ISKO 2010

1. ISKO 2010 TERMINOLOGY AS ORGANIZED KNOWLEDGE BoyanAlexiev Nancy Marksbury

2. Outline Terminology as Organized Knowledge ISKO 2010 • Introduction • Theoretical and Methodological Premises of KO • Theoretical and Methodological Approaches to Terminology • Commonalities Between KO and Terminology • Conclusion

3. Introduction Terminology as Organized Knowledge ISKO 2010 Why look at Terminology as Organized Knowledge? • Overlaps between IS and T: • both solve communication problems in special languages • both make use of common info management tools (keywords, indexes, thesauri, etc.) • both benefit from modern database storage and retrieval systems • Terminology management today is knowledge-based: • knowledge-rich contexts extracted for constructing definitions and acquiring domain knowledge • lexical knowledge patterns used for automatic term extraction

4. Aim Terminology as Organized Knowledge ISKO 2010 Aim of paper: Exploring possibilities to integrate KO and T research methods in a knowledge-oriented approach to terminography

5. Theoretical and methodological premises of KO (1) Premises Terminology as Organized Knowledge ISKO 2010 • Definitions of KO • description, indexing and classification of documents (KOS) • how knowledge is socially organized (broader meaning within IS) • Four KO paradigms in terms of interpretation of concept formation: • Empiricism - concepts corresponding to sensations • Rationalism - simple concepts inborn, complex concepts defined from simple ones • Historicism - concept formation affected by traditions and social communities • Pragmatism– concepts formed by people’s practical activity

6. Theoretical and methodological premises of KO (2) Premises Terminology as Organized Knowledge ISKO 2010 • Modern and Postmodern Theories of KO • Modern view of the world: neutral and objective (positivist view) • Task of classification: mapping and representing this world of ideas • Research and thinking in KO focused on rules and guidelines for creating classification systems (e.g. thesaurus building) • Post-modernism: KO an active construction of reality and a particular view of the world • Semantics of words revealed in use (discourse community) • KO = social construction, so KOS more transparent and effective • Pragmatic view: KO deals with human needs and interests • KO units: K elements (concept characteristics), K units (concepts), larger K units (concept combinations), K systems

7. Theoretical and methodological premises of KO (3) Premises Terminology as Organized Knowledge ISKO 2010 • KO methods: scientific and bibliographic • Fundamental scientific methods of KO related to basic paradigms: • Empiricism (observations and inductions): Classification by statistical generalizations based in “similarity” • Rationalism (pure reason, deductions): Classification based on logical, universal divisions • Historicism: Classification based on historical or evolutionary development (taxonomies) • Pragmatism: Classification based on specific values, policies, goals • KOS and Semantic Tools

8. Theoretical and methodological approaches to T(1) Approaches Terminology as Organized Knowledge ISKO 2010 • General Theory of Terminology: • Priority of the concept; precision of concepts; univocity of the term; • A concept – universal, i.e. independent of cultural differences • Communication problems from inter-/intra-lingual synonymy • Solution – standardization • A Model of Knowledge for Terminology: • A multidimensional space with intersecting axes (conceptual primitives=characteristics) • A concept identified uniquely by references to its coordinates along each axis • Language – a discrete medium (finite items) → the value of a concept with respect to a given axis defined as a range (set of points) • An idealized K structure is assumed to be determined by the social norm (synthesis of the collective view).

9. Approaches Terminology as Organized Knowledge ISKO 2010 Theoretical and methodological approaches to T(2) • The Sociocognitive Approach to Terminology: • Only few categories can be clearly delineated; • Categorization results from the interaction between language and the mind - the world is (partly) in the human mind; • Concepts = units of understanding often not clearly delineated, have prototype structure, experiential rather than objective; • Only clear-cut concepts can be submitted to standardization; • The Communicative Approach to Terminology: • TU multifaceted: units of knowledge, units of language, units of communication • Model – theory of doors: TU approached from the concept (cognitive), from the term (linguistic) and from the situation (communicative) • TU identified in specialized discourse = an organized K structure – could be represented by a conceptual map

10. Approaches Terminology as Organized Knowledge ISKO 2010 Theoretical and methodological approaches to T(3) • Conceptual corpus-based approach • TKB organizes concepts into networks of relations • Identifying conceptual relations/CR in running text • Search for CR by linguistic patterns • Lexico-semantic corpus-based approach • Linguistic aspects of term: collocation behavior, argumental relations, etc. • The Termontography Method • Sociocognitive T theory and methods combined with ontological methods • Initial framework of categories and relationships with domain specialists (top-down) • Ontological analysis → categorization framework – a template for K extraction from corpus • Eliciting culture-specific K and categorizations from texts • The new K confronted with the categorical frame (bottom-up analysis) • Results entered in a termontological database for terminographic purposes

11. Commonalities between KO and Terminology (1) Commonalities Terminology as Organized Knowledge ISKO 2010 • Semantic similarities and terminological discrepancies • Empirical investigation searching the word ‘knowledge’ in terminology papers (37 contexts retrieved) and the term ‘term’ in KO papers (14 contexts retrieved) • Terms with the same meaning in KO and T show useful collaboration • Terminological discrepancies: unnecessary homonymy e.g. ‘keyterm’ • Similar Theoretical Underpinnings • Both KO and T are all about concepts and conceptual relations • Both influenced by post-modernism • Hence shift towards pragmatic, historical and phenomenological approaches in KO, and mixed onomasiological and semasiological approaches in T

12. Commonalities between KO and Terminology (2) Commonalities Terminology as Organized Knowledge ISKO 2010 • Similar Research Methods • Practically all KO methods are applicable to modern T practices:

13. Conclusions Conclusions Terminology as Organized Knowledge ISKO 2010 • Both KO and T influenced by the post-modern epistemological understanding of the world: cultural creation, not objective reality; • A tendency in both KO and T towards a domain-specific approach: classifications and TK items organized from the specific perspective of the respective discourse community; • Combined KO and Terminology research methods would lead to strengthening the collaborative links between specialists in the two fields bringing about the development and improvement of their theoretical, methodological and practical achievements.

14. Questions? Contact Terminology as Organized Knowledge ISKO 2010 • BoyanAlexiev, Ph.D. University of Architecture, Civil Engineering and Geodesy Sofia, Bulgaria boyanaa@abv.bg • Nancy Marksbury Palmer School of Library and Information Science C.W. Post , Long Island University, New York nancy.marksbury@liu.edu