Cognitive Approaches to Specialist Languages

(Tina Sui) #1

Chapter Eighteen
416


Out of the number of possible properties which constitute the sharedeness
of identifying resemblance across the terms in Polish and English meaning
properties (Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk 2010), the Shared Qualitative
features of the semantic (functional in particular) and contextual-pragmatic
as well as a set of Shared Quantitative Internal features, denoting the
number of object feature values in common as well as Shared External
(Frequency) counts, are of primary importance in determining closeness of
fit between the terms in both languages.
One of the most important criteria to employ in determining the
closeness of equivalence fit is a check for allowable modulation and
practical substitutions, paying particular attention to the re-conceptualization
types exhibited. Cluster members are not identical, they show (degrees) of
resemblance between one another. There are a number of properties that
can be modulated by practical inter-substitution strategies, which can be
contextually constrained but not fully predictable. Degrees of resemblance
between the input (Source) and target conceptualizations cover the
following types in the materials studied:


SL- TL resemblance patterns


SL CONSTRUAL Æ TL Construal
PERSPECTIVE 1Æ PERSPECTIVE 2
EVENT figurative Æ EVENT literal
SYNTACTIC Pressure (Syntactic Selection Constraints)
OBJECT 1 Æ OBJECT 2
Schemacity/Granularity [generalized/particularized meanings]
Prototypical category member ÆPeripheral category member
(near) Lexical Synonyms/(near) Lexical Equivalents
Word Æ Definition
Word Æ Examples (list)

The equivalence types presented for the item motor exhibit what I call
sufficiently similar meanings in the LSP discourse, tolerated for practical
reasons and referred in the present chapter as more-or-less identical effects
or solutions (Sossinsky 1986, Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk 2012), i.e., “an
approximation of an exact solutionெ. In such cases full meanings are
accessible and can be dynamically activated within a certain tolerance
space, which are construed up to (context-specific) tolerance threshold,
beyond which a miscommunication event may occur. In the case of less
determinate senses, in which full meanings are not accessible, which is
more frequent in general language than in restricted domains, it is so-

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