Lexical complimentarity as an indicator of terminology normalization (the case study of international relations term system in the English, German and Ukrainian languages)

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LEXICAL COMPLIMENTARITY AS AN INDICATOR OF TERMINOLOGY NORMALIZATION (THE CASE STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS TERM SYSTEM IN THE ENGLISH, GERMAN AND UKRAINIAN LANGUAGES)

Z. Kudelko

Abstract

The article highlights peculiarities of lexical complementarity of the terms in the German, English and Ukrainian languages in the term system of international relations. The terminological units of the abovementioned terminological sphere are analyzed and compared taking into consideration their internal and external forms. The dependence of internationalization of the term and its motivation on its length is revealed. The obtained results show the degree of similarity of the terms of international relations in the studied languages, determining the possible prospects for their harmonization.

Key words: terminology, term, lexical complementarity, external form, internal form, term length, terminology harmonization.

Анотація

З.Б. Куделько.

У статті розглядаються особливості лексичної спорідненості термінологічних одиниць терміносистеми міжнародних відносин в англійській, німецькій та українській мовах. Лексична спорідненість є мірилом інтернаціоналізації та гармонізації термінології. За основу дослідження було взято 1 000 термінологічних одиниць даної фахової субмови, які порівнювалися за зовнішньою та внутрішньою формою. Експеримент продемонстрував ступінь близькості термінів міжнародних відносин у досліджуваних мовах, визначаючи можливу перспективу їх гармонізації. Було виявлено, що терміносистема міжнародних відносин має досить високий ступінь нормалізації, про що свідчить структурна близькість термінів досліджуваних мов. Дана терміносфера орієнтована, головним чином, на лексичні одиниці англійської мови, тобто, мову-продуцент терміносистеми міжнародних відносин, що зумовлює високий відсоток лексичної спорідненості між англійською й українською мовами через велику кількість інтернаціоналізмів та запозичень з англійської мови. Було встановлено, що найнижчий серед трьох мов ступінь спорідненості за зовнішньою формою - в німецької, оскільки, що в даній мові мовці часто намагаються замінити зовнішню форму, але зберігають внутрішню форму, про що свідчить велика кількість імпліцитних інтернаціоналізмів. Під час проведення дослідження з'ясовано, що існує залежність рівня спорідненості від лексичної довжини термінів, а також обчислена середня лексична довжина термінів для кожної мови. Підтверджено тезу про те, що ступінь умотивованості залежить від лексичної довжини. Значення ступеня вмотивованості зростають зі збільшенням лексичної довжини терміна від однієї до трьох-чотирьох основ і знижуються при досягненні терміном довжини 5-ти та більше основ. Найбільш вмотивованими є терміни, які складаються з 2-4 основ. Дана наукова розвідка доводить, що фахова субмова міжнародних відносин має досить високий ступінь нормалізації, про що свідчить також структурна близькість термінів англійської, української та німецької мов. Автор приходить до висновку, що контакт і взаємодія термінологій різних мов веде до їх взаємного збагачення, що своєю чергою сприяє уніфікації та інтернаціоналізації терміносфер, щоб забезпечити ефективне спілкування на міжнародному рівні, а отже, значно сприятиме інтернаціоналізації та інтеграції терміносистеми міжнародних відносин.

Ключові слова: термінологія, термін, лексична спорідненість, зовнішня форма, внутрішня форма, лексична довжина, термінологічна нормалізація.

At the present stage, the terminology of international relations is one of the most developed and extensive terminologies. The number of terms that form this term system numbers tens of thousands of term units. Despite this, it is constantly being replenished and expanded. The process of enrichment of the terminology of international relations is continuous and closely related to the scientific and technological progress, the emergence of new concepts and phenomena in this field. Therefore, the linguists face two issues: motivation of the terms and the problem of their normalization. The «terminological explosion», which has been observed recently, requires closer attention from linguists. Terminologists should not only register, select, recommend existing terms for experts in a particular field, but also direct all terminological processes of the relevant sciences.

