Elementarity of entries

  A structured terminology database holds a number of data categories. It was stated that all information on a term that can be found should be implied in a termbank in appropriate data categories. Frequently more than one bit of information can be found per data category in existing termbases as well as in lexica . For example: sometimes a context example is combined with the definition, or even more often: if there are two examples, they are stored in the same category. This results in fatal problems for terminology interchange, which are described in section 3.6.3.

To add to the problems of terminology interchange: if there is only one bit of information in a data category elementarity (that is one entry per data field in a database) helps to increase functionality, for example: Sometimes the full form and its abbreviation are stored in the same field, resulting in problems in the search for at least one of them. Storing them in extra fields makes it easier to implement a search for both of them. Furthermore, one of the terms can be marked prefered or deprecated, which would not be possible when stored in the same category.

For the design of a termbase elementarity of data categories is a basic principle.

Thorsten Trippel
Fri May 21 13:04:11 MET DST 1999