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specialised field allows developing rules to generate names in
accordance with the ones utilised to classify the objects to be
named. These names have to be understandable and easy to apply
by the potential users of that system. In any case, according to
Gutiérrez Rodilla, nomenclatures are not always artificial
languages; it is possible that the rules establish the way to choose
the resources of the language. What really characterises a
nomenclature is its aim for the language of the science to be
scientific, it means that it is as precise and neutral and free from
the scrap of standard language as possible. Nomenclatures do not
try to be unalterable; in fact the advance of a science in relation to
the objects studied and to be named, occasionally, shows
erroneous concepts in relation with the classification of the
objects, which leads to the modification of the rules established in
a nomenclature. The objective of periodical revisions of a
nomenclature is to expand and perfect it, as well as grant its
stability. When some modifications are implemented in a
nomenclature, it is not due to an erroneous enunciation of its rules,
it is because the criteria to classify all the objects to be named have
changed or been corrected. Consequently, the parallel system to
generate and assign names has to be changed or corrected in the
same way.
In short, when a nomenclature is used or analysed, it is
necessary to know the following aspects:
• the activity into which the nomenclature is to be constituted,
• the nature of the objects observed or studied in this activity,
• the criteria applied to classify those objects.
Several rules or conventionalisms, parallel to the criteria
used to classify the objects will be established. As the knowledge
of an activity is developed, information may arise forcing
modifications of the criteria to classify the objects and,
consequently, the rules used to generate the terms of the
nomenclature.
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