Филолгические науки/3.Теоретические и методологические проблемы
исследования языка
Dyachenko
G. F., candidate of
philological science, associate
professor, Duvanskaya I.F., senior lecturer, Mykhailiuk S. L., senior lecturer
PRINCIPLES OF LEXICAL STRATIFICATION OF
VOCABULARY (ON THE MATERIAL OF
VERBAL LEXIS OF TEXTS
"ACOUSTICS AND ULTRASONICS")
Due to the development of science and a broad
spread of scientific knowledge into all areas of life,
the vocabulary of any technical specialty is
connected with all vocabulary of the
language as a whole. This, to a certain extent,
can be referred to the
technical field of knowledge "Acoustics and ultrasonics”
(A&U) the units of which are researched in the given
paper.
However, it was
repeatedly noted in the linguistic literature that
the lexis of scientific and technical texts
has a number of the features resulting from peculiarities
of the given style, which is characterized by a
tendency to general-abstract
material representation, to the exact
definition of concepts, phenomena and
processes [1]. The accuracy and objectivity of
scientific judgments and definitions is achieved by selecting the vocabulary inherent
to scientific style in general.
The existence of probabilistic and
statistical model (frequency vocabulary) of the text
corpus "Acoustics and Ultrasonics"
(A&U) allows to carry out the objective analysis of vocabulary
of this field of scientific knowledge in the form
of lexical stratification of randomly chosen units functioning in texts of A&U.
The created probabilistic vocabulary
model of the English corpus of A&U
gives a preliminary idea of lexical units of scientific and technical texts of
the text corpus studied. The A&U
sublanguage compiled in the form of the frequency vocabulary
allows, considering statistical parameters of words, to find the
typology of lexical units of the vocabulary
and the unit analyzed.
The text corpus was made of the
articles from the scientific journals issued in the
As an object
of the analysis, it
was decided to enter a class of verbs as one of the
most frequently used in the text of the A&U corpus.
From the frequency vocabulary, the list of
the verbal lexemes which fraction in the A&U
probabilistic and frequency model made up
17,34%, i.e. almost fifth part of all word token of the corpus.
In spite of the fact that there is no consensus among
linguists concerning classification of lexis
of the scientific and technical texts, all researchers recognize that the lexis
of the language of science is not uniform [2;
3; 4].
In given research,
we adhere to the point of view according to which in the
language structure (text ccorpus)
of sciences,
three rather independent groups of lexicon can be selected
more or less accurately – this is a common,
general scientific and terminological lexis [2;
5; 6]. Having accepted this postulate as an
initial point, we carried out the analysis of
the stratification
of layers in a class of verbs of the A&U text corpus. Singling
out the lexical layers of verbs was realized by means of a
statistical method in a formal way.
Since there are no accurately outlined
borders between the terminological and common lexis,
it is more correct not to oppose the term to non-term,
but to define extent of word termhood in this specialty as compared to its usage
in other fields of scientific knowledge as well as to
correlate the studied units with the corresponding units of common-literary
dictionaries [7]. Therefore, two
additional frequency word books – the frequency
technical Automotive industry dictionary which on the scientific subject
considerably differs from the specialty "Acoustics and Ultrasonics", and
the frequency word book of common-literary lexis by
Thorndike, Lordge [8] were taken for
comparison.
The
comparison of the ranged lists of the verbal units taken from the
frequency word books of A&U,
"Automotive industry" and the frequency
word common-literary book by Thorndike,
Lordge was made. Here the
value of a difference of numbers (ranks) of a verb served
in the specified dictionaries as a measure of termhood
of a verb in A&U sublanguage
as compared to the "Automotive industry" specialty and the verbal units of the dictionary
by Thorndike, Lordge.
In correlating the word frequency lists of verbs,
the following results were
revealed. First, the verbs that
give very small difference of ranks and do
not have terminology units neither
concerning the common-literary dictionary nor
the Automotive industry dictionary were marked out.
These verbs deals with a common layer of lexis.
Second, it became clear that there are verbs with a considerable difference of
numbers in correlating the
common-literary dictionary by Thorndike,
Lordge, and dictionaries A&U and
"Automotive industry", and at that, in comparing the
frequency word books of technical fields,
the size of a difference of ranks was insignificant. Such verbs were rather
terminological regarding
the common-literary dictionary and deprived of terminological
aspect when comparing to only
frequency word books of specialties A&U and
"Automotive industry". These units were included
in a general scientific layer of lexis.
Third, it was indicated that the part of verbs gives a very
big difference of numbers as in respect to verbal units of
dictionary by Thorndike, Lordge, and as in
respect to the verbs singled
out from the probabilistic and ‘Automotive
industry’ frequency model. The verbs of this
type were noted in terminology system of the technical area
of A&U and referred
to the undoubted terms.
