PRODUCTIVITY OF SELECTED SUFFIXES IN THE TERMS OF MATHEMATICS

Abstract

The article deals with the analysis of mathematical terms, i.e. simple nouns. Complex terms are avoided in order to prepare a detailed lexico-grammatical analysis. The research examines the term formation within the word class of nouns. Origins of the English and Slovak terms are analysed, described and compared. Latin and Greek languages are languages of science for the English language. The original languages of terms in both languages. Furthemore, Slovak terminological equivalents are compared with the English ones in term preference the Latin/Greek term or the native term if exists. According to term formation processes, the following suffixes representing bound morphemes are analysed: -er, -or, -ion. The terms formed by affixation using the selected suffixes are compared with the Slovak counterparts in terminology of mathematics. Terms are analysed according to principles for term formation. The following principles should be followed in the formation of terms and appellations, as far as possible and as appropriate to the language: transparency; ⎯ consistency; ⎯ appropriateness, linguistic economy; ⎯ derivability and compoundability; ⎯ linguistic correctness; ⎯ preference for native language. Subject of analysis are terms taken from the Slovak National Corpus 10.0, i.e. English –Slovak Parallel Corpus 4.0 en, Slovak –English Parallel Corpus 4.0 sk and the British National Corpus. In the research, electronic corpora are applied. They use mathematical ad statistical methods to evaluate e.g. occurrence, frequency, collocability of words. The previous mentioned methods are taken into consideration and help to prepare the effective, precise and objective analysis of the planned analysis. The research is based on both languages and comparison of terms in both parts of the corpus. Specific trends and tendencies in the strategies of term formation are analysed. Descriptive method is used and the methods of quantitative and qualitative analysis are applied. Due to analysis of two languages, contrastive and comparative approaches are entailed. Terminology records of terms are examined from lexico-grammatical point of view and on the basis of term-formation tendencies in each analysed language. i.e. Slovak language and English language. Records include entry, identification number, reference to the term, synonyms, subject field, formula, abbreviation, context, reference to the context, definition, reference to the definition.