Terminology. International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Issues in Specialized Communication - Volume 19, Issue 2, 2013

Although visuals have been co-deployed with text in specialized dictionaries as far back as the European Renaissance, the interaction of both representational modalities is relatively under-researched. As a consequence, available knowledge is relatively limited with respect to the kinds of visuals employed in specialized dictionaries, the kinds of definiendum that elicit specific types of visuals, the functions of visuals relative to text in definitions, and the association between particular visuals and visual-text functions. This study sheds light on these questions from the perspective of specialized dictionaries in two fields (Biology and Mechanical Engineering). Significantly, the study underscores how the ontology or nature of Biology and Mechanical Engineering appear to determine both the selections made of visual types and the dominant text-visual relationships. The study further makes a contribution to cleaning up the Augean clutter that is the terminology of visuals.

According to Frame-Based Terminology (Faber et al. 2005, 2006, 2007), a crucial issue in terminology management is how specialized concepts should be represented within the knowledge structure of a scientific domain. This paper proposes a model of specialized concept representation based on conceptual frames (Faber et al. 2006, 2007; Faber 2011) and blends (Fauconnier 1999; Fauconnier and Turner 1998, 2002). Although frame-blending has been documented in general language (cf. Coulson 2005), it has not as yet been studied in specialized language. In this paper, we show how it can be applied to harmful algal bloom in the field of marine biology.

This paper addresses the lack of an explicitly agreed and defined terminology in the ontology engineering field, and particularly, the need for a glossary, which consists of terms and definitions for actions when developing ontologies. The novelty of this paper lies in the precise description of a methodology for building a glossary with the processes and activities involved in ontology development as well as the relations between them (such as subtype, composition and synonym). The methodology proposed in this paper takes its inspiration from ideas taken from earlier research on methodological processes for creating multilingual terminological products and for defining a glossary in a particular domain as well as on domain knowledge organization. The description of our methodology includes the approach followed and the steps carried out, as well as the key issues that arise when the glossary was being created. So far as we are aware, this is the first attempt to normalize the terminology (denominations and definitions) of process and activities in ontology building.

This paper investigates the methodological bases for assigning terminological equivalents that have been proposed by lexicographers and terminologists. It will be argued that consistent methodologies for assigning equivalents are still lacking. We then describe a methodology based on Frame Semantics (Fillmore 1977, 1982, 1985; Fillmore and Atkins 1992) for assigning the equivalents of specialized verbs that occur in a comparable corpus of judgments and we provide arguments to the effect that a methodological approach to the establishment of terminological equivalence based on the frames evoked by the terms as well as on their syntagmatic behaviour is a suitable approach for the identification of equivalents. The resulting descriptions of the specialized verbs, of the frames and the identified equivalents were encoded in a resource called JuriDiCo from which examples will be drawn to illustrate our point.

All cultures have their own specific words, phrases, sayings, signs and symbols. Such culturally bound terms need to be defined in a special way so that they can be understood well by people from different cultures and often require more extensive coverage than that provided in a general language dictionary. A dictionary of cultural terms is an ideal vehicle for this purpose, and an online version of such a dictionary can give greater flexibility in design and content. A single database may be used to supply material for such dictionaries, meeting the needs of a variety of users. This paper proposes a concept for an online Australian English cultural dictionary database, covering three key areas: the selection of culturally bound terms, data fields and display options. The design and principles of this database may also be extended to create databases for cultural dictionaries of other languages and cultures.