Terminology

Terminology is the study of terms and their use. Terms are words and compound words or multi-word expressions that in specific contexts are given specific meanings—these may deviate from the meanings the same words have in other contexts and in everyday language. Terminology is a discipline that studies, among other things, the development of such terms and their interrelationships within a specialized domain. Terminology differs from lexicography, as it involves the study of concepts, conceptual systems and their labels (terms), whereas lexicography studies words and their meanings.

Terminology is a discipline that systematically studies the "labelling or designating of concepts" particular to one or more subject fields or domains of human activity. It does this through the research and analysis of terms in context for the purpose of documenting and promoting consistent usage. Terminology can be limited to one or more languages (for example, "multilingual terminology" and "bilingual terminology"), or may have an interdisciplinarity focus on the use of terms in different fields.

Term (logic)

In analogy to natural language, where a noun phrase refers to an object and a whole sentence refers to a fact, in mathematical logic, a term denotes a mathematical object and a formula denotes a mathematical fact. In particular, terms appear as components of a formula.

A first-order term is recursively constructed from constant symbols, variables and function symbols. An expression formed by applying a predicate symbol to an appropriate number of terms is called an atomic formula, which evaluates to true or false in bivalent logics, given an interpretation. For example, is a term built from the constant 1, the variable x, and the binary function symbols and ; it is part of the atomic formula which evaluates to true for each real-numbered value of x.

Besides in logic, terms play important roles in universal algebra, and rewriting systems.

Elementary mathematics

In the context of polynomials, sometimes term is used for a monomial with a coefficient: to 'collect like terms' in a polynomial is the operation of making it a linear combination of distinct monomials. Terms, in this sense, are things that are added or subtracted. A series is often represented as the sum of a sequence of terms. Individual factors in an expression representing a product are multiplicative terms. For example, in 6 + 3x − 2, 6, 3x, and −2 are all terms.

Contractual term

A contractual term is "Any provision forming part of a contract". Each term gives rise to a contractual obligation, breach of which can give rise to litigation. Not all terms are stated expressly and some terms carry less legal gravity as they are peripheral to the objectives of the contract.

Classification of term

Condition or Warranty

Conditions are terms that go to the very root of a contract. Breach of these terms gives the right to repudiate the contract, allowing the other party to discharge the contract. A warranty is less imperative than a condition, so the contract will survive a breach. Breach of either a condition or a warranty will give rise to damages.

It is an objective matter of fact whether a term goes to the root of a contract. By way of illustration, an actress's obligation to perform the opening night of a theatrical production is a condition, whereas a singer's obligation to perform during the first three days of rehearsal is a warranty.

Statute may also declare a term or nature of term to be a condition or warranty. For example, the Sale of Goods Act 1979 s15A provides that terms as to title, description, quality, and sample (as described in the Act) are conditions save in certain defined circumstances.

Academic term

An academic term (or simply "term") is a portion of an academic year, the time during which an educational institution holds classes. The schedules adopted vary widely.

Formal language

In mathematics, computer science, and linguistics, a formal language is a set of strings of symbols that may be constrained by rules that are specific to it.

The alphabet of a formal language is the set of symbols, letters, or tokens from which the strings of the language may be formed; frequently it is required to be finite. The strings formed from this alphabet are called words, and the words that belong to a particular formal language are sometimes called well-formed words or well-formed formulas. A formal language is often defined by means of a formal grammar such as a regular grammar or context-free grammar, also called its formation rule.

The field of formal language theory studies primarily the purely syntactical aspects of such languages—that is, their internal structural patterns. Formal language theory sprang out of linguistics, as a way of understanding the syntactic regularities of natural languages. In computer science, formal languages are used among others as the basis for defining the grammar of programming languages and formalized versions of subsets of natural languages in which the words of the language represent concepts that are associated with particular meanings or semantics. In computational complexity theory, decision problems are typically defined as formal languages, and complexity classes are defined as the sets of the formal languages that can be parsed by machines with limited computational power. In logic and the foundations of mathematics, formal languages are used to represent the syntax of axiomatic systems, and mathematical formalism is the philosophy that all of mathematics can be reduced to the syntactic manipulation of formal languages in this way.

Language (journal)

Language is a peer-reviewed quarterly academic journal published by the Linguistic Society of America since 1925. It covers all aspects of linguistics, focusing on the area of theoretical linguistics. Its current editor-in-chief is Gregory Carlson (University of Rochester).

Under the editorship of Yale linguist Bernard Bloch, Language was the vehicle for publication of many of the important articles of American structural linguistics during the second quarter of the 20th century, and was the journal in which many of the most important subsequent developments in linguistics played themselves out.

One of the most famous articles to appear in Language was the scathing 1959 review by the young Noam Chomsky of the book Verbal Behavior by the behaviorist cognitive psychologist B. F. Skinner. This article argued that Behaviorist psychology, then a dominant paradigm in linguistics (as in psychology at large), had no hope of explaining complex phenomena like language. It followed by two years another book review that is almost as famous—the glowingly positive assessment of Chomsky's own 1957 book Syntactic Structures by Robert B. Lees that put Chomsky and his generative grammar on the intellectual map as the successor to American structuralism.

Language Spoken at Home in the United States of America

Language Spoken at Home is a data set published by the United States Census Bureau on languages in the United States. In 2000 and 1990, it was a part of Summary File 3, collected from the long-form questionnaire which was distributed to 1 out of 6 households. The data set is put to use by governments and other organizations in determining which languages to use in a specific geographic area; for instance in voting machines, literature for voters, and material for public libraries. This question was first asked in 1980; It replaced a question about one's mother language.

The published data is for 30 languages, chosen for their nationwide distribution, and 10 language groupings (see list below). Data from households which report languages other than the 30 are reported under the language groupings. Thus, languages which are widespread in certain areas of the country but not nationally get put together, even in block level data. Lithuanian, and Welsh are simply "Other Indo-European languages," Yoruba and Swahili are simply "African languages," and Indonesian and Syriac are simply "Other Asian languages." Several locally very well represented languages, such as Punjabi and Pennsylvania German, are collated into smaller groupings. Native North American languages besides Navajo are also collated, though they are reported on several geographic levels in another data set.