Semantic Relations, Dynamicity, and Terminological Knowledge Bases

The linguistic and conceptual shift in Terminology has led to a more discourse-centered approach with a focus on how terms are used in texts (Temmerman and Kerremans, 2003). This shift has affected the construction of terminological knowledge bases, which have an underlying network of semantic relations. Such a network can be derived from corpus analysis and the extraction of terminological units and semantic relations from knowledge-rich contexts (Meyer, 2001). Until recently, however, semantic relations in termbases were mainly restricted to generic-specific and part-whole relations. This was conducive to static configurations, which are at odds with the representation of dynamic action in domain models (Barrière, 2001: 137). Terminological knowledge bases can acquire greater coherence and dynamicity when: (1) a frame-based structure is used as the top level representation for all concepts; (2) a wider range of conceptual relations are contemplated, some of which may be domain-specific. This paper describes the semantic relations used in the EcoLexicon terminological knowledge base on Environmental Engineering and their representation. This choice of relations is derived from both corpus and definitional analysis, and is also reflected in the graphic resources for each concept. This semantic network can be accessed in the form of a ThinkMap representation. a Departamento de Traducción e Interpretación, Facultad de Traducción e Interpretación, Universidad de Granada, 18071 Granada, Spain. E-mail: [email protected] b E-mail: [email protected] c E-mail:[email protected] Current Issues in Language Studies 1(2009)/P. Faber, P. León, J. Prieto/ Semantic Relations, Dynamicity, and Terminological Knowledge Bases 2