Some Peculiarities of Word-Formation Mechanisms in the Area of Civil Engineering

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to give emphasis to the issue of civil engineering terminology, more precisely word-formation mechanisms in this field of study. Terminology is the science studying the structure, formation, development, usage and management of terms. Dissimilar and sometimes contrasting definitions are given to terminology and terms, however there is a common denominator, which shows that terms behave differently within certain morphological and syntactic rules. With reference to the above, for the acquisition of the civil engineering terminology be done appropriately, one should have some general knowledge regarding word-formation mechanism of terms in a certain specialty, respectively, civil engineering. From this perspective, as far as terminology acquisition is concerned, a great importance should be given to the inner and outer (loanwords) word-formation mechanisms. In the main, in this paper a detailed observation will be implemented on a terminological dictionary concerning civil engineering. Special attention will be devoted to the morphological aspects of word formation, such as prefixes, suffixes and compounds in civil engineering terminology. These three word-formation peculiarities predominate by being the most frequently used mechanisms. From the observation it was determined that compound terms (around 2000) are the mechanisms prevailing, referent to the frequency of productivity, followed by prefixes and suffixes. Concerning prefixes, it should be emphasized the fact that there were more than 30 prefixes present in this dictionary but only 10 were really productive. The prefixes having negative connotations were distinguished to have a high frequency of productivity throughout the observation, such as in-, anti-, non-, un etc. While suffixes on the other hand, being the third most productive mechanisms in this dictionary, were distinguished for their productivity on creating mostly nouns out of other word classes and expressing processes actions or states.