SEMANTIC PHENOMENA CHARACTERIZING ENGLISH TERMINOLOGY OF BIOTECHNOLOGY

Abstract

The article deals with the analysis of the main semantic processes in the English terminological system of biotechnology. The importance of our investigation lies in the fact that biotechnology is still a rather new sphere of human activity that is rapidly developing at present, thus the special language of biotechnology reflecting these rapid changes demands great attention on the part of terminologists as the new concepts should be nominated and different semantic processes described. The aim of the research is to define and describe terminological meanings of the English terms of biotechnology in comparison with other words of general language and terms of other spheres of human activity and analyze such semantic processes as polysemy and synonymy inside this terminology. In order to achieve the aim of the work it is necessary to study English biotechnology terms and their meanings on the basis of explanatory and terminological dictionaries and to analyze different semantic processes in the English biotechnological terminology. The language material of our investigation is 1000 English biotechnology terms with the explanation of their terminological and general meanings. The words are taken from terminological and explanatory dictionaries. The analysis showed that many English biotechnology terms were formed by means of terminologization of common language words. The correlation of special and common language lexis is studied by means of selection of common semantic features (semes). Special emphasis in the articles is also laid on the study of polysemy and synonymy in English terminology of biotechnology.