Université de Montréal - Thèse sous forme numérique

43A concept can only be understood in the context of the system to which itbelongs. Thus, before comparing two languages, it is first necessary to draw upor discover the independent systems of concepts existing in each individuallanguage.[…]Basically, two terms can be considered as equivalent when they match in allcharacteristics, i.e. when there is conceptual identity.The identity of content of the terms derives from the fact that they occupy thesame position in both systems. So, it seems that conceptual characteristics are thefeatures according to which the relationship of equivalence has been measured interminology. However, not all terminologists adopt the onomasiological approach andthose who adopt a lexico-semantic / lexicographic approach as well as a theoreticalview of meaning closer to that defined by Piotrowski (1994) will not usually proceed asArnzt (1993). Rather, they will take into account the collocability patterns of terms.This is, for instance, the case of L‘Homme (2008).In DiCoInfo (L‘Homme 2008), a specialized lexical resource that describes theterminology of the subject field of computing and the Internet in English, French andSpanish, equivalents of terms are selected on the basis of the analysis of their actantialstructures. The actantial structure roughly corresponds to the obligatory participants ofpredicative and quasi-predicative terminological units. The actants are identified byanalyzing the patterns of collocates observable in a large amount of concordances.Although some actants are not always linguistically instantiated, they are mandatorymeaning slots. Therefore, in DiCoInfo, equivalent terms contain the same number andtype of actants (Table 1).For instance, email 2 and courriel 2 are equivalents because they have threesimilar actants: Destination, Agent and Instrument. Courriel 2 cannot be an equivalent ofemail 3 because terms instantiating the actant Patient, part of email 3 , do not haveequivalents in courriel 2 . Another example of what Piotrowski called the ―formal