The structure of the DRG is semasiological, i.e. starting from the word and not the thing.
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This metonymic extension was a semasiological process, which was, however, followed at some point by an onomasiological one.
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The notion of action signs in semasiological theory, for example, presupposes a view of human beings as meaning-making agents.
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In spite of the above critical remarks, I do not wish to deny the value of both the onomasiological and the semasiological approaches in semantic studies.
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The opposite approach is known as semasiology: here one starts with a word and asks what it means, or what concepts the word refers to. Thus, an onomasiological question is, e.g., "what are the names for long, narrow pieces of potato that have been deep-fried?" (answers: french fries in the US, chips in the UK, etc.), while a semasiological question is, e.g.
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A broad distinction is made between general and specialized dictionaries. Specialized dictionaries include words in specialist fields, rather than a complete range of words in the language. Lexical items that describe concepts in specific fields are usually called terms instead of words, although there is no consensus whether lexicology and terminology are two different fields of study. In theory, general dictionaries are supposed to be semasiological, mapping word to definition, while specialized dictionaries are supposed to be onomasiological, first identifying concepts and then establishing the terms used to designate them.
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Because of the fertility of the börden another connexion has been made to the word bören, whose primary meaning was "yield" or "output", thus a börde would be a "land that produced a rich yield". Semasiological comparisons are made in this regard to the word tragen ("to carry", "to bear"): the related words Ertrag ("yield") and Getreide ("grain") stem from the Middle High German getregede ("that which is borne"). In the heraldic motto of the House of Alsleben is the term Vorborde, which is translated today as "for the ancestral land". See also: Beauce and the terms Gau and Gäu as part of the name of various landscapes or administrative districts.
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The main principles of terminological work were elaborated, terminologies of the leading European languages belonging to many subject fields were described and analysed. It should be mentioned that at the former USSR terminological studies were conducted on an especially large scale: while in the 1940s only four terminological dissertations were successfully defended, in the 1950s there were 50 such dissertations, in the 1960s their number reached 231, in the 1970s – 463 and in the 1980s – 1110. As the result of development and specialising of terminological studies, some of the branches of terminology science – such as typological terminology science, semasiological terminology science, terminological derivatology, comparative terminology science, terminography, functional terminology science, cognitive terminology science, historical terminology science and some branch terminology sciences – have gained the status of independent scientific disciplines.
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