Terminology

Terminology. The set of words or expressions that have specific meanings in science, arts, or the professions. They differ from common words by their semantic precision. A special term is created in a language by (1) changing the meaning of a common word, (2) coining a neologism, or (3) borrowing a term from another language.

To the 19th century. The earliest extant source of Ukrainian terminology is the Izbornik of Sviatoslav (1073). It contained Church Slavonic glosses of little-understood words (mainly calques from the Greek) and 27 literary figures and tropes found in the Holy Scriptures and Georgios Choiroboschos’ article on images. Ruskaia Pravda shows that legal terminology was highly developed in 11th- to 12th-century Rus’. Adelphotes (1591) systematically used Greek calques in the Ukrainian redaction of Church Slavonic for Greek grammatical and literary-stylistic terms. Its terminology set the standard for the terminology used in the Slavonic grammars of Lavrentii Zyzanii (1596) and Meletii Smotrytsky (1619). The earliest examples of Ukrainian medical terms are found in a preserved fragment from a late 16th-century pharmacotherapeutic tract, and scientific terms can be found in a textbook translated from the German, Lutsidarii (1636). Ivan Velychkovsky was the first to explain terms of figurative versification in his collection Mleko (Milk, 1691).

1850–1914. Ukraine’s national rebirth in the 19th century and the concurrent growth of science and technology made Ukrainians aware of the need for Ukrainian terminology. Under Polish, Russian, Austrian, and Hungarian rule the scientific and technical educational institutions in Ukraine used either Polish, Russian, or German. In the Austrian Empire, where there were fewer restrictions on the Ukrainian language, the Ukrainian members (Yakiv Holovatsky, Hryhorii Shashkevych, Yu. Vyslobotsky) of a government commission for the compilation of Slavic legal terminology published Juridisch-politische Terminologie für die slavischen Sprachen Österreichs ... Deutsch-ruthenische Separatausgabe (17,000 words, 1851). Ivan Verkhratsky collected popular Ukrainian natural-science nomenclature and published it with equivalent Latin and German terms in seven fascicles (Lviv, 1864, 1869, 1872, 1879, 1908). He also prepared a list of Ukrainian botanical terms (1892). A new German-Ukrainian legal and administrative dictionary was compiled by Kost Levytsky (1893; 2nd edn 1920). It contained terms based on the folk vernacular, neologisms, and borrowings from other Slavic languages. In 1894 the Shevchenko Scientific Society (NTSh) appealed to the reading public to collect popular terms in ‘the trades, the cottage industry, agriculture, commerce, and folk medicine’ because ‘scholars ... frequently are forced to borrow them from other Slavic languages or to create them sometimes ... very unsuccessfully and counter to the spirit of our language.’ Beginning in the mid-1890s, materials on Ukrainian terms in mathematics, physics, and chemistry (by Volodymyr O. Levytsky, 1895–6, 1903), geography (Stepan Rudnytsky, 1908, 1913), mineralogy (Ivan Verkhratsky, 1909), and botany (Mykola Melnyk, 1922) were published in NTSh serials. I. Zatserkovny published a list of legal terms in Chasopys’ pravnycha (1902, nos 4–5).

In the Russian Empire, Mykhailo Levchenko, the author of the first Russian-Ukrainian dictionary (1874), first wrote of the need to develop Ukrainian terminology on the basis of the folk vernacular and provided a glossary of his translations of several dozen internationally used terms (Osnova (Saint Petersburg), no. 7 [1861]). In reply, Petro S. Yefymenko added a number of new terms (Osnova, no. 8 [1862]). Because of tsarist restrictions on the use of the Ukrainian language (see Ems Ukase and Petr Valuev), only a few contributions to Ukrainian terminology were published: a glossary of vernacular plant names by Opanas Rohovych and a Latin-Ukrainian list of 1,000 plant names by Fedir Vovk in Zapiski Iugo-zapadnago otdela Russkago geograficheskago obshchestva (1873); a list of agricultural terms by S. Vengrzhynovsky in Kievskaia starina (1898, nos 7–8); and Viktor Vasylenko’s dictionary of technical (handicrafts and agriculture) terms from Poltava gubernia (Kharkiv 1902). After the Revolution of 1905, conditions improved with the lifting of restrictions. Zapysky Ukraïns’koho naukovoho tovarystva v Kyievi (18 vols, 1908–18) provided terminological indexes to every study published therein. Ukrainian student circles or commissions at the Kyiv Polytechnical Institute, the Moscow Agricultural Institute, and the Kvitka-Osnovianenko Society in Kharkiv began compiling terminological materials from literary and folk sources. In 1913 the Ukrainian Scientific Society in Kyiv assumed the task of co-ordinating this work and received the materials—several thousand cards of agricultural, natural-science, and technical terms—collected by the circles and commissions.

