ADVENTURES OF THE GREEK PREPOSITION μετά: FROM METAPHYSICS TO METAFILES

Abstract

The present paper discusses the unique role which the Greek preposition μέτα (meta) plays in forming international terms. The research is conducted with three purposes: a) to outline the stages of the functional transposition of the Greek word μέτα (meta) tracking down its transformation into derivational morpheme with a set of homonymous meanings; b) to reveal the status of μέτα in terminological units and c) to show the role of this morpheme in the formation of the notion of metalanguage. It is claimed that μέτα had undergone functional transposition before it caused real “terminological pandemic” becoming a component of hundreds of international terms – from adverb to preposition and finally to affix. Having discussed the cluster of ideas concerning the morphemic status of this and similar Greek and Latin affixes in a variety of terminological units, the authors substantiate the idea that it is a prefix that can add different senses to derived terms. A substantial portion of the paper is dedicated to the term “metalanguage”. The latter is viewed from the standpoint of the dynamic term-forming perspective and defined as a universal semiotic code of the semantic and syntactic description of the object-language and thus is an important fragment of an operative configuration of knowledge. The article approaches different issues of the interpretation of metalanguage trying to explain the logic of the development of this notion via the driving force of the prefix. Key words: derivational morpheme, Greek prefix μέτα-, term-formation, international term-element, metalanguage.