The relevance of this article is to identify the degree of the lexical complementarity of international relations terms, allowing the development of fairly objective approaches to improving and normalizing this professional sublanguage to avoid unambiguity and eliminate the terminology barrier, to optimize the Ukrainian-language terminology formation. The objective of the article is to analyze the lexical complementarity of the term units in the international relations terminology by means of comparing term units in the English, German and Ukrainian languages and, consequently, to establish the principles for this terminological sphere harmonization.

The issues of lexical complementarity, internationalization and terminological normalization have long been the subject of the study of many scholars: Y. Apresyan, V. Dubichinsky, B. Golovin, V. Grinev, T. Kyiak, G. Budin, F. Columas, H. Felber, E. Wuster and others.

According to modern linguists, the lack of an orderly uniform terminology complicates the training and communication of researchers and scientific and technical workers (within one country and internationally); the conclusion of technical documentation often leads to errors in solving scientific and technical issues. As of today, the terminological units are required to be unambiguous within one field, complete in the reflection of meaning, conceptually accurate and, at the same time, brief in presentation.

These tasks are directly related to the problems of the content organization of the language units, and therefore - with issues of their internal form and lexical meaning. A term functioning is of a significant role for the development of knowledge especially when it comes to coining of new concepts and phenomena. It possesses classifying and analogic (modelling) function. The first one allows to specify the existing notions; the second one assists in creating new notions by means of analogy with already existing ones (Grinev-Grinevich, 2008). Hence there is a need to improve the language, including the selection of internal forms focused on meaning, to prevent arbitrariness in the use and construction of linguistic expressions.

The effectiveness of decisions about the choice of forms and their contribution to the specifics of meaning, as well as their use depend on the understanding of most general laws that govern the development and operation of terminology. lexical affinity terminology language

Discovering and explanation of the general rules for the terminology development and functioning is not an easy task, because in natural languages many laws are manifested indirectly in the form of trends and rules and are often incomprehensible at first glance. However, the analysis of the results of terminological research of English, German and Ukrainian terms from different subject areas shows that the development of terminology is influenced by a number of linguistic and extralinguistic factors (Grinev, 1993, p. 156).

The lexical complementarity of terminological units of different languages plays a significant role in the process of normalization of terms and regulation of terminological systems.

We consider complementarity as the degree of terms internationalization in different languages, the degree of closeness of terminological systems of different languages.

Comparing the terminological units belonging to different languages, there can be traced a certain semantic discrepancy between them, first of all, in terms of a term expression, differences in the internal forms of the words belonging to different languages. Such variances arise mainly due to the fact that cultural-historical and universal experience is reflected in the meanings of words, and the system of this particular language offers linguistic means for their expression.

In the process of linguistic research, some scholars (for example, F. de Saussure and his followers) believed that this phenomenon confirms the dependence of the differential nature of language on the system; others explained it by the fact that the scope and content of similar meanings (or internal forms) in different languages are not similar.

Concepts are of beyond national nature, while the linguistic means that express them contain certain structural features that are inherent in each language. Despite the differences in the ways of forming concepts and the difference in semantic structures in different languages, translation from one language to another is always possible. On the one hand, each language has a national originality, and on the other hand you can find a lot of similarities in different languages.

These are possible differences in the structural formalization of ideas that can generate reasonable and unfounded points of view about «rich» or «poor» languages, about their disadvantages and advantages. In addition, in the context of international professional communication, different lexical design of terminological units creates significant difficulties, especially the problems that arise in connection with scientific and technical translation (Kiyak, 1989, p. 79). First of all, this is due to the need to achieve mutual understanding: as a rule, a term that more accurately conveys the common meaning for both of them can be found only in one of the two.

One way to overcome the above differences and difficulties is the interlingual unification of terms. The measure of interlingual harmonization of terminology is lexical complementarity.

T. Kyiak proposes to distinguish two types of interlingual unification of terms: external and internal forms (Kiyak, 1989, p. 79).

By external form unification we mean the complete internationalization of terminological units, which leads to the modification of only some functional features of languages and does not affect the international sound and meaning of the term. The number of such terms gradually increases and depends in different terminological spheres on many extralinguistic factors (Bachinskiy, Kiyak and Knignitskaya, 1988, p. 13).

