Cover not available
Part of
Multiple Perspectives on Terminological Variation
Edited by Patrick Drouin, Aline Francœur, John Humbley and Aurélie Picton
[Terminology and Lexicography Research and Practice 18] 2017
► pp. 213–258

Chapter 9
Term and concept variation in specialized knowledge dynamics

 | University of Granada
Variation is a relatively new area of study in Terminology, as traditional approaches initially relied on the univocity principle and represented concepts in static universal structures. This means that for a long time, neither term nor concept variations were regarded as important and were largely ignored. Nonetheless, specialized domains are dynamic, and dynamism is an inevitable source of variation. The same reality can be perceived in different ways, giving rise to different conceptualizations, which in turn cause different denominations to emerge. This is known as multidimensionality. This chapter explores this phenomenon by analysing its impact on term and concept variation. As shall be seen, term and concept variation, far from being unrelated, are the consequence of the convergent influence of multidimensionality, context, and dynamism in specialized domains.
Keywords: term variation, concept variation, multidimensionality, context
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Term variation in the psychiatric domain
    • 2.1Representing term variants in VariMed
    • 2.2Extracting term variants from a specialized corpus
    • 2.3Analysing dimensional variants
      • 2.3.1Dimensions and text types
      • 2.3.2Term variants and text types
      • 2.3.3Term variants and collocational context
  • 3.Concept variation in the environmental domain
    • 3.1Representing conceptual networks in EcoLexicon
    • 3.2Extracting hyponymic structures from a specialized corpus
    • 3.3Analysing multiple hypernyms
      • 3.3.1Intra- and intercategorial multidimensionality
      • 3.3.2Hypernym preference across subdomains
      • 3.3.3From multiple hypernyms to other semantic relations
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 24 August 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/tlrp.18.09leo
References (40)
References
American Psychiatric Association. 2013. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th ed. Arlington (VA): American Psychiatric Publishing. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Akman, Varol. 2000. “Rethinking Context as a Social Construct.” Journal of Pragmatics 32 (6): 743–759. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Barrière, Caroline. 2004. “Building a Concept Hierarchy from Corpus Analysis.” Terminology 10 (2): 241–263. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Barsalou, Lawrence W. 2005. “Situated Conceptualization.” In Handbook of Categorization in Cognitive Science, ed. by Henri Cohen, and Claire Lefebvre, 619–650. St. Louis: Elsevier. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bowker, Lynne. 1997. “Multidimensional Classification of Concepts and Terms.” In Handbook of Terminology Management: Basic Aspects of Terminology Management, ed. by Sue Ellen Wright, and Gerhard Budin, 133–143. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1998. “Variant Terminology: Frivolity or Necessity?” In Proceedings of EURALEX’ 98, ed. by Thierry Fontenelle, Philippe Hiligsmann, Archibald Michiels, André Moulin, and Siegfried Theissen, 487–495. Liège: University of Liège.Google Scholar
Bowker, Lynne, and Shane Hawkins. 2006. “Variation in the Organization of Medical Terms: Exploring some Motivations for Term Choice.” Terminology 12 (1): 79–110. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Candel, Mora, Miguel Ángel, and Marisa Carrió Pastor. 2012. “Corpus Analysis: A Pragmatic Perspective on Term Variation.” Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada 1: 33–50.Google Scholar
Casey, Patricia R., and Brendan Kelly. 2007. Fish’s Clinical Psychopathology: Signs and Symptoms in Psychiatry. London: Gaskell.Google Scholar
Condamines, Anne. 2002. “Corpus Analysis and Conceptual Relation Patterns.” Terminology 8 (1): 141–162. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Croft, William, and D. Alan Cruse. 2004. Cognitive Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cruse, D. Alan. 1986. Lexical semantics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
. 2002. “Hyponymy and Its Varieties.” In The Semantics of Relationships, ed. by Rebecca Green, Carol A. Bean, and Sung Hyon Myang, 3–21. Dordrecht: Kluwer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Faber, Pamela, Pilar León-Araúz, and Arianne Reimerink. 2014. “Representing Environmental Knowledge in EcoLexicon.” In Languages for Specific Purposes in the Digital Era, Educational Linguistics 19, ed. by Elena Bárcena, Timothy Read, and Jorge Arhus, 267–301. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fernández-Silva, Sabela, Judit Freixa, and María Teresa Cabré. 2011. “A Proposed Method for Analysing the Dynamics of Cognition through Term Variation.” Terminology 17 (1): 49–73. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Freixa, Judit. 2006. “Causes of Denominative Variation in Terminology: A Typology Proposal.” Terminology 12 (1): 51–77. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hearst, Marti A. 1992. “Automatic Acquisition of Hyponyms from Large Text Corpora.” In Actes de COLING-92, 2:539–45. Morristown, NJ: International Committee on Computational Linguistics.
