Terms Denoting Parts of a Tree - A Contrastive Approach

Abstract

The frequent misuse of specialized terms by forestry students, due to the wrong assumption that they are synonymous, requires an endeavor to detect and correct inaccuracies in monolingual and bilingual lexicography for a more efficient process of learning and/or teaching L2. In this spirit, the aims of this article are to identify the denominations of the parts of a tree in Romanian and English, and to verify their equivalence in both languages. The method used to describe and examine this sector of the lexicon is the semic analysis, commonly applied in lexical field theory. The first section of the article presents a brief theoretical overview of the lexical field theory and the methodological framework. The discussion continues with the semic analysis of a number of lexemes denoting parts of a tree in Romanian, which is based on the lexicographic and terminological definitions, and ends with several observations regarding the distinction between these two types of definitions (section two). Section three is dedicated to the semantic analysis of the English equivalents of the Romanian lexemes, while the last section reveals important concluding remarks related to the similarities and differences between the two language systems. The desired final product of this research resides in its didactic applicability, more specifically in efficient methods of L1 and L2 lexical acquisition.

Keywords

• lexical field theory
• semic analysis
• lexicographic definition
• terminological definition
• lexical acquisition