Classification of Homonymic Terms in Medical Terminology of English, Russian and Tatar Languages

Abstract

This study is undertaken to identify the similarities and differences of classification of homonyms in medical terminology of English, Russian and Tatar languages. In this paper a comparative method was used to identify the common and special in the compared languages. The basis of comparison in the medical terminology of genetically unrelated languages was established. In this study, the method of feature comparison was used, i.e. the phenomenon of homonymy was studied in a comparative aspect. The results of this study contribute to ordering the terms, the selection of the correct, appropriate term when translating medical texts from one language into another. The languages under the consideration have intra-terminological, inter-terminological, inter-system homonymy. Besides, there are homonymic relations between eponyms in all languages. In the medical terminology of the English language, the following groups of homonyms are found: absolute, incomplete, partial (homophones, homographs) homonyms. Incomplete homonyms are divided into lexical and lexical and grammatical, and partial homonyms are divided into lexical, lexical and grammatical, grammatical (homonyms-converse terms). Homophones, in turn, are classified into homophones and near homophones. Homonyms are classified into homonyms of a high degree of homonymity, homonyms of a medium degree of homonymity, homonyms of a low degree of homonymity in Russian medical terminology. In medical terminology of the Tatar language absolute and incomplete homonyms are distinguished. Incomplete homonyms include homoforms that belong to different parts of speech and homographs. Homographs are rare phenomenon in the medical terminology of the Tatar language. Separately, as a special group, homonyms-converse terms are considered. There are three types of functional shift relations in the Tatar language: syntactic, lexical and semantic, the most common of which is syntactic relation. The phenomenon of homonymy affects the Greek-Latin terminological elements, which are international. Comparative analysis of three languages in the matter of homonyms in medical terminology has shown that English and Tatar languages have more similarities than English and Russian ones and Russian and Tatar ones. The English medical terminology is more replete with homonymous acronyms than Russian and Tatar ones.