Terminologija / Terminology

2025, Nr. 32, p. 1–6

Turinio nuoroda / Contents link

ISSN 2669–2198 (elektroninis / online)

www.mruni.eu

Olga USINSKIENE

DOCTORAL DISSERTATION

A FRAMEWORK OF CONCEPTS IN THE MIGRATION DOMAIN AND THEIR EXPRESSION IN ENGLISH AND LITHUANIAN

HUMANITIES, PHILOLOGY (H 004) VILNIUS, 2024

Olga Usinskiene.

A FRAMEWORK OF CONCEPTS IN THE MIGRATION DOMAIN AND THEIR EXPRESSION IN ENGLISH AND LITHUANIAN (A SYSTEM OF CONCEPTS IN THE FIELD OF MIGRATION AND THEIR EXPRESSION IN ENGLISH AND LITHUANIAN): doctoral dissertation, Vilnius: Mykolas Romeris University, 2024, 320 pp.

SIGITA RACKEVIČIENĖ

Mykolas Romeris University

Email: [email protected]

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5794-0296

https://doi.org/10.35321/term32-12

On 6 September 2024, Olga Ušinskienė defended her doctoral dissertation at Mykolas Romeris University (hereafter – MRU), A Framework of Concepts in the Migration Domain and their Expression in English and Lithuanian (A System of Concepts in the Field of Migration and Their Expression in English and Lithuanian) (supervisor: Prof. Dr. Sigita Rackevičienė).

Copyright © 2025 Sigita Rackevičienė. Published by the Institute of the Lithuanian Language. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. // Published by the Institute of the Lithuanian Language. This article is open access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction of the content in any medium, provided that the author and source are credited.

Received: / Received: 2025-03-27. Accepted: / Accepted: 2025-04-03.

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In her dissertation, drawing on data from bilingual English and Lithuanian corpora created for this study, O. Ušinskienė modelled the conceptual system of the migration domain and compared the linguistic means used to form its designations. Thus, the dissertation analyses two dimensions of the migration domain: the conceptual dimension, with the aim of developing models based on conceptual relations and revealing the domain’s principal processes; and the linguistic dimension, with the aim of identifying the linguistic means used to designate concepts in this domain.

For the purposes of the study, two bilingual corpora were created from international and national documents on migration: a parallel corpus (approximately 1.5 million words) and a comparable corpus (approximately 2.2 million words). The corpora yielded 388 English and 376 Lithuanian concept designations. In the dissertation, concept designations include noun phrases functioning as terms, multiword terms, and proper names relevant to the migration domain. In addition, to gain the fullest possible understanding of the concepts, supplementary data were collected: informative contexts for each concept were retrieved from the corpora, while definitions were gathered from specialised dictionaries and terminology databases. The corpora and their metadata are stored on the MRU SharePoint site (a link to the site is provided in the dissertation’s first appendix), and all the terminology data collected and systematised are presented in the dissertation’s second appendix, which runs to 136 pages.

The dissertation’s introduction defines the key research parameters and discusses the dissertation’s scholarly novelty, value, and the practical applicability of its results. The author notes that the dissertation is significant in several respects: 1) the terminology study contributes to the field of corpus-based English and Lithuanian terminology research by adding another specialised domain—migration; 2) modelling a concept system on the basis of conceptual relations, undertaken for the first time using bilingual English and Lithuanian data from the migration domain, is significant for research into the conceptual dimension of specialised domains; 3) the working analysis of concept designations, grounded in the principles of cognitive linguistics, is important for contrastive studies of the linguistic dimension of terminology; 4) the overall research methodology, based on combining approaches grounded in knowledge analysis and lexical analysis, contributes new methodological insights and perspectives to the development of Lithuanian terminology work.

The first part of the dissertation presents the general theoretical aspects of the study. It outlines the principal assumptions of terminology science as discussed in foundational works on terminology and in ISO standards devoted to terminology. Two main approaches underpinning the dissertation’s research are described in detail: the knowledge-based (onomasiological) approach and the lexically based (semasiological) approach. The principles of these approaches and the principal schools of terminology that develop them in their work are discussed. At the end of the first part, the author explains how these two approaches are applied in the dissertation research and which of their aspects are most important for analysing the conceptual and linguistic dimensions of terminology in the migration domain.

