27.811, Review: Cog Sci; Lexicography; Socioling; Text/Corpus Ling; Translation: Kockaert, Steurs (2015)

Fri Feb 12 17:00:14 UTC 2016

LINGUIST List: Vol-27-811. Fri Feb 12 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 27.811, Review: Cog Sci; Lexicography; Socioling; Text/Corpus Ling; Translation: Kockaert, Steurs (2015)

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Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2016 11:59:45
From: Bruno Maroneze [maronezebruno at yahoo.com.br]
Subject: Handbook of Terminology

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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/26/26-1923.html

EDITOR: Hendrik J.  Kockaert
EDITOR: Frieda  Steurs
TITLE: Handbook of Terminology
SUBTITLE: Volume 1
SERIES TITLE: Handbook of Terminology 1
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2015

REVIEWER: Bruno O. Maroneze, Universidade Federal da Grande Dourados

Reviews Editor: Helen Aristar-Dry

SUMMARY

This Handbook of Terminology, edited by H. Kockaert and F. Steurs, intends to
cover a broad range of topics within the field of Terminology, a domain
closely related to Linguistics (especially Lexicology), but which has
independent origins and its own methodologies (see Cabré, 1993). Its 25
chapters are divided into six different parts, preceded by an introduction and
a foreword. Each chapter is written by a different author (mostly academics,
but also authors working in environments other than universities, like
terminology management institutions) and has a short abstract and keywords
list at the beginning.

The introduction, written by the two editors, states the purposes of the
volume and also announces the subject of the second volume, which is
terminology management in the context of language communities and the global
computing environment. The text closes by presenting short descriptions of the
following chapters.

The foreword is written by Dirk Geeraerts, currently one of the most important
scholars in the field of lexical studies. His text emphasizes the links
between Terminology and Linguistics, stating that the disciplines had
different origins and went through different paths, especially because
Terminology was “lexically oriented rather than focusing on syntax, with an
applied and language-specific rather than universal and theoretical
perspective, and based on a theoretical framework that largely derived from
structuralist lexicology” (p. xvii). But nowadays, the growing interest in the
lexicon has been an opportunity for both fields to “narrow the gap” and, as a
result,  Terminology studies may now incorporate the new descriptive models of
the lexicon from Linguistics. Geeraerts also emphasizes the importance of the
digital revolution for the recent developments in Terminology, especially in
three aspects: “the abundant availability of digital texts”, forcing
terminologists to work together with corpus linguists; the digital form in
which terminographical products may now be presented; and the fact that
specialized language becomes less specialized because of the massive access to
specialized texts.

Part I is entitled “Fundamentals for term base development”. The first
contribution, by Pius ten Hacken, is “Terms and specialized vocabulary: taming
the prototypes”. The author opposes the traditional terminological definition
(based on necessary and sufficient conditions of a concept) to the idea that
concepts are based on prototypes. An important distinction established by ten
Hacken is that of terms and specialized vocabulary (which he bases on
Temmerman, 2000). For him, a word found in a specialized context constitutes a
term only when it is attributed a terminological definition, which happens
mainly in two contexts: that of legal disputes and that of scientific claims.
Otherwise, there is no need of terminological definitions and the concepts may
be described based on the notion of prototype. This approach seems slightly
different from other contributions in the same volume, such as Depecker’s.

The second chapter is entitled “Frames as a framework for terminology”, by
Pamela Faber. She presents Frame-Based Terminology (FBT), an approach which
brings contributions from Cognitive Linguistics (especially Frame Semantics)
and other recent models. FBT is divided into three micro-theories: (1) a
semantic micro-theory, drawing on concepts from the Generative Lexicon theory;
(2) a syntactic micro-theory, based on events and on verb predicate classes
(Aktionsarten); and (3) a pragmatic micro-theory, which addresses specialized
communication.

Loïc Depecker’s contribution is entitled “How to build terminology science?”
and addresses the problem of building a language for terminology work, the
“terms of terminology”, so to speak. He emphasizes the distinction between
“sign” and “term”, saying that terminology science deals with the relation
between a term (which is a linguistic sign), a concept and an object. Depecker
also clarifies notions such as “technicity”, “specialized language”, “special”
(as in “language for special purpose”), and explains some of the decisions
that were taken in the elaboration of ISO norms on Terminology.