Kageura, Kyo. 1997. “Multifaceted/Multidimensional Concept Systems.” In Handbook of Terminology Management: Basic Aspects of Terminology Management, ed. by Sue Ellen Wright, and Gerhard Budin, 119–132. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kristiansen, Marita. 2011. “Domain Dynamics in Scholarly Areas. How External Pressure may Cause Concept and Term Changes.” Terminology 17 (1): 30–48. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Langacker, Ronald W. 1987. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar: Theoretical Prerequisites, Vol 1. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
León-Araúz, Pilar, Pedro Magaña, and Pamela Faber. 2009. “Building the SISE: An Environmental Ontology.” In European Conference of the Czech Presidency of the Council of the EU TOWARDS eENVIRONMENT Opportunities of SEIS and SISE: Integrating Environmental Knowledge in Europe, ed. by Jiří Hrebícek, Jiří Hradec, Emil Pelikán, Ondřej Mírovský, Werner Pillmann, Ivan Holoubek, and Thomas Bandholtz, 16–23. Brno: Masaryk University.Google Scholar
León-Araúz, Pilar, and Pedro Magaña. 2010. “EcoLexicon: Contextualizing an Environmental Ontology.” In Proceedings of the Terminology and Knowledge Engineering (TKE) Conference 2010 . Dublin: Dublin City University.
León Araúz, Pilar, and Pamela Faber. 2012. “Causality in the Specialized Domain of the Environment.” In Proceedings of the Workshop Semantic Relations-II. Enhancing Resources and Applications (LREC’12), ed. by V.B. Mititelu, O. Popescu, and V. Pekar, 10–17. Istanbul: ELRA. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
León-Araúz, Pilar, Arianne Reimerink, and Alejandro García Aragón. 2013a. “Dynamism and Context in Specialized Knowledge.” Terminology 19 (1): 31–61. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
León-Araúz, Pilar, Arianne Reimerink, and Pamela Faber. 2013b. “Multidimensional and Multimodal Information in EcoLexicon.” In Computational Linguistics, ed. by Adam Przepiórkowski, Maciej Piasecki, Krzysztof Jassem, and Piotr Fuglewicz, 143–161. Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
León-Araúz, Pilar 2014. “Semantic Relations and Local Grammars for the Environment.” In Formalising Natural Languages with NooJ 2013, ed. by Svetla Koeva, Slim Mesfar, and Max Silberztein, 87–102. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Google Scholar
León-Araúz, Pilar, and Arianne Reimerink. 2016. “Multidimensional Categorization in Corpus-based Hyponymic Structures.” In Corpus-based Studies on Language Varieties, ed. by Francisco Alonso Almeida, Laura Cruz García, and Víctor González Ruiz. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Marshman, Elizabeth, Tricia Morgan, and Ingrid Meyer. 2002. “French Patterns for Expressing Concept Relations.” Terminology 8 (1): 1–29. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Meyer, Ingrid. 2001. “Extracting Knowledge-rich Contexts for Terminography: A Conceptual and Methodological Framework.” In Recent Advances in Computational Terminology, ed. by Didier Bourigault, Christian Jacquemin, and Marie-Claude L’Homme, 279–302. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Michalski, Ryszard S. 1991. Concepts as Flexible and Context-dependent Sets: The Two-Tiered View. Fairfax: George Mason University.Google Scholar
Murphy, M. Lynne. 2003. Semantic Relations and the Lexicon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Picht, Heribert, and Jennifer Draskau. 1985. Terminology: An Introduction. Guildford: University of Surrey.Google Scholar
