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Terminology: Online-First Articles

Managing polysemy in terminological resources [*] *

ORCID logo | Université de Montréal

Polysemy, even when it is considered within specialized domains, is a recurrent phenomenon and the topic is debated from time to time in terminology literature. Part of this literature still advocates ways to prevent polysemy. Another portion recognizes the prevalence of polysemy, especially in specialized corpora, but considers it from the perspective of other phenomena, such as ambiguity, indeterminacy, categorization or variation. Although the number of perspectives on meaning have increased over the years, the treatment of polysemy in terminological resources is still unsatisfactory. This article first shows that polysemy is an integral part of specialized communication and that there are different kinds of domain-specific polysemy. Then, it reviews selected perspectives that have been taken on polysemy in terminology literature. The treatment of 45 polysemous lexical items in four specialized resources is then analysed. Finally, different methods based on lexical semantics are proposed to account for polysemy in terminological resources.

Keywords: terminology, polysemy, predicative units, alternation, terminological resource, semantic frame, semantic relations, microsense
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Polysemy in specialized domains
    • 2.1Regular polysemy
    • 2.2Alternations
    • 2.3Microsenses
  • 3.Different views on polysemy in terminology
    • 3.1Mutually exclusive concepts
    • 3.2Polysemy and related phenomena
    • 3.3Domain-specific meanings and common or general meanings
    • 3.4Polysemy in domain-specific resources
    • 3.5Treatment of polysemous lexical items in four domain-specific resources
      • 3.5.1A focus on knowledge structures
      • 3.5.2Nouns and multiword terms
      • 3.5.3Imprecise or missing meaning distinctions
  • 4.Polysemy in terminological resources
    • 4.1Lexical relations
    • 4.2Labelling of arguments
    • 4.3Situating meanings in broader conceptual situations
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 25 July 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/term.22017.lho
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