TERMINOLOGICAL WORK AS INTEGRAL PART OF INTERCULTURAL COMPETENCE DEVELOPMENT

Key words: terminology, terminological work, multilingual information society, terminological working methods, terminology project, language sign, cognitive and onomasiological method

Tatyana VYSOTSKAYA State educational institution “National Mining University”, Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine

TERMINOLOGICAL WORK AS INTEGRAL PART OF INTERCULTURAL COMPETENCE DEVELOPMENT The scale of terminological work nowadays is great. Modern world, economy, industry, and society have recently undergone considerable development stipulating the diversification of goods, products, and special knowledge.

The birth of new naming units, special

architectonics of scientific facts and phenomena, consistence and brevity of their statements are the main characteristics of LSP. Modern language for special purposes is characterized with a great spring in the exchange of specialist information not only within the branch or between

branches

(i.e.

in-branch

or

inter-branch

communication).

In

terms

of internationalization and globalization, it has become an important means of international scientific and professional communication. “Specialist communication now makes up about four fifths of all information, which is exchanged at an ever increasing rate via the new communication channels of the borderless, multilingual information society” [8, 1]. As it is stated in COTSOES Recommendations for terminological work, new requirements laid down for commercial information and documentation (e.g. product declaration and tendering in the language of the customer, multilingual documentation and stock-keeping of international companies) have made terminology into a production and marketing factor and even an economic factor with regard to quality, safety and profitability. This is felt particularly keenly by small and medium-sized enterprises, such as those that were formed for the economic or industrial exploitation of scientific or technological developments. Whereas in large, specifically international companies, just

as in the larger public administrations, terminology in its various applications (e.g. editing of specialist texts, translation, documentation, stock-keeping) has now largely been accepted as a matter of course, smaller and newly formed companies face considerable difficulties in this field because terminology work is relatively costly. However, if any of these firms wishes to maintain its position in national or even international competition, it must meet the terminological

requirements

imposed

by

reliable

product

information

and documentation [8, 9]. Nowadays the facts of terminology being an economic factor and terminology work serving

the

enterprise

culture

are

absolutely

undeniable.

Modern

terminology

is in the immediate interest of linguists and translators. For the latters terminology work is a great

way

to learn

the

specialist

subject

field,

while

the

formers

consider

it to be the science of the concepts (terminology science). In the sphere of LSP analysis the method of cognitive and onomasiological analysis is considered to be the most promising one, as the synthesis of cognitive and onomasiological paradigms reflects the main factors of the language system as a whole. The purpose of our research is to define the focus of terminological vocabulary cognitive and onomasiological analysis method. To reach the purpose we have to: 1) analyse the theoretical background of the terms research in cognitive and onomasiological aspect; 2) specify the tasks of cognitive and onomasiological approach to terms investigation. The problem of cognitive and onomasiological approach to terms investigation is developed in the works by L. A. Manerko, E. S. Kubryakova, V. M. Leychik and other researchers. The linguists consider comprehensive description of language phenomena to be the purpose of the approach. The study of information language processing is one of the main trends in terminological vocabulary investigation. The information language processing is approached to as a complex cognitive process, comprising the communication mode of the information on socium cognitive activity objects and phenomena encoded by the means of the language. One has to agree with N. F. Alefirenko considering that “the system of the natural language signs is a key to the man’s inner mental lexicon – the key instrument of information cognitive processing” [1, 183]. A concept as a unit of individuum or speech community consciousness

