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2 The Creation of Technical-
Scientific Words and Ex-
pressions
Whenever a machine is deviced or a novel technique
or method is developed, when scientists discover yet
another unknown phenomenon, it. must. be given a
name and it is the privilege and the responsibility
of the scientist or technician to coin the appropriate
term. Rarely. if ever, he invents a completely
new word: he reaches back to his old friendly
linguistic background, to lexical items he is familiar
with, and he manipulates them resorting to various
mechanisms.
a. He uses Latin or Greek elements (morphemes)
or words to form compounds, adding appropriate
endings:
PHOTO-GRAM-METR-IC (English ending which
marks an adjective)
PHOTO-GRAM-METR-ISCH (German ending
which marks an adjective)
PHOTO-GRAM-(M)ÉTR-ICO (Spanisch ending
which marks an adjective)
PHOTO-GRAM-METR-IQUE (French ending which
marks an adjective)
PHOTO-GRAM-(M)ETR-IA (Spanish ending which
marks a noun and denotes a discipline)
b. He uses Latin or Greek morphemes or words and
adds them to words in his own language:
PHOTO-APPARAT (German)
HALB-QUANTITATIV (German)
SEMI-ONDA (Spanish)
INFRA-RED (English)
INFRA-ROUGE (French)
INFRA-VERMELHO (Portuguese)
c. He uses foreign words and combines them with
words in his own language:
DESKTOP-OBERFLÂCHE (!) (English + German)
RESEAUPLATTE (French + German)
RESEAUSCANNER (French + English)
IMPRESORA OFFSET (Spanish + English)
d. He combines words in his own language:
HARDWARE (English)
AEROESPACIAL (Spanish)
FERNERKUNDUNG (German)
SENSOREAMENTO REMOTO (Portuguese)
OCCUPATION DU SOL (French)
e. Ile uses already existing technical words and
transforms them to suit his needs:
PIXEL ... MIXEL ... VOXEL
HARDWARE .. SOFTWARE .. FIRMWARE
COMPUTER ... TRANSPUTER
f. He uses a ,string^ of words to describe as closely
as possible his invention but, finding it too long,
he shortens it using different methods and these
abbreviated versions become words:
Radio Detection and Ranging — R.A.D.A.R — radar
Light Amplification by Simulated Emission of
Radiation — laser
Picture element — pixel
Modulator-demodulator = Modem
g. He coins acronyms and uses them as nouns
GIS DTM
SPOT GPS
1/0 AP
h. He combines acronyms and abbreviations with
existing words:
CCD cameras - radar emission
IR pictures - pixel analysis
GIS technology - laser printer
I/O devices
or in
words | Process viat
a
words
techn. words
words
Abbreviations
Table 1 Different approaches in the creation of words.
The letters correspond to the listing above
And what happens once he ,emits“ these words?
They begin a life of their own, unfolding their multiple
semantic potentialities, all of them open, unexplored.
At its infantile stage a word is used and abused.
Sometimes different versions coexist:
workstation - workingstation
gray scale - tonal scale - step wedge
It expands its meaning as the field it covers becomes
wider; it is adopted by other disciplines and its
meaning is transferred, assimilated or adapted. In
summary: everybody feels free to bend it to whatever
his neds may be.
» LINGUISTIC, coined by Ferdinand de Saussure
to be used in the context of human oral and
written language, and ,SEMANTICS* has been
adopted by image interpreters (INTERPRETER:
person who gives an immediate translation of words
spoken in another language - Oxford University
Press Dictionary) referring to patterns and rules
that govern the conveyance of meaning in digital
photogrammetry. Thus, instead of creating a new
word (in Medicine the concept is covered by the word
SEMIOLOGY^") a new field of meaning has been
added to the old one.