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In the second part of the dissertation, parallel and comparable corpora in the field of migration, and the processes involved in their compilation and the extraction of terminological data, are presented. First, the advantages and disadvantages of parallel and comparable corpora are discussed, and the need to use both types of corpora for a comprehensive terminological study is explained. The stages of corpus compilation and the composition of the corpora are presented in detail. The corpora consist of documents from international and national organisations. First, a detailed analysis was conducted of international organisations and their documents, and the documents required for the study were selected. These include legally binding and non-binding documents of intergovernmental organisations (the United Nations, the Council of Europe and the European Union, and organisations under their authority), such as conventions, primary and secondary legislation, recommendations, reports, and others. The national legislation of the Republic of Lithuania and the United Kingdom was then analysed. The parallel corpus consists of documents available in both the original and translated languages (mostly documents from international organisations), while the comparable corpus consists of documents available only in the original language (mostly national documents). The dissertation presents the metadata categories for the collected documents, as well as the processing of the texts and their upload to the Sketch Engine software. The principles for extracting terminological data and identifying equivalents are then described. The Sketch Engine software tools used to collect the English-language data required for the study—concept designations and informative contexts needed to determine concept content and relations—are presented. Procedures for identifying Lithuanian equivalents in the parallel and comparable corpora, as well as the Sketch Engine tools used for this purpose, are discussed.

The third part of the dissertation is devoted to the conceptual dimension of the migration domain: the theoretical and methodological principles of analysis, the modelling of the migration-domain concept system, and a detailed presentation of each model comprising the system.

The first chapter of the third part presents the principles of conceptual analysis. It discusses the significance of definitions for research into conceptual relations and describes different classifications of conceptual relations, focusing primarily on the typologies presented in ISO standards and by the scholar Anita Nuopponen. It also discusses the concept categories defined in the works of the scholar Juan C. Sager and the University of Granada research group “LexiCon.” The concept categories into which the concepts identified in the dissertation research are classified are presented: activities and states (ACT), animate entities (ANE), and inanimate entities and their properties (INANE).

The second chapter of the third part describes the modelled concept system for the migration domain—its overall structure and each individual model. The modelled migration system consists of three models:

1) A causal chain of migration, linking the processes that cause migration with those caused by migration;

2) A migration taxonomy model, consisting of three smaller sections devoted to three types of migration: labour migration, family migration, and humanitarian migration;

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3) The migration procedure model, also consisting of three parts, is devoted to the procedure for each type of migration: the labour migration procedure, the family migration procedure, and the humanitarian migration procedure.

Each model is presented in detail: the conceptual relations that enabled the model to be created are explained, as is how different types of relations combine into a unified whole; the conceptual categories and specific concepts assigned to each model are described, along with the real-world phenomena they reflect and the English and Lithuanian words and phrases used to name these concepts. Each model and its parts are also presented in structured diagrams, highlighting the types of conceptual relations and the systematic similarities and differences between the models.

The fourth part of the dissertation is devoted to the linguistic dimension of the migration domain: the theoretical and methodological principles of the analysis and the analysis of the linguistic means of expression used to form the names of concepts in the migration domain in English and Lithuanian.

The first chapter of the fourth part presents the principles of cognitive morphological analysis and the principles for analysing the lexical and syntactic means used to form concept names. The methodological basis of each level of analysis is visualized in a diagram representing the relationship between a concept and its names in English and Lithuanian, thereby emphasizing that the analysis seeks to identify which linguistic means are used in English and Lithuanian to express the same conceptual content.

The second chapter of the fourth part presents the results of the empirical analysis. The data are organized on several levels in order to determine: 1) whether there are noticeable differences in linguistic expression between concepts belonging to different conceptual models and between concepts belonging to different conceptual categories (ACT, ANE, INANE); 2) what differences in linguistic expression there are between concept names in English and Lithuanian. This multilayered analysis is also reflected in the structure of the subsections: the data for each model and, where relevant, each category are analysed separately, and the results are summarized at the end. When illustrative data examples are presented, the English and Lithuanian equivalents denoting the same concept are always paired. The following aspects are analysed:

1) cases of synonymy: bilingual pairs of concept names are classified according to the number of synonyms in each language (2:1; 1:2; 2:2, etc.) and according to the types of synonyms (lexical, morphological, syntactic, and morphological);

2) number of semantic components: concept names are classified as monolexical or polylexical;

3) lexical meanings of semantic components: the lexical meanings of the head component and modifiers in concept names are identified in each conceptual category and grouped by semantic fields;

4) types of modification in polylexical concept names: in each conceptual category, concept names are classified according to the position of the modifiers in relation to the head

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with respect to the component, i.e., according to whether the modification is prepositional, postpositional, or bipositional (pre- and postpositional);

5) the syntactic structure of polylexical concept designations: concept designations of each modification type are classified according to their syntactic structure, represented by sequences of part-of-speech tags for the modifiers.

