Terminology. International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Issues in Specialized Communication - Volume 18, Issue 1, 2012

One of the characteristics traditionally attributed to neologisms is that they label new realities, which is particularly relevant in terminological studies because these are concerned with areas of intense denominative activity. This article proposes that, besides this well-known feature, the neologisms of specialised fields may also take a different role, more related to filling lexical gaps than to naming innovative concepts. This investigation examines the specialised vocabulary of modern olive oil agriculture and analyses a selection of neologisms before bringing forward a theoretical proposal concerning their linguistic use. Subsequently, this argument is illustrated by applying our model to the definitions of the terminological neologisms under study.

The study on term formation presented in this paper is related to the problem of determining the function of neologisms in scientific communication and to the issue of processing the concomitant variation, typical of such new denominations. Our analysis of scientific texts shows that neologisms can have quite a different role in scientific communication than they are generally credited with in terminological studies. The well-known referential role, consisting of the creation of a new designation for naming a new concept is overshadowed in scientific texts by a more rhetorical role. Here the scientist resorts consciously to variation, hence creating a “neology effect”, specifically for the reason of emphasising various novel aspects of his thought. This function of neology as a rhetorical device is generally glossed over in terminology studies, in much the same way as the analysis of variation used to be, due to the expected stability that neologism should eventually gain in line with well-established terms. Consequently, in this article, we try to place the phenomenon of neology within the framework of discourse analysis.

The situation of the terminologies of cutting-edge sciences and technologies in such important languages as French and Spanish is rapidly changing. It can be demonstrated that they rely more and more directly on English-language terms and conceptual structures. This new situation calls for a review of the factors involved and how they affect neology as secondary term formation. This article seeks to characterize terminological dependency and to identify those parameters by which it can be measured. To do this, the authors first interviewed some Spanish-speaking researchers about their own practice, and then took three highly specialized micro-domains brought to light in the terminology work of graduate students of translation. After evaluating the validity of this latter approach, the authors analyse the three terminologies from linguistic and pragmatic points of view, concluding that, in the three fields, new terms are as closely modeled as possible on their existing English-language counterparts.

This paper aims at discussing some theoretical aspects of the creation of term neologisms through translation, using as examples Greek terms from the field of Translation Studies itself. The premise of the paper is that while a basically semiotic approach tends to be the prevailing one in theoretical discussions, in practice, the creation of neologisms seems to be mainly achieved through correspondences at signifier level only, often leading to Greek neologisms which are not totally in line with the notion (signified) lying behind the designation of a term. Within this wider theoretical framework provided by the semiotic approach, this paper will propose that a combination of terminological unit (level of signifier), notion (level of signified) and definition (transitional level) is an operational theoretical framework for the successful creation of Greek neologisms, using as example three cases taken from the Greek adaptation of the Translation terminology by Delisle et al. (1999).

Secondary term formation is a process of undeniable importance in modern specialised communication due to the dominance of English. However, empirical works and methodologies to approach this issue on specialised neology are scarce. This paper describes a contrastive study that proposes to tackle secondary term formation by addressing the most productive units in term formation in the dominant language, syntagmatic noun compounds. It describes and compares these multiword units in an English-Spanish comparable corpus containing research papers in the field of remote sensing. The compounds originating in the language of primary term formation are analysed first and then compared to the resulting units in the target language, with special attention paid to their morphosyntactic and semantic structure. Finally, the influence of English in the Spanish equivalents is assessed through the identification of the transferring procedures used to import them. The results show a strong preference for loan translations in this process.

With this paper we propose to bring the linguistic and cultural reality of the migration phenomenon to the specialized neology within a descriptive, communicative and cognitive context. The vocabulary of migration falls within the framework referred to as the Communicative Theory of Terminology, this is not only because of the terminological units used but also for reasons of function and the fact that this vocabulary can easily be used in informative discourse. We have been able to observe the dynamic nature of this vocabulary and the constant creation of new terms: the birth of new terms, many of which had to survive a period of instability before becoming accepted as correct; the disappearance of a number of terms, words that shortly after gaining acceptance, some not even reaching maturity, fell into disuse of their own accord; and the opposite, terms that regained popularity thanks to their use in high impact news stories in the media: patera.