Early
on, many scholars and other specialists came to realize the importance of using
accurate terminology in their fields, and e.g., Linnaeus (1707-1778) and Lavoisier (1743-
1794) created systematic nomenclatures for their respective fields. By the end of the 19th
century, international rules had been established for botany, medicine, chemistry, etc.
Different kinds of cooperative terminological activities appeared as a result of the industrial
revolution. TS was established by the Austrian engineer Eugen Wüster (1898-1977),
whose doctoral dissertation “Internationale Sprachnormung in der Technik, besonders in
der Elektrotechnik” was published in 1931. He brought together theories and methods from
several disciplines, such as linguistics, logic, ontology, and information science. Linguistics,
especially lexicology and lexicography, had created a foundation for describing general
language vocabulary, but was not yet sufficient to cope with L[anguage for] S[pecial]
P[urposes] or their vocabularies. The basic axioms of the general theory of terminology are:
(i.) TW starts from a concept (cf. lexicography) and its goal is to delimit the concepts
clearly from each other; (ii.) concepts and terms are seen as separate units; (iii.) emphasis is
on a synchronic view; (iv.) concepts and terms can only be studied in their relation to the
related concepts and terms; and (v.) organization of terminological entries is systematic or
thematic instead of alphabetic. It was also seen as necessary to manipulate the lexical
resources used in special fields consciously.
