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LECTURE 4
CLASIFICATIONS OF TERMS

4.1 The Classification of Terms According to Their
Morphological Structure.
4.2 The Classification of Terms in Accordance with Their
Semantic Structure.
4.3 Other Professional Unit that Function in the Professional
Discourse.

Key terms: simple, non-simple, derived, compound, complex
terms, borrowings, professionalism, nomenclature.

4.1 The Classification of Terms According to Their
Morphological Structure
In recent times there has been a growing interest in the study
of technical terms still there are a lot of issues that should be
solved, the most burning is the standartisation of terms. To
simplify this process all the terms should be grouped, that’s why
different classifications of terms should be discussed.
Formally a term is a unit that can be broken up into separate
elements and may be made up of smaller, identifiable and
meaningful units known as morphemes. From the morphological
standpoint, lexical units are simple if they contain only one
morpheme, or complex if they have more than one morpheme. The
meaning of a compound unit is in principle the combination of the
meanings of its constituent morphemes but this is not always the
case. The lexical root is the only morphological unit that is
essential for a term. Affixes combined with the root or several
roots combined with each other yield complex terms. All lexical
roots have a stem. A stem differs from an affix in that it can
function as a term without the presence of an affix: body,
duodenum, commute, stain.

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