Each aspect was also analyzed quantitatively: an extensive quantitative data analysis was conducted, revealing trends in the formation of concept designations both within individual conceptual models and across models.

The conclusions present the key findings of each part of the dissertation and discuss what new knowledge they provide about the object of study.

The author notes that combining methods based on knowledge analysis and lexical analysis made it possible to assess concept designations not only as structural units of a conceptual system, but also as units of natural language in their natural context of use.

Corpus compilation and data-mining work show that research into terminological data in the field of migration requires two types of corpora: parallel and comparable. They make it possible to gather a much more comprehensive sample of terminological data in the field of migration, a greater number of informative contexts, and to identify more English and Lithuanian equivalents.

Analysis of the conceptual dimension of the field of migration revealed that concepts in this field can be divided into three main conceptual models, based on the following relations between concepts: ontological (cause–effect, part–whole, process–result, and agent–activity–object) and logical (generic and specific concepts). All three models form an overall system of concepts in the field of migration, reflecting how phenomena in this field are conceptualized in international and national documents.

Analysis of the linguistic dimension of the field of migration revealed which linguistic means are used to express concept designations in English and Lithuanian across different conceptual models and categories. The analysis showed that synonymy is most prevalent in the second and third models, and that the most common type of synonym in both languages is the lexical synonym (e.g.: permanent migration – pastovioji migracija / nuolatinė migracija, illegal entry / irregular entry – illegal entry). The study also confirmed the tendency toward polylexicality of terms identified by researchers in other subject fields. In the dissertation’s research material, polylexical units account for 92 percent of all concept designations in the field of migration in both English and Lithuanian. Analysis of lexical structure revealed that most concept designations are compositional—their meanings can be understood on the basis of the meanings of their individual components. In each model, designations are constructed from components belonging to different semantic fields. The head component most often denotes a particular activity or state, an inanimate or animate object, while modifiers specify various aspects of the features of the concept denoted by the head component; for example, the concept designation asylum for an applicant – for an asylum seeker is formed according to this principle: HEAD COMPONENT ‘form of protection’ + MODIFIER ‘participant in migration’.

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Analysis of syntactic structures revealed that both premodification and postmodification are used in Models 1 and 3, whereas postmodification is entirely uncharacteristic of Model 2, which covers the taxonomy of migration types, e.g., labour migration – labour migration. In most cases, the types of modification in English and Lithuanian coincide, but in a substantial proportion of cases, English names with postmodification correspond to Lithuanian names with premodification, e.g., children of refugees – children of refugees.

Summarising the conclusions, the author states that they “may provide valuable information for researchers engaged in modelling concept systems, comparative terminological analysis, and translation studies” (p. 314). The author also notes that the parallel and comparable corpora compiled during the study “may be reused in linguistic research in the field of migration” (ibid.).

Olga Usinskiene’s dissertation A Framework of Concepts in the Migration Domain and their Expression in English and Lithuanian (Migracijos srities sąvokų sistema ir raiška anglų ir lietuvių kalbose) makes a substantial contribution to terminological work in Lithuania, enriching it with a comprehensive terminological study of another specialised field—migration—significant for the data it has gathered, its analysis, and its methodological insights. As the dissertation’s author notes, the research results also have practical value. The concept system of the migration domain may serve specialists in the field in organising and communicating knowledge about migration processes, as well as members of the public wishing to acquire this knowledge. The results of the linguistic analysis may provide valuable information to terminology developers and translators. Research into both dimensions may be useful to terminology management specialists and technology developers working in knowledge engineering and automatic data extraction. The bilingual research data compiled may also be used to create a terminology database for the migration domain, which would be useful to migrants, employees of migration institutions, legislative drafters and translators, and students of migration law and policy.

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