定名的理据与名词术语翻译

Theoretical Justification for Naming and Translation of Terminologies

本文试图从认知学的视角探讨定名的理据。指出定名与人们对客体特征观察有着密切的关系。作者从相当数量的名词术语中看到人类感官观察对定名所起的作用。通过对汉英两种语言的一些名词进行对比研究,发现有一部分双语词是对等的或基本对等的,而有更多的双语词只是对应,而不能说是对等,因为它们是依据各自对客体观察得到的特征命名,它们的所指意义相同,但是内涵意义不同,即它们同指而表述不一。

This paper attempts to provide theoretical justification for naming from the perspective of cognitive science. It points out that naming has to do with our observation of features of the target object. From out observation of a number of nouns, we are convinced that our sense organs play a large part in this connection. By placing bilingual pairs of words together for contrastive study, we may find that some pairs can be called absolute equivalents, while many others can not be regarded as such, but just pairs of words with different connotational meanings, yet pointing to the same target objects, for these words in question have been given their respective names by picking up different conceptual features of the given objects and named accordingly in their resepctive languages.