1917–20. The First World War interrupted the research on terminology. In January 1917 Oleksander Yanata, predicting the imminent opening of Ukrainian schools, called upon linguists to devise a terminology based on the popular vernacular and literary materials before technical language became polluted with artificial terms. In March 1917 Mykhailo Hrushevsky spoke out against extreme ‘ethnographism’ and urged that previous work in the field be used in preparing new educational and popular scientific literature. That task was taken up jointly by the newly created Society of School Education and the Ukrainian Scientific Society in Kyiv, and in 1917 the first short drafts of geographic, grammatical, arithmetical, geometric, and algebraic dictionaries were published. At the time at least 12 terminological dictionaries were published by various institutions and societies in Kyiv, Poltava, Kobeliaky, Mohyliv-Podilskyi, Hadiach, Vinnytsia, and Kamianets-Podilskyi. The most important ones were Ivan Zhyhadlo’s short Russian-Ukrainian legal dictionary (3 edns, 1917–19), Lev Padalka’s Russian-Ukrainian administrative dictionary (2 edns, 1917–18), and Volodymyr M. Leontovych and O. Yefymov’s Russian-Ukrainian legal dictionary (2 edns, 1917, 1919).

In the autumn of 1917 the General Secretariat of Education and Ministry of Justice of the Ukrainian National Republic asked Olena Kurylo of the Terminological Commission of the Ukrainian Scientific Society in Kyiv (UNTK) to prepare terminological glossaries for schools and the courts. In 1918 Kurylo published a brief dictionary of Ukrainian medical terms in Ukraïns’ki medychni visty and, together with Hryhorii Kholodny, a draft dictionary of Ukrainian physics terms. The All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (VUAN) Russian-Ukrainian legal dictionary edited by Ahatanhel Krymsky (1926) was based on Kurylo’s materials. In August 1918 the Terminological Commission of the UNKT and in 1919 the VUAN Orthographic and Terminological Commission were established. By the end of 1920 the UNTK commission had collected over 200,000 cards of materials from published sources. In 1917–19 many small dictionaries of mathematical, physics, chemical, medical, natural-science, zoological, geographic, and meteorological terms appeared, but most of them were inadequately and amateurishly prepared.

Soviet Ukraine. In the first three years of Soviet rule only three terminological dictionaries were published, the most important of which was Martyrii Halyn’s Russian-Ukrainian medical dictionary (1920). From 1921 the VUAN Institute of the Ukrainian Scientific Language (IUNM) under the direction of Ahatanhel Krymsky and, later, Hryhorii Kholodny co-ordinated all terminological work in Soviet Ukraine with the aim of developing a national terminology based on the vernacular and neologisms. In 1923–30 the IUNM published 20 of the planned 34 Ukrainian-Russian terminological dictionaries (with German and French or Latin equivalents), many of them in association with the Shevchenko Scientific Society. The most important of them were in the fields of chemistry (Olena Kurylo, 1923), geology (Pavlo Tutkovsky, 1923), anatomy (Latin-Ukrainian, ed F. Tseshkivsky and Oleksander Cherniakhivsky, 1925), mechanics (Tadei Sekunda, 1925), mathematics (Fedir Kalynovych, 1925), ornithology (Mykola Sharleman, 1925), pathology (Latin-Ukrainian, Ovksentii Korchak-Chepurkivsky, 1926), theoretical mechanics (Kalynovych, 1926), technical sciences (M. and L. Darmoros, 1926; I. Sheludko and T. Sadovsky, 1928), vertebrate zoology (Sharleman and K. Tatarko, 1927), manufacturing (F. Lokhanko, 1928), natural science (Fedir Polonsky, 1928), botany (Latin-Ukrainian, Oleksander Yanata and N. Osadtsa, 1928), public services (Kost Turkalo and V. Favorsky, 1928), electrical engineering (I. Sheludko, 1928), invertebrate zoology (Irynarkh Shchoholiv and S. Panochini, 1928), mechanics (ed V. Favorsky, 1929), administration (M. Doroshenko et al, 1930), construction (S. Bulda, 1930), music (1930), and surveying (Yu. Trykhvyliv and I. Zubkov, 1930).

