REALIZATION OF THE SEMANTIC POTENTIAL OF A COMMON LEXEME IN COMPOUND TERMS (Using the Adjective "Pryamoi" as an Example)

Abstract

The article is devoted to the problem of the interaction of terminology with natural language and the issue of the semantic development of a commonly used word in languages for special purposes. It is argued that along with the construction of designations based on Greek-Latin term elements and borrowing from other languages, terms are created using natural language tools in a morphological, syntactic, morphological-syntactic or semantic way. At the same time, the terminology uses the semantic potential of words of general use in a peculiar way: it profi les precisely those lexical meanings that allow you to accurately convey the content of concepts in a certain area of spe-cial knowledge. The author focuses on the adjective “direct”, which functions as a component of compound terms in a number of fi elds of knowledge and activity: linguistics, mathematics, physics, biology, law, military aff airs, medicine, etc. Based on etymological dictionaries, the semantic potential of an adjective in a natural language is revealed and variants of its implementation in terminology are determined. It is shown that the dominant mea ning in special fi elds of knowledge and activity when using the word direct is ‘directly related to something’. Behind this meaning is a conceptual sign of the temporal and spatial adjacency of objects and phenomena, the presence of systemic relations between them. Highlighted in general literary explanatory dictionaries as the main adjective of the direct meaning ‘exactly elongated in some l. in the direction without bends’, that is, related to the perception of the appearance, shape of the object, is not paramount in the fi elds of special knowledge and activity, although this meaning is represented as part of terminological units (rectum, straight drill, straight cut, etc.) In linguistic and mathematical terminology, the adjective direct actualizes the meaning of ‘primary’, which is not fi xed by dictionar-ies of the general literary language, but in mathematics and some other fi elds the meaning of ‘equal, correlative’ is realized as a result of the semantic development of the word.