Corpus linguistics is of vital importance in terminology. The information obtained from corpora can be used to complement data in dictionaries and termbases. The authors describe a framework of linguistic analysis that facilitates the extraction of conceptual information from corpora. The authors are presently using this methodology in Oncoterm, a research project. One of the objectives is to elaborate a bilingual terminological database. In this termbase, medical concepts are organized in categories represented by templates. The application of the template to more specific concepts generates values that show the inheritance of knowledge structures within a specialized domain. The definitional information within each term entry is thus totally coherent with the information regarding other terms within the same conceptual category. This is conducive to the specification of a language of terminographic definition, which is concise, consistent and applicable to other medical domains and other languages.