Université de Montréal - Thèse sous forme numérique

55in such a way that they are composed of smaller units referring to other concepts alsodescribed in the dictionary. In the vast majority of times, English and French definitionscontain the same numbers, e.g. 1382, 1390, 1118 and 1325 (cf. Figure 7). Sometimes,there is even a picture to illustrate the concept being described. In Figure 7, the conceptunder 1025 has an English designation and two French ones that are perfect equivalentsas all three can be defined in exactly the same way and they all represent the sameobject. In fact, this case of perfect equivalence between the French term and the Englishone can be found throughout most of the dictionary. However, Wüster alsodemonstrates that even in the vocabulary of mechanical construction interlingualdivergences may exist (Figure 8).From Figure 8 one can observe that there is no English designation for theconcept 699, while there are two designations for it in French: écrou à créneaux andécrou crénelé. Concept 699 can be designated in English by means of two more specificterms, those indicated in 700 (hexagon slutted nut) and in 701 (hexagon castle nut,castle nut, castellated nut, pinnacle nut) which, in turn, have French equivalentsdifferent than those given in 699 (écrou normal à créneaux, écrou HK (700); écrou hautà créneaux; écrou HKL (701)). Similarly to the previously mentioned situation ofanisomorphism in which the structure of conceptual systems differs from one languageto another, French reveals here to have a term for a generic concept including concepts700 and 701 whereas English has a hyperonym void.As mentioned, Arnzt (1993: 5) argues that interlingual comparison is morefavourable in the field of terminology because connotations play a secondary role as theconceptual content of the term is the most important aspect. We have attempted todemonstrate here that, although interlingual comparison may be more favourable in thefield of terminology, this does not necessarily mean that there are no divergences at allin technical domains. In this section, we have also given the example of the specialized