Yankovets O. English Border Terminology: Structural and Semantic, Cognitive and Functional Aspects

The thesis substantiates the structural, semantic, cognitive and functional peculiarities of the terminological units of the border sphere in modern English. The issues of structural, semantic, cognitive and functional peculiarities of English border terminology are comprehensively considered for the first time: productive word-forming models of terminological units are presented and their productivity is determined; the semantic classification of terminological units of the border sphere according to the denoted concepts is carried out; the lexical and semantic relations between the terms of the border terminology system are analysed; the lexical and semantic field of border terminology is constructed; border neologisms that appeared in connection with the Anti-Terrorist Operation and the Joint Forces Operation in Eastern Ukraine are studied; specific functions of certain structural and semantic categories of border terms are described. According to the results of the research, a terminological vocabulary of border lexis was compiled. The main means of term-formation within the study are morphological, syntactic and semantic methods. Each of them is divided into subtypes: the morphological method deals with affixation, word formation and abbreviation; the syntactic one comprises the formation of two-, three- and polycomponent phrases; the semantic method includes terminologization, transterminologization and metaphorization within our work. In the process of analysing the morphological method of word formation, it was found that the suffix method of word formation significantly prevails over the prefix and prefix-suffix; two-component terms-composites significantly prevail in quantity over the three-component ones; the abbreviation appears in the texts of border sphere documents in the form of stable and contextual abbreviations. The syntactic method is the most effective among the formation methods of border terms analysed by us. Syntactic terminological word combinations are dominated by two-component terms followed by three-component word combinations, and polycomponent terms are the least numerous group among the analysed word combinations. Within the semantic method, some terms are formed in a lexical and semantic way, i.e. on the basis of lexical units of commonly used or transterminological lexis available in the language, as well as by means of metaphorical transfer. Nine lexical and semantic groups are identified, which present a set of terminological units of the border sphere terminological system. Synonymy is a typical phenomenon to denote special concepts in the border sphere, which enables to vary the linguistic means within this terminology system. Antonymous terminological units are a method for expressing diametrically opposite features of identical quality in the studied terminology of the border sphere. Borrowing and internationalism are effective methods to replenish the border terminology system. The largest number of border terminological units comes from the Old French language. The main functions of English border terms are nominative, significant, definitive, communicative and cognitive.