Once Again on the Term Characteristics as Parts of Speech

The article examines two views on the terms as parts of speech. One of them suggests that a term can be expressed only by a noun or a substantial word combination, i. e. by a phrase which has a noun as syntactically most principal word. This point of view is based, first, on the fact that it is the noun that has broad semantic capabilities and isable to convey the essence of terminological names, and, second, on the analysis of real terminological dictionaries, in which noun is the most often input unit. Another point of view is that the term can be expressed not only by a noun or substantial word combination, and modern lexicographic practice seems to confirms this. The authors consistently provide examples confirming that linguistic specificity of the term cannot be limited by its expression only by nouns. For example, the adjectives technogenic, cerebral, juvenile, etc. are not derived from any substantive, which theoretically could have been the case, but so far there are no such nouns either in dictionaries or in any relevant texts (technogenic — technogenicity* or technogeny*, cerebral — cerebrality*, cerebral*, juvenile — juvenality* or juvenile*). Such adjectives act as independent terms and express certain concepts in the relevant science. Thus, the authors argue that the term can be expressed not only by a noun, but also by an adjective and a verb.