Terminizacija ir determinizacija

TERMINOLOGY PROBLEMS Kazimieras GAIVENIS TERMINOLOGIZATION AND DETERMINOLOGIZATION Terminologization is the transformation of words into terms, while determinologization is the transformation of terms into ordinary words. These two processes differ from each other primarily in that the former can be regulated, whereas the latter is spontaneous and unregulated. Terminologization often changes the grammatical and lexical character of words: the combinability of terms, certain grammatical features, and relations of synonymy, antonymy, etc. change. For example, the common-language word salt has no plural, while its most common specific names are two: feed salt and table salt. In chemistry terminology, by contrast, the word salts denotes a class of chemical compounds, that is, crystalline substances with an ionic structure. In chemistry, salts may be normal, acidic, basic, double, etc. There can also be singular specific terms with the word salt, e.g.: Bertoletti’s salt, Glauber’s salt, bitter salt, etc. Or take another example. The antonym of the ordinary word heat is the word cold, whereas the term heat has no antonym, because the word cold is not terminologized in physics terminology. The concept of “cold” does not exist at all in physics terminology. S. Šalkauskis called terminologization “the precision of a word.” He wrote: “A word undergoes the least change when it enters scientific terminology if, for this purpose, all that remains is to precisely establish the intension and extension of the concept underlying it. This terminological process may be called the precision, or refinement, of a word by people. It is always unavoidable when scientific terminology has to borrow words from ordinary language, since the latter never possesses the precision that the aims of science may demand. The lack of precision in a word in fact shows that the concept underlying it has not been consciously established in terms of intension and extension. If, for example, people use the word ‘animal,’ they most often do not realize what characteristics constitute the intension of the concept of animal and, correspondingly, which individuals or even species can be denoted by this word.⟧ 4 what characteristics constitute the intension of the concept of animal and, correspondingly, which individuals or even species can be denoted by this word. It is true that anyone who studies the word animal is more or less clearly aware that the concept of animal includes, one way or another, the characteristic of life; but an uneducated person will rarely be able to determine what other characteristics the concept of animal includes besides the characteristic of life. If we do not recognize any such characteristics at all, then we will have to apply the word ‘animal’ even to plants, since plants are characterized by life in a certain sense, namely vegetative life. If, conversely, we add at least one more characteristic alongside that of life, we will have to narrow the meaning of the word ‘animal’ accordingly, that is, apply it to a narrower range of things. It appears that this characteristic is sentience (sensibilitas), which also prevents us from applying the word ‘animal’ to plants, since it must be restricted to the domain of sentient life. Thus we find that the word ‘animal’ is applicable only where life and sentience come together”1. Thus, terminologization is primarily associated with the refinement of a word’s extension and intension. In some fields of science, creating terms through terminologization is very common, while in others it is rare. For example, the terminology of botany, zoology, agriculture, animal husbandry, meteorology, and other fields contains countless terminologized words from the standard language and dialects, whereas their number is very small in chemistry, computing, and astronomy terminology. Terminologization is a twofold process: in one case, words from the standard language and dialects are terminologized; in the other, terms from neighboring fields are. The latter phenomenon is called transterminologization. Unfortunately, it is often difficult to say whether a term has undergone transterminologization in our language. Most such terms are international calques. For example, the computing term call, whose English equivalents are call(ing), call-in and fetch(ing), was probably translated from the Russian term обращение, since the English equivalents of the grammatical term for address are allocution and address. The mathematical term complement (the difference between a set and its subset) probably arose independently of the grammatical term complement, having instead been translated from the corresponding terms in other languages (cf. English complement, Russian дополнение, etc.). 1 Šalkauskis S. Raštai. V., 1991. T. 2. P. 24–25. 5 In dialects, and sometimes in the standard language as well, the same word often refers to entirely different things. For example, in Lithuania the word gurgždis has been used for at least several plants: wild angelica (Angelica silvestris), garden angelica (Archangelica officinalis), lovage (Levisticum officinale), ground elder (Aegopodium podagraria), cowbane (Cicuta virosa), poison hemlock (Conium maculatum), and others. Having made this word a term in the terminology of plant systematics, botanists use it to refer to only one plant—Chaerophyllum. It belongs to the family of umbellifers (Umbelliferae). Absolute synonyms with identical extensions can become hyponyms and hypernyms in terminology. For example, the word šikšnys has been used in our dialects and in the standard language for any bat, but in zoological systematics terminology this word is used to name only certain species, such as the serotine bat (Eptesicus serotinus), cf. English Serotine bat, Russian поздний кожан2, the northern bat (Epitesicus nilssoni), cf. English Northern bat, Russian северный кожан3. The same has happened with the word plikšnys. In J. Baronas’s dictionary, this word refers to bats in general, whereas in the terminology of zoological systematics we find only the species term parti-coloured bat (Vespertilio murinus), cf. English Particolored bat, Russian двухцветный кожан4. In this case, the word šikšnosparnis has been made a term only for the order. In terminology work, rather unsuccessful cases of term formation from ordinary words also occur fairly often. For example, in hydrotechnical terminology, an attempt has been made to turn the word core (the core of a jet) into a term for the inner part of a jet. The word heart (the heart of a jet) would be much more suitable here. In animal anatomy terminology, the word face (a cow’s face) is unsuitable. In agricultural terminology, it is hardly appropriate to speak of corn straw, clover hay5, and so on. Determinization—the transformation of terms into ordinary words—is characterized by 2 Lietuvos fauna. Žinduoliai. V., 1988. T. 1. P. 84. 3 Ten pat. P. 87 4 Ten pat. P. 89. 5 A n s k a i t i s V., K i l a s M. Rusų-lietuvių kalbų žemės ūkio terminų žodynas. V., 1971. P. 259, 275. 6 This means that a determinized term does not disappear, but merely puts out a new offshoot (an ordinary word) in another field of use. For instance, the term from physics and geology epicentras denotes the projection onto the Earth’s surface of the center of a phenomenon occurring above or below it, whereas the determininologized word epicentras names the maelstrom of any social events (e.g., neramumų epicentras). Determinized terms from physics and technology are particularly common in colloquial speech, e.g.: kalibras, spektras, aparatas, blokas, impulsas, mechanizmas, trintis, etc. However, certain conditions are necessary for determinization to take place, namely: 1) the term must be widely disseminated and known not only to specialists; 2) some semes of the term and the determinized word must coincide. 7