Semantic relations in the terminology field of marine engineering. Polysemy

Abstract

The present article aims at analysing the cases of terminological polysemy in the field of marine engineering both in the English and the Bulgarian terminological systems. Although it has generally been assumed that a single term should correspond to a single concept, so that a clear and unambiguous communication is ensured, the research results prove that in practice this is far from being the case. The instances analysed are excerpted from corpus materials consisting of specialized and general language dictionaries as well as specialized scientific texts intended for students and professionals in the field. The comparative study results show that in both languages polysemantic terms can arise as a result of their interaction with words belonging to the general language or they can be motivated by a metonymic or metaphoric transfer within the given specialized language. A broad-based theoretical background has been presented and instantiations of all these types of polysemantic terms as well as their explanations have also been included in order to reveal a detailed account on the particularities of terminological polysemy in the field of marine engineering.