and cogitation is stored as “verbal understratum” [6, 57] or naming unit (a word, a word combination) reflecting the knowledge about objects and phenomena. E. S. Kubryakova notices that “the problem of the language sign meaning should be put as the problem of what conceptual or cognitive formation lies under the sign’s “roof”, what quantum of information is marked out from the general flow of information about the world by the sign body” [3, 23]. The character of the naming unit deserves special attention, as it is stipulated by the individual specifics of the cognizing subject, his social set-up, his cultural level, experience, and situation. Thus, the main task of the cognitive method is to describe “the system of needs meeting in knowledge special structures determining and recording, … i.e. their “packing” into language forms, which meet certain formal and content requirements” [2, 56]. The notion of categorization is one of the fundamental notions of human activity and one of the key ones of the cognitive method. Categorization is defined as the scheduling of the notion, object, or process to a certain rubric of experience or category. This is the process of these categories formation, the segmentation of the human’s inner and outer world according to the entity characteristics of his functioning and existing, the ordered representation of different phenomena by the means of minimizing the number of their classes, unions, etc. [7, 51]. Categorization is the main means to order the world, the main way to systematize that observed and to see the likeness of one phenomena as opposed to the difference of the other ones [4, 96]. The categorization of the language material reflects each word cognitive interpretation as a demonstrative special category. It also reflects the categories as the units of a certain hierarchical system with hyper-hyponymic relations as well as the systems with the so-called basic level in the words taxonomy, where general (abstract) category names are introduced to the upper level while the most concise representatives of the same category are introduces to its lower level [5, 96–114; 305–320]. Cognitive approach is tightly bound to the theory of nomination, as the latter tries to answer the question, “What part of knowledge about the subject, the one processed or the one being processed and gradually turning into the object’s concept gets a separate name?” The understanding of nomination from cognitive viewpoints means answering the question, which sets of concepts and why are verbalizes in the language and which

language form is chosen to solve this problem. It is quite possible that the theory of nomination can be viewed as the variant of cognitive theory, and its gains can be used for cognitive science further progress and development [5, 70–71]. Thus, the investigation of terminological vocabulary in the frameworks of cognitive approach presupposes the process of thought correlation with a certain conceptual category study, scheduling cognitive and notional concepts of the language community professional sphere and defining the interrelation of knowledge and cognition as well as their reflection in the language units. Cognitive and onomasiological investigation of terminological word combinations allows to define the nature of the concept and to show its relation with other conceptual structures, to elicit subject names conceptual resources, to point out the core and the edge of the language category, its prototypical structure, and to identify main cognitive and onomasiological models of terminological names. Onomasiological approach to naming units investigation suggests pointing out three main categories: onomasiological basis, onomasiological marker, and predicate bounding the basis and the marker with certain relations. Onomasiological basis, expressed by the stem of the term, has the leading role in the special notion primary categorization, i.e. in defining its place in the scientific worldview. Further subcategorization is connected with the onomasiological marker, which reflects various object and nonobject entities. The method is intended to explain the correlation of onomasiological structure with the structures of knowledge about the object, i.e. with concepts and categories. The implementation of onomasiological method to the analysis of terminological vocabulary allows to state the correlation of notions reflected in these terminological units semantics, to categorize the defined notion, to define notional instruments of the naming units formation and the character of their motivation, adding much to intercultural competence development. REFERENCES [1] АЛЕФИРЕНКО Н. Ф. Современные проблемы науки о языке, М, 2005, 416 . [2] КУБРЯКОВА Е. С. Актуальные проблемы изучения словообразовательных систем славянских языков In: Научные доклады филол. факультета МГУ, М, 1998, Вып. 3, 52–70. [3] КУБРЯКОВА Е. С. Возращаясь к определению знака In: Вопросы языкознания, 1993, №4, 18–28. [4]

КУБРЯКОВА Е. С. Начальные этапы становления когнитивизма: лингвистика

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[6] СЕЛИВАНОВА Е. А. Когнитивная ономасиология, К, 2000, 248. [7] СТОЛЯРОВА Л. П. Базовый словарь лингвистических терминов / Л. П. Столярова, Т. С. Пристайко, Л. П. Попко, К, 2003,192. [8] COTSO: Recommendations for Terminology Work, MediaCenter of the Confederation, CH 3003 Berne, 2002, 112.

SUMMARY The paper deals with terminology as a production, marketing and even an economic factor. Terminological work is considered as one of the main means of intercultural competence development in modern multilingual information society. The paper presents terminological working methods as well as main steps and underlying principles of a terminology project. The emphasis is made on cognitive and onomasiological method as one of the means of intercultural competence development allowing to state the correlation of notions reflected in these terminological units semantics, to categorize the defined notion, to define notional instruments of the naming units formation and the character of their motivation, adding much to intercultural competence development.