Examining the terminology of international relations, we tried to offer a plausible and effective approach to comparing the literal meanings of English terms with appropriate meanings of German and Ukrainian terms. The criterion for selection was the degree of lexical complementarity. 1 000 terminological units of this terminological system were taken as a basis. Comparing the terms of these languages, 3 groups were identified:

1) terms, the external form of which completely coincides in the compared languages, for example: abolitionist (English) - Abolitionist (German) - аболіціоніст (Ukrainian); dragoman (English) - Dragoman (German) - драгоман (Ukrainian); immigrant (English) - Immigrant (German) - іммігрант (Ukrainian) (Kaminska, Kudelko and Logvinov, 2014);

2) terms, the external form of which partially coincides, for example: internuncio (English) - Internuntius (German) - інтернунцій (Ukrainian); vice-consul (English) - Vizeconsul (German) - віце-консул (Ukrainian); state border (English) - Staatsgrenze (German) (Kaminska, Kudelko and Logvinov, 2014);

3) terminological units, the external form of which does not match, for example: peace (English) - Frieden (German) - мир (Ukrainian); inviolability (English) - Unverletzbarkeit (German) - недоторканість (Ukrainian); declaration of war (English) - Kriegserklarung (German) - оголошення війни (Ukrainian) (Kaminska, Kudelko and Logvinov, 2014).

The results of the experiment are shown in the Table 1.

Table 1. Lexical complementarity of terms by the external form in the English, German and Ukrainian languages

Similarly, the study was conducted on the internal form of the terms. The process of interlingual unification of terminological units by internal form is more complex and important. By implicit internationalization we mean the presence of the same semantic elements in the plane of term expression; absence of «extra» lexical items used in only one of the compared languages; establishment of identical semantic relations between constituent morphemes (Bachinskiy, Kiyak and Knignitskaya, 1988, p. 14).

Similarly to the division of terms by external form, groups of terms by internal form were identified:

1) terms, whose internal form completely coincides in the compared languages, for example: політичний авантюризм (Ukrainian) - political adventurism (Ukr.); вірча грамота (Ukrainian) - Beglaubigungsschreiben (German); letters of recall (English) - Abberufungsschreiben (German) (Kaminska, Kudelko and Logvinov, 2014);

2) terms, whose internal form partially coincides, for example: відхилити ноту (Ukrainian) - to reject a note (English); recipient country (English) - Empfangerstaat (German); multifunctional bank (English) - Universalbank (German) (Kaminska, Kudelko and Logvinov, 2014);

3) terminological units, the internal form of which does not match, for example: емісар (Ukrainian) - Sendbote (German); expatriation (English) - Auslandszulage (German); зачистка (Ukrainian) - mopping-up operation (English) (Kaminska, Kudelko and Logvinov, 2014).

In the Table 2 we present the results of this experiment.

Table 2. Lexical complementarity of terms by the internal form in the English, German and Ukrainian languages

Thus, as we see, the results show the degree of similarity of the terms of international relations in the studied languages, determining the possible prospects for their harmonization, which gives grounds to draw the following conclusions:

1. The terminological system of international relations has a fairly high degree of normalization, as evidenced by the structural similarity of the terms of the studied languages.

2. The terminological sphere under consideration is focused mainly on lexical units of the English language and to a lesser extent on German terms.

3. The lexical complementarity between English and Ukrainian is a high percentage due to a large number of internationalisms and borrowings from English, which is the language-producer of this terminology.

4. The lowest degree of complementarity in external form among three languages is represented in German, due to the fact that in this language there is a tendency to replace the external form, but retain the internal form, as evidenced by a large number of implicit internationalisms.

5. Indicators of lexical complementarity between Ukrainian and German terminological units of the terminological system of international relations occupy an intermediate place.

6. The studies of this terminological area indicate the dependence of the level of complementarity on the lexical length of terms. By lexical length we mean the number of stems of the term. The lexical length of the term is defined as the number of full words that are part of the term-phrase (Bialyk, 1997, p. 79). We calculated the average lexical length of terms for each language:

- 2.14 stems in English;

- 2.35 stems in German;

- 2.4 stems in the Ukrainian language;

These studies confirmed the idea that the degree of motivation depends on the lexical length. The value of the degree of motivation intensifies with increasing of the lexical length of the term from one to three or four stems and decreases when the term reaches a length of 5 or more stems. The greatest value of the degree of motivation is reached in the terms consisting of 2-4 stems (see Table 3).

