидактики. Сб. научных трудов. Вып. 2, Москва, 102–116. Сложеникина Ю. В. 2005: Термин: семантическое, формальное, функциональное варьирование. Москва. TERMINŲ SISTEMŲ KLASIFIKACIJOS Plėtojant B. Golovino straipsnyje „Terminų sistemų tipai ir jų skyrimo pagrindai“ (1981) iškeltas idėjas ir remiantis šiuolaikinėmis terminologijos koncepcijomis siūlomos keturios pagrindinės terminų sistemų klasifikacijos: kognityvinė, pagal turinį, lingvistinė, norminamoji. Terminologija | 2008 | 15 15 CLASSIFICATIONS OF TERMINOLOGICAL SYSTEMS Developing the ideas in the article by B. N. Golovin “Types of Terminological Systems and the Basis for their Distinguishing” (1981) and applying modern concepts of Terminology Science, in this article the four main classifications of terminological systems are suggested: cognitive, semantic, linguistic and normative. Gauta 2008-10-25 Владимир Моисеевич Лейчик Государственный институт русского языка им. А. С. Пушкина ул. академика Волгина, д. 6 117485 Москва, Россия Эл. почта: [email protected] 16 Владимир Лейчик | Классификации терминосистем