The next contribution, by Kyo Kageura, is entitled “Terminology and
lexicography”. The author begins by stating the three meanings of the word
“Terminology”: (1) “the set of practices and methods used for the collection,
description and presentation of terms” (p. 45); (2) the theory that explains
the relationship between concepts and terms; (3) “A vocabulary of a special
subject field” (p. 45). He continues with the definitions and characteristics
of terms, distinguishing them from ordinary words (Section 2), and discusses
the theoretical and practical status of the terminology understood as a set of
terms (section 3). In Section 4, the author establishes a distinction between
terminology and linguistics, on one side, and between terminology and
epistemology, on the other, and finishes the article (Section 5) by
differentiating terminography and lexicography. It becomes clear that, for the
author, terminology and linguistics are two clearly separate (though related)
domains, a claim that is not consensual.

The chapter “Intensional definitions” is signed by three authors: Georg
Löckinger, Hendrik J. Kockaert and Gerhard Budin. It focuses on practical
issues with definitions, preceded by a short theoretical section. The authors
mention that this kind of definition has a history traceable back to Aristotle
and present many practical examples. Of great practical and didactic interest
are the “Rules for writing and assessing intensional definitions” (Section 5),
also very rich in examples, which render the text easier to understand. At the
end of the chapter, the authors present the Unified Modeling Language (UML), a
modeling language suited to represent intentional definitions, especially in
computational settings.

The next chapter, “Enumerations count”, by Henrik Nilsson, makes an
interesting counterpoint to the previous one, by focusing on extensional and
partitive definitions. Beginning by establishing a difference between
“enumerations in definitions” and “enumerations as definitions), the author
proposes a very thorough typology of definitions in which there is some
element of enumeration. The chapter ends with some prescriptive remarks as to
whether enumerations should be used as definitions and in which cases one
cannot avoid using enumerations. More discussion of this subject appears in
the “evaluation” section, below.

The chapter “Associative relations and instrumentality in causality” is
written by Paul Sambre and Cornelia Wermuth. The chapter presents a
description of the associative relations of instrument, cause and time in
titles of medicine articles. It is different from previous chapters in that it
has a more descriptive, rather than prescriptive, goal, and it presents a
fully linguistic semantic analysis, rather than establishing a clear
difference between terminology and linguistics. In fact, it could be
considered an analysis of scientific texts, more than of terms. It is
theoretically dense and relies heavily on cognitive linguistic concepts, such
as cognitive grammar and frame semantics.

The chapter “Ontological definition”, by Christophe Roche, deals with the
subject of ontology, understood as a description of concepts and its
relationships. The author clearly distinguishes between concepts (units of
knowledge) and meanings (linguistic dimensions of the concepts) and,
therefore, between term definition (the description of the linguistic meaning)
and thing definition (the description of the object), with a third concept,
name definition (a link between term and concept), in-between. The article
also deals with artificial languages best suited to represent concepts. It is
worth noting that the chapter has a great number of footnotes, which somewhat
compromise the ease of reading.

In “Domain specificity”, Claudia Santos and Rute Costa present the results of
research that focused on the methodology for term extraction and knowledge
representation. They discuss the dichotomy between semasiology and
onomasiology, arguing that both have their role in terminology theory and
practice, especially in extracting terminological data. They also stress the
importance of working with a team of specialists in the domain.

The last contribution of the first part is entitled “Getting to the core of a
terminological project”, by Claudia Dobrina. It is a very practice-oriented
chapter, that first presents a typology of terminological projects and then
describes two examples of projects in a very didactic way, aiming at people
who intend to work in this field.

This last contribution prepares the second part of the book (“Methods and
Technology”), with articles focusing on methodological matters. “Automatic
Term Extraction”, by Kris Heylen and Dirk De Hertog, describe many diverse
methods of term extraction by computer, like statistical and linguistic
approaches. The second article, “Terminology tools”, by Frieda Steurs, Ken De
Wachter and Evy De Malsche, is a review of five very important terminology
software programs, commonly used for knowledge management, document management
and translation work.

