Project presentation

Romanian meteorological scientific and popular terminology of the atmospheric phenomena. Linguistic approach financed by CNCS (indicative PN-II-ID-PCE-2011-3-0656).
- is taking place between October 2011 - October 2014, Institute of Romanian Philology "A. Philippide" (project director: RS I Dr. Cristina FLORESCU).

Theoretical premises

Linguistic analysis is contrastively undertaken between two linguistical levels of the lexical group that is denoting, in Romanian, the atmospheric phenomena. The research focuses on both literary language - the scientific language, and that of the popular language (in the broadest sense, encompassing both dialectal and common elements).

Looking at things from Coseriu's point of view, we are investigating distratic (socio-linguistic valences of the project are obvious) and diatopic (dialectological analysis is required) boundaries. Diaphasic is present in the process of delimiting the expressive elements from the denotative nucleus of lexical elements and in the taxonomy of stylistic variants (when applicable).

Diachronic study of language facts has imposed during the first year of the project in question; there are considered: etymologies, chronological structuring of senses and quotations, indication of the first attestation of lexemes belonging to each terminology series (whenever it's possible).

Continuously, the research exegetically argues that it operates with linguistic realities that circumscribe on different cultural universes. On one hand, the cultured nature of scientific terminologies (Ts), on the other hand, the regional / dialectal nature of popular terminologies (Tp) give these two terminology categories distinctive specific features which are linguistically analysed and lexicographically marked as such. The contrastive nature of the study requires, whenever necessary, difficult isomorphic type correlations at semic level.

Areas of extreme difficulty of the undertaking are represented by the elements of lexical overlapping between the two terminological categories. This area of overlap is specifically addressed in both Atmospheric Phenomena Dictionary (DFA) (cf. infra) and the linguistic study.

The working system

Provides for the research alongside of both types of languages, out of the need to correlate scientific terms and dialectal terms from central terminological nucleus represented by words belonging to main lexical fund of Romanian language.

Working with the meteorology specialist is a decisive factor in the project, focusing mainly on two directions: a) selecting the most scientifically appropriate terms that designates only atmospheric phenomena; b) narrowly defining specialized terms that, in the current stage of Romanian academic lexicography (updating the old series DA of Romanian Language Dictionary), requires significant analytical lexicological and lexicographic reorganisation and brings new semantic clarifications in the area of research.

Research subject

It is limited (time adapting to the project under consideration) to the linguistic study of Romanian terminology regarding only the atmospheric phenomena. The analysis lies within linguistic lexicological researches that focuse on the lexical-semantic fields of the Romanian language.

Lexical groups research can be made from several analytical perspectives: cf. (Ursu: 1962; Bidu-Vrânceanu 2012) – scientific terminologies or (Coteanu: 1973; Chivu: 2000; Zafiu: 2001) – stylistic variations or (Bidu-Vrânceanu 2005) – lexical-semantic fields etc.

The project proposes a comparative lexicological study between two specialized terminologies, cf. (Florescu: 2008, Florescu: 2010). Regardless of the direction of research, the Romanian meteorological language was never studied, the high originality nature of the approach being obvious.