Acceso usuarios
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Ágota Fóris
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Onomastics, nomenclature and terminology are often regarded as multidisciplinary fields of interest, with a particular focus on the study of specialised vocabulary. Although these disciplines are clearly linked by their common concern with “names” (i.e., proper names, scientific names1, and terms, respectively), this paper demonstrates that they adopt different perspectives, employ distinct methodologies and pursue specific research objectives when analysing the proprial elements of the lexicon. Proper names, scientific names, and terms, in fact, display similarities in the complex structure of their meanings, including components such as denotation, motivation, categorical information, lexical (etymological) sense, connotation, and affective shades. At the same time, they also have some special features: scientific names are formed consciously, usually at international level, on the basis of predetermined linguistic elements and rules to designate and classify entities of the tangible word; terms (if linguistic) are usually created in spontaneous specialised communication by using the common elements and rules of natural languages to indicate abstract concepts and systematise units of knowledge; and proper names evolve either spontaneously, or consciously from restricted, genre-specific sets of elements and rules of natural languages to identify socio-culturally salient real or fictitious entities and abstract units.
