Terminology and documentation*  Object of the study of terminology:  analysis and description of the units representing specialized knowledge in specialized discourse  Object of the study of documentation:  organize the information found in documents and conveyed by means of terminological units (TU) * GROUP IULATERM Barcelona : IULA. Pompeu Fabra University

Terminology and documentation In theory and in practice, terminology and documentation are interrelated:  Terminological work cannot be carried out without documentation  At least part of the documentary work cannot be carried out without terminology  Terminology is therefore necessary for documentary work and documents are the basis for any terminological work.

Terminology Basic elements of terminological work:  all terminological projects are founded on practical professional needs  they are expected to answer these professional needs  they are expected to be adequate to the communicative situation which is defined on parameters such as professional activity, domain and specific topic, sociolinguistic context, language function or specific addressees

Documentation Documentation is necessary to terminology:  it makes the description of terms possible, because terminological units are fundamental elements of the oral and written discourse produced by specialists;  it helps develop a theory of “terms” in context

Documentation  Terminological units  convey the concepts of a certain special field  interrelate and transfer knowledge under certain circumstances and for certain communication purposes  Communication takes place through oral and written discourse  This discourse conforms texts (documents) that are the object of documentation

Documentation  Terms appear in specialized communication when specialists have to name a concept of their discipline  Terminologists retrieve from the documents the units they will integrate in dictionaries to be consulted by specialists and other users  specialized texts are the natural habitat of these terms  Documentation is the source of terminographical work

Stages of documentation  preparation stage: necessary source of information to acquire the cognitive competence  terminological work to begin with selection and analysis of the specialized documentation  works supplying this information: specialized works, lexicographic collections, encyclopedias or atlases.

Stages of documentation  stage 1: detection, delimitation and extraction of terms from documents  in this phase, documents (texts) are the only testimonial source which can vouch for the use of the terms in the special subject field and for their grammatical and semantic features  Documents allow to evaluate the frequency with which the term appears in its context of use.

Stages of documentation  Taking documents as a parameter, units are selected and confronted, certain forms are rejected being too general, other forms may be rejected because they belong to different subject areas  terms are analyzed and compilation of terminological records is carried out  terminological records gather, for each term, a series of linguistic, inter-linguistic and pragmatic data

Terminology as representation of specialized knowledge  Specialized texts convey specialized content through technical terms  Each terminological unit corresponds to a cognitive node in a special field  the whole of these nodes linked to one another by specific relations constitutes the conceptual representation of that special field  Therefore, specialized reality can be represented through terminology

Terminology as representation of specialized knowledge  Task of the documentation specialist: indexing.  Indexing = description of the contents of a specialized document. A series of units is used to give a synthesis of the knowledge contained in the text.  Aim of indexing: reducing the texts to minimum units that may be significant for the retrieval of information. These minimum units may be, in most of the cases, terminological units. Units are therefore taken as keywords or descriptors.

Terminology as representation of specialized knowledge  Efficient retrieval of information requires two conditions:  Good organization and controlled structure of cataloguing criteria  Well systematized description of contents  classifications and thesauruses are used to classify information

Terminology as representation of specialized knowledge  Classifications: hierarchical associations among concepts (relation "generic-specific”) Relevant for highly hierarchical subject fields (classifications in natural sciences). Insufficient for other subject fields.  Thesauruses: instruments for conceptual organization. Semantically related lists of terms.

Thesaurus: features Content: a thesaurus is a series of terms (generally standardized) related to one another semantically by synonymy, hyponymy (terms may be hyponyms of a given hypernym/hyperonym) and association. Structure: a thesaurus is a highly formalized document containing a controlled and dynamic vocabulary and a series of conceptual relations expressed formally through encoded expressions. Functions: Thesauruses are control instruments regulating the use of natural language with the aim of enabling information retrieval.

Thesaurus: reference work where words are grouped together according to similarity of meaning. Dictionary: reference work where words are defined tegory/attitude tegory/attitude try_index try_index

Terminology and specialized knowledge Terminology, as a set of terms, is absolutely necessary in all the activities involved in specialized knowledge: it is through the terms used in discourse that specialized knowledge is represented and consolidated. Specialists convey their knowledge using terms. Specialized communication attains its highest degree of precision and accuracy by means of terms.

Terminology and specialized knowledge The documentary description starts with real documents (showing different levels of formalization and specialization) produced by specialists. Documentary description allows: 1. to detect units representing the contents of documents; 2. to retrieve units afterwards.

Terminology and specialized knowledge Documentation is a reflection of the linguistic, scientific and ideological characteristics of the author or the group to which it is ascribed.

The terminological unit The terminological unit is the basic linguistic unit of specialized communication. Terminological units are units of the lexical system of languages. The terminological nature of lexical units is a value resulting from the association of a lexical unit to a precise meaning within a particular domain or thematic field.

Terminology and specialized knowledge TUs are part of Natural Language: when a lexical unit updates its specialized value it becomes a terminological unit. Terminological units are composed of form and meaning. The form follows the general characteristics of the grammar of each language. The meaning is specific within each discipline.

Terminology and specialized knowledge From the formal point of view, a terminological unit is a lexical unit that can be decomposed in smaller components unless it is formed by one unique lexical morpheme. In this case it is a univerbal simple unit. Basically, terminological units are nouns, as nouns allow us to reference and denominate specialized knowledge.

Terminology and specialized knowledge Real terminological units can be used in different fields. They can be polysemous in the sense that the same denomination may appear with a partially different meaning in other fields. In addition, there can also exist variants (synonyms), with identical or approximate but always equivalent meaning, to designate the same concept.