THEMATIC GROUPS OF ENGLISH TERMS OF THE SPECIALIZED LANGUAGE OF THE U. S. HIGHER EDUCATION

Abstract

The article, based on a systematic approach, highlights the author's thematic groups of English-language terminological units of the specialized  language of higher education in the United States. An attempt has been made to comprehend on the scholarly basis the correlation between the concepts of “thematic group” and “lexical-semantic group”. It is noted that the thematic classification of lexical units, which is the most common way of combining words, is bgrounded on the internal connections of objects and phenomena of reality, and is determined by the subject-logical features and common functional purpose of these units. Thematic groups of one or another branch terminological system can contain several nuclear lexical-semantic groups, and their units are characterized by a clear differentiation of features. It is emphasized that in interpreting the concept of thematic group, modern linguistics aims to determine the ways and features of semantic development (extralinguistic aspects) not of individual words, but of groups of lexems that have one semantic orientation. A thematic group is a group of words that includes words selected and combined on the basis of common subject-logical connections, and these words are the same parts of speech; or words from other parts of speech, needed to reveal a common theme. In the process of systematic study of English terminology of the U. S. higher education at the conceptual level, the terms are distributed by the author in a certain order – built subject-matter classification, which results in combining terms into thematic groups. Thematic classification involves a clear, logically sound organization of terminological vocabulary. The classification of the terminology of American higher education is based on determining its content, establishing the scope of semantics of each term, its concept that is combined with other terminological units in a single terminology system of the U. S. higher education.