The Corpus from a Terminographer's Viewpoint

Abstract

While the use of corpora is well-established in lexicography, it is still in its infancy in terminography. This paper argues that the importance of domain knowledge in terminography makes the terminographer a significantly different kind of corpus user than the lexicographer. We begin by identifying the role of a corpus in terminography. Next, we propose ways of designing and balancing corpora so that they are consistent with these roles. Finally, we outline a number of terminography-specific functionalities that would be useful in a terminographer's workbench. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of corpus terminography for terminographical methods, for the design of terminological dictionaries, and for corpus shareability.