In “Concept modeling vs. data modeling in practice”, Bodil Nistrup Madsen and
Hanne Erdman Thomsen describe how the clarification of concepts is done by
means of terminological data modeling. They describe terminological ontologies
and the Unified Modeling Language (UML, also mentioned in other chapters). The
chapter ends with two concrete examples of concept modeling.

The last chapter of the second part is “Machine translation, translation
memory and terminology management”, by Peter Reynolds. He describes the use of
terminology resources in machine translation and translation memory
technologies, as well as presents a survey with translators on how they use
these resources.

The third part has the title “Management and quality assurance (QA)”, and
contains six papers on commercial and industrial applications of terminology.
The first one is “Terminology work and crowdsourcing”, by Barbara Inge Karsch,
a very interesting paper on the possibilities that the new concept of
crowdsourcing can open to terminological work. The author describes which
terminology tasks could be more suited to a crowdsourcing and which should be
made by an individual terminologist.

The next chapter, “Terminology and translation”, by Lynne Bowker, is the
second one in the book that deals specifically with the subject of terminology
applied to translation. The author describes many situations in which
translators may use terminology resources and also those in which they need to
create theirs; this would be a main difference between term banks (produced by
terminologists) and term bases (produced by translators). Another important
aspect is that of training translators in terminology, in face of the new
available technologies.

Another very interesting chapter on terminology and the “business world” is
“Managing terminology concepts”, by Silvia Cerrella Bauer. The author explains
how terminology management can be done in enterprises and organizations in
general, with very useful thoughts for the terminologist who is not accustomed
to the business administration world.

In “Terminology management within a translation quality assurance process”,
Monika Popiolek explains how terminology work can be integrated into QA
(Quality Assurance) models for translation processes, including guidelines and
computer tools to help these tasks.

Kara Warburton, in her chapter “Managing terminology in commercial contexts”,
has an approach which is slightly different from the other chapters in this
third part. The author proposes to rethink which terminology concepts should
be revised in order for Terminology theory be useful in commercial
environments.

The last chapter of the third part, by Alan K. Melby, presents TBX, a
XML-based terminology exchange format. The title of the chapter is “TBX: A
terminology exchange format for the translation and localization industry”.
The author first presents which would be the most important characteristics of
such a format and describes some previous attempts; he then makes an
evaluation of TBX based on those parameters and concludes by presenting the
format’s current status and possible future refinements.

Part IV of the book has the title “Case studies”, containing two chapters. The
first one, “Using frame semantics to build a bilingual lexical resource on
legal terminology”, by Janine Pimentel, is a description of JuriDiCo, an
online resource of legal terminology in a bilingual (English-Portuguese)
setting. The article focuses on the study of verbs, a word class that is very
important in legal terminology, and, for that, frame semantics proves to be a
very useful theoretical support.

The second article in this part is entitled “Terminology and localization”, by
Klaus-Dirk Schmitz. The author focuses on software localization and the
importance of terminology for this subject. He describes criteria for creating
a new term or selecting a preferred term, as well as some other issues on
terminology management for localization.

Part V is on “Language and terminology: Planning and policy” and contains two
chapters: “Language policy and terminology in South Africa”, by Bassey E.
Antia, and “Language policies and terminology policies in Canada”, by Nelida
Chan. Both chapters present the sociolinguistic situation of each country
(South Africa and Canada) and describe the importance of terminology within
language policies. In the South African case, the author shows an
implementation of a terminological data base in some minority languages. In
the Canadian case, Nelida Chan describes policies that are very specific to
each province, focusing on English and French, but also including minority
languages like Inuit.

The sixth and last part, “Terminology and interculturality”, contains only one
chapter, “The social and organizational context of terminology work”, by Anja
Drame. After first presenting the importance and reasons for investing in
Terminology (both social and economic) and of terminology policies, the author
introduces the concept of stakeholders, “individuals who are in a position to
influence and be influenced by corporate decisions” (p. 515), who could be
customers, employees, government, the media, among others. Stakeholders must
be taken into account in any terminology management project, because they may
provide support and also be the target groups. The author then focuses on
showing how stakeholders may be integrated in terminology projects. 

EVALUATION

Volume 1 of The Handbook of Terminology is certainly a very useful book for
terminologists and other professionals who deal with this subject. It contains
a good variety of subjects and a strong focus on practical matters.

