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about things and as such are justified in their own right;
methodologies are only means to an end, in the case of
terminology, how to do things”. So Juan Sager does not believe
that terminology is a separate discipline because it does not have
its own epistemology, but he recognizes the importance of separate
principles and methods suited to the purposes terminology
processing wants to achieve: facilitating communication among
specialists, or the self-assertion of technologically non-dominant
languages by means of suitable intervention in and planning of
language usage.
In the opinion of others, terminology is a true scientific
discipline that owes much to the other subject fields, from which it
borrows fundamental concepts (Helmut Felber, Christer Laurén
and Heribert Picht, Maria Cabré, Kyo Kageura, Johan
Myking). It is, nevertheless, considered a separate discipline in the
sense that it has reformulated and synthesized the original
foundations so that it could build its own field. The International
Information Centre for Terminology (Infoterm) also claims a
separate status for terminology science, firstly, because there exist
three so-called “schools of terminology”, the Vienna, the Prague
and the Soviet school; secondly, because there are a number of
universities which started to carry out basic research in
terminology in the last two decades; and thirdly, because in 1979 a
research centre for terminology was created at the Laval
University in Quebec (Canada). At the same time the first chair for
terminology was installed at this university.
There are many intermediate positions, the advocates of
which, although admitting that terminology contains some original
theoretical features, are persuaded that it only conceives of them
within the framework of other, more consolidated disciplines (Rita
Temmerman).
So, apparently, we may distinguish two extreme positions.
Representatives of the first are of the opinion that terminology has
the status of a separate scientific discipline with its own theory,

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