The Ukrainian contrastive terminology science: the present state and prospects

Olga Pavlova

The article deals with the generalizing and inventorying of the theoretical and practical results which have been received in the frames of contrastive terminology science. In the article the object and subject of contrastive terminology science have been made more precise; the tasks and sections of this science have been characterized; the aspects, parameters and units of contrastive terminological analysis have been defined. Besides the dissertations of Ukraine in the field of contrastive terminology science have been inventoryed and shortly analysed, the tasks for the further development of the science have been determined.

Ukrainian language

contrastive terminology science

terminology

contrastive method

semasiological aspect

onomasiological aspect

The contrastive terminology science is a new promising trend in modern linguistics, which has appeared at the junction of three sciences: general linguistics, contrastive linguistics and theory of translation. It has become an independent scientific discipline in the 80-s of the XXth century. Contrastive terminology science is being actively developed in Ukraine nowadays.

A definite contribution into working out and grounding the theoretical problems of contrastive terminology science has been made by the scientists, such as A. Kryzhanovskaya, F. Tsitkina, V. Leitchick, L. Tkachyeva and others.

The aim of the article is to generalize and inventory the theoretical and practical results of the studies in the field of contrastive terminology science in Ukraine. The tasks are to make the object and subject of the contrastive terminology science more precise; to characterize the tasks and sections of the science; to define the aspects, parameters and units of contrastive terminological analysis; to inventory and analyze the dissertations in the field of contrastive terminology science and to determine the main tasks for the further development of the science.

Having generalised the scientific acheivements in the field of contrastive terminology science we can ascertain the following.

Contrastive terminology science, according to the definition given by V. Leitchick, attends to contrastive study of terms and their entities, i.e. terminologies and terminology systems, which belong to one, two, or several branches of knowledge in one and the same language or in different languages [16, p. 31]. The object of contrastive terminology studies is considered to be the terms and whole terminology systems, and the subject is the regularities of the system of similarities and differences in grammatical, word-forming and lexico-semantic structure of terms and terminology systems of two, three or more national languages [28, p. 138].

In the structure of contrastive terminology science 4 sections can be singled out: 1) the contrastive study of terms of one and the same branch of knowledge in two or more national languages; 2) the contrastive analysis of terms and terminology systems of two, three or more branches of people's activity at the basis of one or two or more languages; 3) the study of problems of borrowing terms from one language to the other; 4) the investigation of problems of the linguistic theory of scientific and technological translation [16, p. 5].

As for the methods of its research, contrastive terminology science has borrowed a number of methods from other branches of linguistics and has used them widely for the study of terms and terminologies. The descriptive method, the contrastive method, the morphemic analysis, the immediate constituents analysis, word-forming analysis, the definition analysis and contextual analysis belong to them.

The units of contrastive terminology studies can be the following: 1) terms and the main components of their semantic structure; 2) the thematic and lexico-semantic classifications of terms; 3) the vocabulary which embraces the whole terminological continuum of a definite branch of knowledge or activity.

The examination of 20 candidate dissertations written in Ukraine in the field of contrastive terminology science has shown that the majority of the works investigates the terminology of one field of knowledge on the basis of two, three, four or five languages, i.e. they belong to the first section of the science [1–4; 7–8; 12–14; 18–19; 21–24; 26]. The contrasted languages are Ukrainian, Polish, Russian, English, French and German. Some studies are conducted in the onomasiological aspect, and the other in the semasiological aspect. Some of the research works combine these two aspects. One of the research works belongs to the second section of the science and it presents the contrastive analysis of 4 different terminologies in one and the same language [11]. And three works belong to the third section of contrastive terminology which studies the problems of terminological borrowings [5; 10; 25].

We can come to the following conclusions. The contrastive terminology science is being gradually developed in Ukraine. It has been shown by the worked out theoretical foundations and the activization of the process of writing the candidate dissertations. The tasks which have to be solved for the further development of contrastive terminology science are 1) the improvement of the methods of contrasting the terminologies; 2) the addition of the languages of national minorities of Ukraine (Byelorussian, Moldavian, Crimean-Tatar, Bulgarian, Romanian and Hungarian) to the contrastive terminology studies; 3) the inclusion of the problems of contrastive terminology stiudies into the programmes of the regional and international conferences on terminology science; 3) the continuation and improvement of the practice of compiling the terminological dictionaries; 4) writing the manuals and tutorials in contrastive terminology science; 5) the elaboration of the recommendations on the methodical organization of the teaching the foreign terminology of the speciality to the students in the course of teaching LSP.

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