It should be noted, however, that some absences could be pointed at. First of
all, it is clear that purely descriptive (linguistics-based) terminology is
not a major concern for the editors; diachronic terminology, which has been an
important subject in descriptive approaches (and is a main area of interest
for this reviewer) could also be remarked as an important absence (Dury;
Picton, 2009 may be mentioned here).

It is also worth remarking that many theoretical chapters in Part I present a
view that is not shared by many researchers in the field, especially by
terminologists working on more linguistics-based approaches (including this
reviewer). For example, Depecker’s chapter presents a clear separation between
terminology science and linguistics: “terminology science and terminology work
deal with two elements other than those commonly used in linguistics” (p. 36).
This could be contrasted with the following quote from Cabré: “Para mí, los
términos no son unidades distintas a las unidades del léxico, sino unidades
del léxico que adquieren características específicas en su uso discursivo.”
[To me, terms are not units distinct from lexical units, but lexical units
which acquire specific traits in their use in discourse] (Krieger; Santiago;
Cabré, 2013).

This strong “separatist” view can also be noted, for instance, in the chapter
on intensional definitions (by Löckinger, Kockaert and Budin). Here, the
authors present some shortcomings of this kind of definition (p. 67), but
there is one aspect that is never mentioned: the now famous criticism to
Aristotelian concepts made by prototype theory (for instance, Geeraerts,
2006). Although one can disagree with prototype theory, it is worth noting
that it has often been applied to terminology theory (as in the first chapter,
by ten Hacken).

Prototype theory could also be remembered in the chapter on extensional
definitions. On pages 97-98, Nilsson mentions the difficulty of finding an
intensional definition for the concept of “narcotic drug”, although it is not
so difficult “to answer the question if a certain substance is a narcotic
drug” (p. 98). Here, understanding the concept of “narcotic drug” as a
prototype-based concept would help us to explain why it is so difficult to
find a set of common defining traits for it, even if one recognizes, by
prototypicality effects, what should or should not be considered a narcotic
drug.

Having noted that the theoretical perspectives of the book do not always
represent consensus in the field, one should praise the great emphasis on
practical matters, which are not often seen in academic terminology works.
Parts II, III and IV, together with the last chapter of Part I (which maybe
would be better placed in Part II), present a rich variety of practical
subjects, dealing with fields highly diverse from linguistics, like business,
commerce and management. This emphasis on practice, in the view of this
reviewer, is the greatest contribution of this book, because it helps
terminologists (especially those with academic, theoretical background) to
also be inserted in terminology works outside academic circles.

REFERENCES

CABRÉ, Maria Teresa. 1993. La Terminología. Teoría, Metodología, Aplicaciones.
Barcelona: Editorial Antártida/Empúries.

DURY, Pascaline & PICTON, Amélie. 2009. Terminologie et diachronie: vers une
réconciliation théorique et méthodologique? Revue française de linguistique
appliquée. XIV. 31-41.

GEERAERTS, Dirk. 2006. Prospects and problems of prototype theory. In:
GEERAERTS, Dirk (ed.). Cognitive Linguistics: basic readings. Berlin: Mouton
de Gruyter. 141-65.

KRIEGER, Maria da Graça; SANTIAGO, Márcio Sales; CABRÉ, Maria Teresa. 2013.
Terminologia em foco: uma entrevista comentada com Maria Teresa Cabré
[Terminology in focus: an annotated interview with Maria Teresa Cabré].
Calidoscópio 11/3. 328-332.
http://revistas.unisinos.br/index.php/calidoscopio/article/view/cld.2013.113.1
1/3771 (22 Sept. 2015)

TEMMERMAN, Rita. 2000. Towards new ways of terminology description: the
sociocognitive approach. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Bruno O. Maroneze completed his Ph.D. in the University of Sao Paulo in 2011.
His Ph.D. thesis focuses on Brazilian Portuguese neologisms formed by
suffixation. His main research interests are on Lexicology, specifically word
formation, neologisms and diachronic studies of the lexicon. He is currently
teaching in the Faculty of Communication, Arts and Letters of the Universidade
Federal da Grande Dourados, MS, Brazil.

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