Terminologization of Colouronyms of Metal and Mineral Etymological Origin: The Evolutionary Aspect

Abstract

This paper is devoted to the study of French colouronyms and their terminologization in different subtypes of scientific discourse. The research is based on colouronyms of mineral origin “(jaune / vert / brun / rouge d’) andalousite” and “quartz (blanc / rose),” as well as those of metallic origin – “jaune d’or” and “jaune / vert de chrome.” The authors carry out an etymological analysis of all the above-mentioned lexical units and consider the main tendencies of the terminologization of words with the semantics of colour in French scientific discourse. The peculiarities of the terminologization of colouronyms of mineral origin are analysed in the chemistry and geology discourse subtypes, whereas trends in the use of colouronyms of mineral origin are presented in the chemistry and physics discourse subtypes.The aim of this paper is to analyse the evolutionary tendencies of the terminologization of French colouronyms in the subtypes of scientific discourse to describe their common and diverging properties at different levels, i.e. structural-semantic, morphological, and syntactic.The empirical material for the research comprises written scientific texts on chemistry(the Annales de chimie et de physique electronic archive of scientific journals), geology (the Planète-Terre electronic archive of scientific journals), and physics (the Futura Sciences electronic archive of scientific journals).The research methods employed include etymological, component, structural-semantic, morphological, and syntactic analyses.The terminologization of colouronyms is a long-term continuous evolutionary discursive process that can be observed in French scientific discourse from the nineteenth century until the present day. The authors investigate the evolutionary tendencies of colouronyms as emerging semantics of colour in lexemes that have not had it before, the development of new structural-semantic models, the increasing numbers of morphological categories of colour terms, the acquisition of new syntactic roles, and the gradual process of the semantic transformation of colouronyms. The transition of colouronyms from one subtype of scientific discourse into another while preserving the structural-syntactic forms and morphological and semantic categories indicates the correlation between the discursive subtypes and the convergence of their functional properties at different levels of the language system. Despite this interdiscursive connectedness, each of the subtypes manifests distinct boundaries, which can be revealed through the study of the semantic specificity of colouronyms and their terminologization in scientific discourse.Transl.: Volkova M.V. 2022. Terminologization of Colouronyms of Metal and Mineral Etymological Origin: The Evolutionary Aspect. Professional Discourse & Communication. 4(2). P. 45–65. DOI: https://doi.org/10.24833/2687-0126-2022-4-2-45-65