Coseriu’s contribution to the historiography of terminology as a linguistic discipline

Authors

Abstract

The main purpose of this article is to highlight the relevant role that, from a historiographical point of view, Eugenio Coseriu played in the consideration of the scientific status of terminology as a linguistic discipline. In contrast to other linguists of his time, who did not glimpse Saussure’s initial ideas on nomenclatures and terms as opposed to the systematicity of languages and the values of linguistic signs, the Romanian linguist not only developed these Saussurean reflections from the sixties of the last century onwards, but, in spite of discarding, at least in the first phase of the analysis, the terminologies from his own lexematic study (within his strict conception of structural semantics), he formulates a set of principles characterizing the terms of the nomenclatorial lexicon as opposed to the features defining the words of the common lexicon. In this line, after giving the Romanian linguist the place he deserves in the historiography of the terminological discipline, both for his continuous terminological-conceptual precisions and his theoretical and epistemological contributions to this discipline from linguistics, we carry out a revised and reworked exposition of the general contribution of the professor from Tübingen to the study and linguistic characterization of terminological units.

Keywords:

terminology, linguistic historiography, Saussure, Coseriu, lexical semantics, lexematics, nomenclatorial lexicon, common lexicon

Author Biography

Miguel Casas Gómez, Universidad de Cádiz

Grupo de investigación Semaínein, Instituto de Lingüística Aplicada, Universidad de Cádiz.

Para correspondencia, dirigirse a: Miguel Casas Gómez (miguel.casas@uca.es), Instituto de Lingüística Aplicada. Av. Duque de Nájera, Nº 16. Edificio Simón Bolívar, 2ª Planta, 11002, Cádiz, España. ORCID: