Abstract

The article considers some of the mechanisms and principles that are argued to be productive in coining technical terms in developing terminologies. The examples are mainly drawn from the fields of nanotechnology, information technologies, space research, genetics and some others. Special attention is paid to the principles of systemic organization of technical terms within a terminology and its reflection in the process of the creation of new technical terms. The structural and semantic peculiarities of one and multi-component technical terms are analyzed as well as the preferences in the number of components. The principles and types of the formation of terminological oppositions and their reflection in the underlying forms of technical terms are discussed. I also focus on the principles of choice of term elements, especially productive and systemic that builds up the corpus of “building blocks” for coining new terms for a certain terminology or the language of science on the whole. The role of productive spheres of borrowing term elements for coining new technical terms is also put into context.

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