However, the
lexis study experience in different
areas of a scientific discourse by a method of probabilistic modelling says
that exclusively statistical technique of the determination of belonging
of a word to this or that lexical layer can be only supportive application
in the solution of this issue [9; 10]. And
one should argue, the main way to refer
words to a stratification layer remains the analysis of their meaning
and realization in a context, establishment of degree of a polysemanticity, the check of synonymic proximity
of the separate
groups of words, a detection
of exclusively unambiguous words within various fields
of science.
The analysis and group of words of the scientific text
cannot be made in a separation from those colligation
and collocations, in which they are really reproduced in text corpus [11,
с.5]. Since
the colligation is the most general basis
of creation of the speech (text), i.e. the morphosyntactic relations in the
true sense of the word, in English, it
is natural for a verb from the point of view of a colligation
to have its syntactic position in the sentence
as a predicative, etc., and from the point of view of the morphology
– the Tenses paradigm of
forms. On the other hand, the collocation provides the accounting of the
idiomatic peculiarity of the
language, i.e. the lexicological and phraseological relations. Speaking about aspects of creation of
the speech, it must be kept in mind that the colligation
is not thought of as something out
of unity with a collocation, with the field that
deals with the study of the vocabulary.
Due to the considerations given above about the
need of usage not only statistical but also contextual methods of identification
of the text units referred to this or that stratification layer,
verbal lexemes were repeatedly reanalyzed , and corresponding changes were
entered in the lists of lexical layers.
We would like to add that the authors
addressed to the experts in technical area
of knowledge "Acoustics and ultrasonics
" for carrying out an expert evaluation
of the
lexis. Thus, lexical stratification of
verbal lexemes was made by three methods: statistical, contextual and the method
of an expert evaluation.
The following results were
obtained. The nomenclature of verbs in the common layer remained without
changes. The greatest difficulties were caused when forming a general
scientific layer of lexis, as an intermediate
one between common and terminological layers. Here we decided to enter into a
layer of general scientific lexis the additional
verbal lexemes that are common for the
texts of scientific functional style, for
that purpose the probabilistic and statistical
Automotive industry model as well as the
terms of fundamental areas of knowledge – mathematics, physics, chemistry –
ware used. Such verbs are usually
used for theoretical reasonings, the description of technical processes
that are common for many
technical specialties. When forming a terminological layer,
not only statistical and contextual methods, but the one of the
expert evaluation were used in combination.
REFERENCE
1. Глушко М. М.
Стратификация лексики языка научной литературы / М. М. Глушко // В кн.: Функциональный стиль общенаучного языка и методы его
исследования. – М. : Изд-во. МГУ, 1974. – С.77-93.
2. Береснев С. Д. Что такое научный функционально-речевой
стиль /С. Д. Береснев // Иностранные языки в школе, 1961. – № 6. – С. 89-101.
3. Митрофанова О.Д.
Язык научно технической литературы / О. Д. Митрофанова. – М.: изд-во МГУ, 1973.
– 147 с.
4. Толикина
Е.Н. Термин в толковом словаре / Е. Н. Толикина // В кн.: Проблематика
определения терминов в словарях разных типов. – Л.: Наука, 1976. – С.45-57.
5. Сушков Ю. А. О
специфике термина в процессе научно-технического перевода / Ю. А. Сушков // В
кн.: Язык научной литературы. – М.: Наука, 1975. – С. 245-254.
6. Андреев Н. Д.
Статистико-комбинаторные методы в теоретическом и прикладном языковедении / Н.
Д. Андреев. – Л.: Наука, 1967. – 404 с.
7. Пиотровский Р. Г.,
Ястребова С. В. Выступление на совещании по лингвистическими проблемам, научно-технической
терминологии / Р. Г. Пиотровский, С. В. Ястребова // В кн.: Лингвистические
проблемы научно технической терминологии. –
М.: Наука, 1970. – С. 212-217.
8. Thorndike E., Lorge I. The Teacher’s Word book of 30 000 words / E. Thorndike, I. Lordge. –New York : Columbia University Teacher’s college press, 1968. – 274 p.
9. Шапа Л. Н. Формы и функции имен прилагательных в научно-техническом
тексте (на материале подъязыка электроснабжения): Дис. … канд филол. наук, спец.
Германские языки 10.02.04 / Л. Н. Шапа. – Одесса, 1991. – 308 с.
10. Tsinova M. V. Lexical component of the second constituent of modal verb constructions in the texts of scientific-technical communication / M. V. Tsinova // Вісник харківського національного університету імені В. Н. Каразіна Серія “Романо-германська філологія. Методика викладання
іноземних мов”. – № 1102. – 2014.
– С. 155-159.
11. Гвишиани Н. Б.
Полифункциональные слова в языке и речи / Н. Б. Гвишиани. – М.: Высшая школа,
1979. – 199 с.