Rogers, Margaret. 1997. “Synonymy and Equivalence in Special-Language Texts. A Case Study in German and English Texts on Genetic Engineering.” In Text Typology and Translation, ed. by Anna Trosborg, 217–245. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2004. “Multidimensionality in Concepts Systems: A Bilingual Textual Perspective.” Terminology 10 (2): 215–240. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rosch, Eleanor. 1978. “Principles of categorization.” In Cognition and Categorization, ed. by E. Rosch and B.L. Lloyd, 27–47. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Silberztein, Max. 2003. NooJ Manual. Available at: [URL]Google Scholar
. 2015. La formalisation des langues. L’approche de NooJ. London: ISTE.Google Scholar
Tercedor Sánchez, Maribel, Clara Inés López Rodríguez, and Juan Antonio Prieto Velasco. 2014. “También los pacientes hacen terminología: retos del proyecto VariMed.” Panace@: Revista de Medicina, Lenguaje y Traducción 15 (39): 95–102.Google Scholar
Tsuji, Keita, and Kyo Kageura. 1998. “An Analysis of Medical Synonyms: The Word-Structure of Preferred Terms.” Terminology 5 (2): 229–249. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wright, Sue Ellen. 1997. “Representation of Concept Systems.” In Handbook of Terminology Management: Basic Aspects of Terminology Management, ed. by Sue Ellen Wright, and Gerhard Budin, 89–97. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (10)

Cited by ten other publications

Vezzani, Federica & Rute Costa
2024. Variation in psychopathological terminology. Terminology. International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Issues in Specialized Communication 30:1 ► pp. 81 ff. DOI logo
Benítez Carrasco, Valeria & Pilar León-Araúz
2023. Denominative variation in the COVID-19 Open Research Dataset corpus. Terminology. International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Issues in Specialized Communication 29:2 ► pp. 252 ff. DOI logo
Chambó, Santiago & Pilar León Araúz
2023. Corpus-driven conceptual analysis of epidemic and coronavirus for the Humanitarian Encyclopedia. Terminology. International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Issues in Specialized Communication 29:2 ► pp. 180 ff. DOI logo
Li, Biwei
2023. Conceptual deviation in terminology translation. Terminology. International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Issues in Specialized Communication 29:2 ► pp. 351 ff. DOI logo
Cabezas-García, Melania & Pilar León-Araúz
2022. Term and concept variation in climate change communication. The Translator 28:4 ► pp. 429 ff. DOI logo
Cabezas-García, Melania & Pilar León-Araúz
2023. Indirect translation and its influence on term variation. Translation Spaces 12:2 ► pp. 255 ff. DOI logo
San Martín, Antonio, Catherine Trekker & Pilar León-Araúz
2022. Repérage automatisé de l’hyponymie dans des corpus spécialisés en français à l’aide de Sketch Engine. Terminology. International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Issues in Specialized Communication 28:2 ► pp. 264 ff. DOI logo
Cabezas-García, Melania & Santiago Chambó
2021. Multi-word term variation. Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada/Spanish Journal of Applied Linguistics 34:2 ► pp. 402 ff. DOI logo
Budin, Gerhard
2019. Zum Entwicklungsstand der Terminologiewissenschaft. In Terminologie : Epochen – Schwerpunkte – Umsetzungen [Kommunikation und Medienmanagement, ], ► pp. 7 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2022. Theoretical Perspectives on Terminology [Terminology and Lexicography Research and Practice, 23], DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 30 december 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.