Terminology Development in Gede'uffa
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Date
2011-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Si nce it s introduc ti on for primary ed uca tion and adm ini s trati on in 1994 , the
com municative domain s o f Ged e' uffa have rcmarkably inc reased thus rcs ultin g in urgcnt
needs to d evelop terminol ogy of fo r var io us fie lds s uc h as education. health. a gri culture,
law, technology, etc. T he goal of te rm ino logy developmen t is to transfer sc ien tific and
techn o logical k nowledge to the ta rget populat ion. It is ev id e nt that the ach ievement of
thi s goal not o nl y requ ires increased numbe r of term s in eac h techni ca l field but al so
s tandardized te rms . Thus, this is one of the preliminary wo rk s in s t~l11dardi z in g terms in
Gede'uffa for variou s techni cal fie lds.
Methodo logicall y, th e study is a descriptive s urvey of terminologica l me t hods and
p rin c iples in li ne w ith the Gede'uffa te rm in o logies. The data W;}s collected fr om \I rille n
sou rces and inte rviews of purpose fu ll y selected informants; a nd analyzed inductivcly.
The fr a m e of reference was set on th e me thodological desc rip ti ons th a t are adapted by
several th eo retic ians of term in o logy such as Abdulaziz ( 1987 and 1989), Sager (1990),
Sage r and Nkwent i-Azeh (1989), Felber ( 19 82 anel 1984 ) and Taliard (2008): and
experi e nces of oth e r languages of Eth iopia, Africa and t he worl el. According to the
s urvey eight methods s uch as scmantic transfer, deri vation, compounding, loan
tran s lat ion, borrow in g, abbrev iation, blending a nd reduplication were employed for term
creation in Gede' u ffa . The exist in g terms of Gede'uffa h ave bee n investigated in relation
to terminological principles that state the imporlance of syste mat ic icrm in o l<lg ie s and
avoidance of synonymy and polysemy in technical lang uages. W ith regard to thi s the
survey res ult shows that many synonyms and pol yse mes were created in the process of
meaning transfe r. Besides, te rms were created in isolation with out even defining them ,
thus resulting in lack of tra n s parency a nd difticulties to comprehencl them both as a lay
man ancl pract itioner of the concerned tield.
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Linguistics