The thesis deals with the comprehensive investigation of dental terminology
in Ukrainian and English languages in terminological, lexicographic, structural-semantic, and translation-oriented dimensions with the compiling of a pilot version of the English-Ukrainian explanatory dictionary of dental terms. The scientific novelty of the research lies in the development of an original conception and principles of compiling a bilingual explanatory dictionary of dental terms. As an appendix to the study, the register of head terms containing 3130 dental terms with Ukrainian equivalents was presented, and 800
of them were lexicographically described according to the developed method
of the dictionary compiling.
The study reveals the nature of the major terminological concepts and determines structural-systematic, cognitive, and sociolinguistic approaches to the investigation
of terminology. The thesis defines a term as a special lexical unit of scientific language, which unambiguously denotes a special concept or phenomenon of a certain science or sphere of public life and belongs to the relevant terminological system. The notion
of terminological system is interpreted as a terminological continuum
of special lexical units of a certain science, where there are the systemic connections and relationships between them in the context of this science.
The presented work clarifies the stages of the dental terminology evolution within
the paradigm of Ukrainian and English medical terminology. The development stages
of the latter are believed to correlate with the corresponding periods of Ukrainian general scientific terminology development.
In addition, the present study deals with the linguistic problems of Ukrainian dental terminology: the ratio of specific and borrowed terminology is established, the advantages and disadvantages of such terminological units functioning within the dental terminological system are determined, as well as their interaction and the need for ordering are outlined. Within the current stage, dental terminology in Ukrainian language, which has been developed over the centuries, incorporates national terminological features as well
as foreign and international terminological units, which were adapted to the norms
of the Ukrainian language.
The specific feature of all medical terminological systems is the presence of Latin and Greek roots. The integral system of dental terminology consists of the following term groups: anatomical nomenclature, highly specialized dental terminology, specialized medical terminology, and pharmaceutical terminology.
Within the framework of the research, quantitative indicators of ‘term saturation’
of dental texts were established experimentally using the developed set of dental terms:
this value was ranged between 30 and 33%.
Based on the analysis of dental lexical units in the structural and semantic aspect,
a thesaurus model of such terminological system was developed as well as the field structure of the dental terminology system and its correlation with the term saturation value within the specialized texts were specified.
The study also analyzed the problematic aspects of the English-Ukrainian translation of multicomponent terms and abbreviations, the structural features of dental terms;
and an algorithm of their translation in accordance with the selected structural models was proposed. Morphemic analysis of dental terms was defined as an important tool
for constructing the definition of the term. In addition, the most frequently used word elements in the area of dentistry were studied and possible translation options were indicated. Using the thesaurus approach, the subgroups of the highly specialized dental terminology system were determined and the lexical-thematic stratification of terms
within each of them according to the branches of dental science was carried out (the basic lexical-thematic terminological groups were outlined according to the main specialties
of dental science – therapeutic, orthopedic, surgical dentistry, and pediatric dentistry).
Finally, the author has offered his own conception of the dictionary development,
and suggested the macro-, micro- and media structure of the English-Ukrainian explanatory dictionary of dental terms, which is an appendix to the proposed research. The specific features of the dictionary, the structure of the dictionary article, the process of dictionary compilation, selection process of head terms and translation equivalents were also described
within this study. Since the dictionary article contains a definition of the term,
the methodological principles of describing the meaning of dental terms were outlined.