In 1930 the leading figures at the Institute of the Ukrainian Scientific Language (IUNM) were implicated in the Stalinist show trial of the Union for the Liberation of Ukraine, and the IUNM was dissolved. Its surviving associates were transferred to the Division (later Sector) of Terminology and Nomenclature at the newly created Institute of Linguistics of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, where by 1933 they managed to publish 10 terminological dictionaries in fields such as mining (P. Vasylenko and I. Sheludko, 1931), economics (Heorhii Kryvchenko and V. Ihnatovych, 1931), human geography (Anatolii Nosiv, 1931), astronomy (Fedir Kalynovych and Hryhorii Kholodny, 1931), transportation and communications (I. Sheludko, 1932), physics (ed V. Favorsky, 1932), botany (V. Vovchanetsky and Ya. Lepchenko, 1932), and agriculture (1933).

During the early Soviet period about 70 terminological dictionaries came out in Ukraine, including medical (V. Kysilov, 1928; V. Kramarevsky et al, 1931), financial (1924), legal (S. Veretka and M. Matviievsky, 1926; ed Ahatanhel Krymsky et al, over 67,000 words, 1926), accounting and statistical (A. Girzhel and D. Rin, 1926), transportation (V. Zhurkovsky, 1926), administration (Ye. Linkevych et al, 1926), pedagogical, psychological, and school administration (Petro Horetsky, 1928), military (S. and O. Yakubsky, 1928), agricultural (P. Sabaldyr, 1931), manufacturing (I. Sheludko, 1931), and biological (S. Panochini, 1931) dictionaries. After Pavel Postyshev’s arrival in Ukraine in the spring of 1933, the Institute of Linguistics of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR was purged. The surviving linguists were ordered to eliminate the puristic elements (see Purism) from already-published dictionaries and to replace them with words common to both Ukrainian and Russian. Thus, five terminological bulletins (1934–5) with corrections were issued. Also, 21 Russian-Ukrainian terminological dictionaries that were being prepared or printed at the time had to be vetted. Only Illia Kyrychenko’s medical dictionary (1936) was published by the institute. With the terror of 1936–7, terminological work at the institute ceased for two decades. From late 1933 to 1935 ten Russified terminological dictionaries for elementary and secondary schools and in 1948 M. Knipovych’s Ukrainian-Russian medical dictionary were published outside the institute.

Terminological research was resumed only in 1957 with the creation of a Dictionary Commission at the Institute of Linguistics of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. After that time over 20 specialized Russian-Ukrainian dictionaries were published, mostly by the academy, in fields such as geology (Serhii Holovashchuk and I. Sokolovsky, 1959), machine science and machine building (V. Khilchevsky and V. Shashlov, 1959), physics (V. Heichenko et al, 1959), mining (O. Kovshulia et al, 1959), chemistry (Ye. Nekriach et al, 1959), hydraulics (H. Shvets et al, 1960), mathematics (F. Hudymenko et al, 1960), medicine (Latin-Ukrainian-Russian, H. Kazier et al, 1960), engineering (M. Matiiko et al, 1961), electrical engineering (Yu. Velychko et al, 1961), botany (D. Afanasiev et al, 1962), thermal and gas engineering (I. Sheludko et al, 1962), agriculture (A. Biloshtan et al, 1963), physiology (B. Yesypenko and M. Kondratovych, 1963), veterinary science (Yakym Yarema et al, 1964), welding (A. Potapievsky, 1964), social sciences and economics (S. Vorobiova and T. Molodid, 1966; rev edn 1976), metallurgy (V. Chekhranov and V. Meleshko, 1970), anatomy (M. Netliukh, 1972), sports (N. Firsel and V. Kaliuzhnaia, 1973), mineralogy (Ukrainian-Russian-English, Yevhen Lazarenko and O. Vynar, 1975), and law (ed Borys Babii, 1985). The puristic approach of the 1920s had been abandoned, and the dictionaries were based on the Russian language. Only in exceptional cases were all synonyms for a term provided, and then one of them—the one identical or similar to the Russian—recommended.

