Coactivity: Philology, Educology / Santalka: Filologija, Edukologija, Vol 15, No 2 (2007)

Lexical Aspects of the Scientific French Language

Rūta Elžbieta Katalynaitė
Aleksandras Velička

Abstract


This article focuses on the analysis of lexical structures of specialized/technical literature in French. The study proves that collocations and words are mainly perceived within the context. The essence of lexical approaches is syntactical connections between lexical units. Speciality vocabulary primarily performs denotative function. The analysis of lexical structure of technical and scientific language shows that semantic connections often prevail while choosing and organizing sets of vocabulary units. Meanings conveyed by lexical units are able to translate information only within the framework of syntactic construction. French terminology does not only consist of one-word terms, but it is also a set of compound and composite collocations and words, which are different in syntactic-semantic structures. Continuous and discontinuous collocations are used, when immediate units are separated from each other and the boundaries are not clearly set. Collocations are composed by using methods of affixation and transposition and are of various length. Notably there are a lot of synonyms and polysematic words in terminological vocabulary. Recently the usage of anglicisms has become charactisistic in French speciality texts. Generally the vocabulary of special and technical literature is mostly logical and stylistically restrained, however figurativeness and expressiveness is also acceptable.

Article in Lithuanian


Article in: English

Article published: 2011-04-15

Keyword(s): lexical approaches; terminological units; composite collocations and words; compound collections and words; polysemy; synonymity; stylistic features; neologisms

DOI: 10.3846/coactivity.2007.12

Full Text: PDF pdf



Coactivity: Philology, Educology / Santalka: Filologija, Edukologija ISSN 2351-714X, eISSN 2335-7711
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License.