Table 3. Dependence of the terms motivation on their lexical length

The increase in the degree of motivation with the increase in the number of stems from which the term is formed, is explained by the fact that the increase of words allows to better express the desired meaning. The decrease in the degree of motivation in the words with high values of the term length is explained, apparently, by the fact that when constructing multi-word terms the choice of words is determined not only by the need to express the necessary information in the term, but also by a number of purely linguistic factors, in particular the norms of lexical compatibility. In addition, in multi-word terms there are lexical items that are irrelevant in terms of lexical meaning or absent in it at all (Bialyk, 1997, p. 8).

The above data confirm the characteristic conclusion for other terminological systems, according to which:

1) the average lexical length is inversely dependent on the degree of complete internationalization of terminological units. Therefore, German terms have the greatest lexical length, and English - the shortest;

2) another reason for the biggest average lexical length of German terms is the peculiarities of word formation of the language, which is characterized by complex words and phrases, while English and Ukrainian languages are characterized by the terms formation by means of affixation;

3) the degree of motivation in some way depends on the lexical length. 2-4 stem terms have the highest values of motivation.

4) the terminology of international relations has a fairly high degree of normalization, as evidenced by the structural similarity of terms in English, Ukrainian and German.

5) the lexical complementarity of the terminological units of the studied languages depends on the lexical length of the term. The greater the degree of internationalization of terminological units, the shorter the lexical length.

6) the process of harmonization of terms of different languages contributes to normalization of terminological systems to avoid unambiguous understanding and eliminating the terminology barrier. It will enhance unification and internationalization terminology to provide effective communication on the international level and therefore will considerably facilitate the internationalization and integration of the terminological sphere of international relations.

Бібліографічний список

1. Бачинский, Я. В., Кияк, Т. Р. и Книгницкая, М. И., 1988. Семантическая и формальная близость терминов русского, английского и немецкого языков. Научно-техническая терминология, 6. с. 12-17.

2. Бялик, В. Д., 1997. Структурно-семантичні параметри терміна і його вмотивованість. Науковий вісник Чернівецького університету. Серія: Германська філологія, 12, с. 78-82.

3. Гринев-Гриневич, С. В., 2008. Терминоведение. Москва: Академия.

4. Камінська, О. І., Куделько, З. Б. та Логвінов, І. І., 2014. Багатомовний тлумачний і перекладний словник дипломатичних термінів. Чернівці: Букрек.

5. Кияк, Т. Р., 1989. Лингвистические аспекты терминоведения. Киев: УМК ВО Украины. Grinev, S. V., 1993. Terminology Research in the Former USSR. Knowledge Organization, 20 (3), pp. 150-159.

References

1. Bachinskiy, Ya. V., Kiyak, T. R. and Knignitskaya, M. I., 1988. Semanticheskaya i formalnaya blizost terminov russkogo, angliyskogo i nemetskogo yazykov [Semantic and formal similarity of terms in Russian, English and German]. Nauchno-tekhnicheskaya terminologiya, 6, pp. 12-17. (in Russian).

2. Bialyk, V. D., 1997. Strukturno-semantychni parametry termina i yoho vmotyvovanist [Structural and semantic parameters of the term and its motivation]. Germanic Philology Journal of Yuriy Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University, 12, pp. 78-82. (in Ukrainian).

3. Grinev-Grinevich, S. V., 2008. Terminovedenie [The science of terminology], Moskva: Akademiya. (in Russian).

4. Grinev, S. V., 1993. Terminology Research in the Former USSR. Knowledge Organization, 20 (3), pp. 150-159.

5. Kaminska, O. I., Kudelko, Z. B. and Logvinov, I. I., 2014. Bahatomovnyi tlumachnyi i perekladnyi slovnyk dyplomatychnykh terminiv [Multilingual explanatory and translation dictionary of diplomatic terms]. Chernivtsi: Bukrek. (in Ukrainian).

6. Kiyak, T. R., 1989. Lingvisticheskie aspekty terminovedeniya [Linguistic aspects of terminology]. Kiev: UMK VO Ukrainy. (in Russian).

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