Should Terminology Principles be re-examined?

📝 Abstract

Operationalization of terminology for IT applications has revived the Wusterian approach. The conceptual dimension once more prevails after taking back seat to specialised lexicography. This is demonstrated by the emergence of ontology in terminology. While the Terminology Principles as defined in Felber manual and the ISO standards remain at the core of traditional terminology, their computational implementation raises some issues. In this article, while reiterating their importance, we will be re-examining these Principles from a dual perspective: that of logic in the mathematical sense of the term and that of epistemology as in the theory of knowledge. We will thus be clarifying and describing some of them so as to take into account advances in knowledge engineering (ontology) and formal systems (logic). The notion of ontoterminology, terminology whose conceptual system is a formal ontology, results from this approach.

💡 Analysis

Operationalization of terminology for IT applications has revived the Wusterian approach. The conceptual dimension once more prevails after taking back seat to specialised lexicography. This is demonstrated by the emergence of ontology in terminology. While the Terminology Principles as defined in Felber manual and the ISO standards remain at the core of traditional terminology, their computational implementation raises some issues. In this article, while reiterating their importance, we will be re-examining these Principles from a dual perspective: that of logic in the mathematical sense of the term and that of epistemology as in the theory of knowledge. We will thus be clarifying and describing some of them so as to take into account advances in knowledge engineering (ontology) and formal systems (logic). The notion of ontoterminology, terminology whose conceptual system is a formal ontology, results from this approach.

📄 Content

Should Terminology Principles be re-examined? Christophe Roche Condillac Research Group - Listic Lab. Campus Scientifique - Université de Savoie - France roche@univ-savoie.fr Abstract. Operationalization of terminology for IT applications has revived the Wüsterian approach. The conceptual dimension once more prevails after taking back seat to specialised lexicography. This is demonstrated by the emergence of ontology in terminology. While the Terminology Principles as defined in Fel- ber’s manual and the ISO standards remain at the core of traditional terminolo- gy, their computational implementation raises some issues. In this article, while reiterating their importance, we will be re-examining these Principles from a dual perspective: that of logic in the mathematical sense of the term and that of epistemology as in the theory of knowledge. We will thus be clarifying and de- scribing some of them so as to take into account advances in knowledge engi- neering (ontology) and formal systems (logic). The notion of ontoterminology, terminology whose conceptual system is a formal ontology, results from this approach. Keywords: Terminology, Terminology principles, ISO standards, ISO 704, ISO 1087-1, Knowledge theory, Ontology, Logic, Ontoterminology. 1 Introduction Nowadays, terminology, as an independent discipline, risks being absorbed into specialised lexicography or knowledge engineering; the former reducing it to a study of linguistic phenomena and the latter, to an issue of computational knowledge repre- sentation. Nevertheless, terminology as a scientific discipline is crucial if we consider that its primary aim is to understand the world, describe the objects that populate it and find the right words to talk about them. Although terminology aims to clarify communication between humans and not to provide computational models [16], we are forced to recognise that it is not entirely satisfactory from the perspective of either Logic (by providing consistent definitions), computation (through a conceptual sys- tem representation) or even in respect of epistemological principles (the essential characteristic is no longer a principle in the latest version of the ISO 704 standard [2009]). If terminology is to continue to exist as an independent scientific discipline, it needs to re-examine its Terminology Principles [29].

This is not intended as yet another criticism of traditional terminology [15], [7], [33]. On the contrary, our contribution is distinctly Wüsterian in its scientific ap- Aguado de Cea et al. (Eds.): Proceedings of the 10th Terminology and Knowledge Engineering Conference (TKE 2012), pp.17-32. 19-22 June 2012, Madrid, Spain proach. The Terminology Manual [10] as well as the ISO 704 standard [16] rightly state that Terminology is multidisciplinary and draws support from a number of disci- plines, e.g. logic, epistemology, philosophy of science, linguistics, etc. Nevertheless a lot a work remains to be done in order to really take into account the lessons learnt from these disciplines. Furthermore, some current thinking and practices in the field of terminology must be integrated into a reviewed version of the ISO 704 standard, in particular to take the notion of ontology for terminology into consideration [26], [27], [30]. In examining the basic premises of terminology, we would like to demonstrate the key role of Logic (terminology is a science), epistemology (essential to under- standing the world) and, a more recent development, computational models (IT appli- cations require terminology to be operationalized). To this end, we will study the Terminology Principles with respect to conceptual system construction in the de- manding framework of formal systems1 – while term definition is dealt with using natural language, concept definition requires a formal language. We will limit our study to the notions of object, concept, characteristic and relation. Insofar as possi- ble, we will try to understand why certain issues arise and when appropriate, suggest more accurate definitions for the Principles. We will also attempt to align its vocabu- lary with that of Logic and Knowledge engineering, both of which are compulsory disciplines nowadays. NB: By Terminology Principles, or Principles for short, we mean the study of con- cepts and their relations. In this article, we refer to the Wüster’s works [40], to the Terminology Manual [10] and to the ISO 704 and 1087-1 Standards on Terminology [16], [18]. 2 Reality and Object “Producing a terminology requires an understanding of the conceptualization” [16]. It means on one hand, understanding the “reality” and on the other, organizing the objects that populate it - two different mind operations that are all too often confused. We must bear in mind some epistemological principles (see the note at the end of this paragraph). One of them is that there are two different kinds of knowledge. “An ob- ject

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