Outside Soviet Ukraine. In interwar Galicia, only one terminological dictionary—of musical terms, by Zinovii Lysko (1933)—was produced. In Cracow the Polish scholar S. Makowiecki published a major Latin-Ukrainian botanical dictionary (1936). In the interwar period émigré scholars affiliated with the Ukrainian Husbandry Academy in Poděbrady, Bohemia, the Ukrainian Scientific Institute in Warsaw, and the Ukrainian Scientific Institute in Berlin prepared and published several specialized dictionaries in fields such as the strength of materials (Stepan Ryndyk, Prague 1924), mathematics (Ukrainian-Russian-German, Mykola Chaikovsky, Berlin 1924), medicine (Latin-Ukrainian, Martyrii Halyn, Prague 1926; German-Ukrainian, P. Oesterle with Zenon Kuzelia, Berlin 1944), anatomy (Yevmen Lukasevych, Warsaw 1926), agriculture (Russian-Ukrainian, ed Yevhen Chykalenko, Poděbrady 1927), forestry (German-Ukrainian, ed Chykalenko, Poděbrady 1931), aeronautics (German-Ukrainian, I. Ilnytsky-Zankovych, Berlin 1939), and military science (German-Ukrainian, I. Ilnytsky-Zankovych, 20,000 words, Berlin 1939). Their work was continued after the Second World War in the United States of America by the Research Society for Ukrainian Terminology and the Ukrainian Terminological Center of America, and in Europe by the Ukrainian Technical and Husbandry Institute. The work of these institutions resulted in such publications as an American-Ukrainian Nautical Dictionary (W. Stepankowsky, 1953); A Selective English-Ukrainian Dictionary of Science, Technology, and Modern Living (Anatole Wowk, 1982); the English-Ukrainian Dictionary of Color Names and Color Science (Wowk, ed Bohdan Struminsky, 1986); a German-Ukrainian electrotechnical dictionary (M. Savchuk, 1981); and the reprints of Halyn’s medical dictionary (1969), Ahatanhel Krymsky’s legal dictionary of 1926 (1984), M. Knipovych’s medical dictionary (1985), and P. Oesterle’s German-Ukrainian medical dictionary (1986).

(See also Lexicography.)

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Kholodnyi, H. ‘Do istoriï orhanizatsiï terminolohichnoï spravy na Ukraïni,’ Visnyk Instytutu ukraïns’koï naukovoï movy, no. 1 (1928)
Kalynovych, F. ‘Pryrodnychyi viddil IUNM: Korotkyi ohliad ioho roboty za chas ioho isnuvannia,’ ibid, no. 2 (1930)
Pezhans’kyi, M. ‘Vklad inzheneriv Zakhidn’oï Ukraïny v ukraïns’ku terminolohiiu ta ohliad suchasnoho ïï stanu,’ in Ukraïns’kyi inzhener (New York 1969)
Smal’-Stots’kyi, R. Ukraïns’ka mova v Soviets’kii Ukraïni, 2nd edn (New York–Toronto–Sydney–Paris 1969)
Kryzhanivs’ka, A. (ed). Sklad i struktura terminolohichnoï leksyky ukraïns’koï movy (Kyiv 1984)
Kryzhanovskaia [Kryzhanivs’ka], A. Sopostavitel’noe issledovanie terminologii sovremennykh russkogo i ukrainskogo iazykov: Problemy unifikatsii i integratsii (Kyiv 1985)
Musaev, K. (ed). Razvitie terminologii na iazykakh soiuznykh respublik SSSR: Obshchaia problematika. Terminologiia na russkom, ukrainskom i belorusskom iazykakh (Moscow 1986)

Roman Senkus, Victor Swoboda

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]