Maintaining the balance between knowledge and the lexicon in terminology: a methodology based on frame semantics

This paper argues for an approach to terms—based on Frame Semantics (Fillmore in Ann N Y Acad Sci Conf Origin Dev Lang Speech 280:20–32, 1976; Fillmore and Baker in A Frames Approach to Semantic Analysis, 313–339, 2010)—that takes into account their linguistic properties and shows how terms and their properties are connected formally to the expression of knowledge in specialized fields. I briefly present the theoretical assumptions underlying this proposal. The main part of the article describes the methodology devised to implement the proposal in two terminological resources that are under development at the Observatoire de linguistique Sens-Texte (OLST). The methodology that comprises seven main steps is based on that of FrameNet (https://framenet.icsi.berkeley.edu/fndrupal/, 2017. Accessed 20 January 2017) (Ruppenhofer et al. in FrameNet II: extended theory and practice. https://framenet.icsi.berkeley.edu/fndrupal/index.21php?q=the_book, 2016. Accessed 27 January 2017), the lexical implementation of Frame Semantics. I illustrate the methodology by applying it to terms that belong to the field of endangered species, a subfield of the environment.