In this way we worked through all the chapters of the curriculum, and the dictionary now has signs for almost 800 specific terms of physics, of these more than 400 are created at Bjørkåsen by these classes. You can download this dictionary on the web:

There are more synonyms than would ordinarily be seen as ideal, because of NSL's own synonym richness based on history, and because of the borrowing from Norwegian spoken/ written language, resulting in composite signs from composite words. The dictionary also contains some of the everyday signs that the physics signs are derived from.

Conclusions:

Even if the transparency of the science terms may not be evident to the lay person, a teacher of the subject should be aware of this, and it is possible to take advantage of this fact in guiding the students to the understanding of the concept underlying the term. There is a link between the representation of a concept and the concept itself, even if this is not always evident (Picht and Draskau 1985; Myking 1998).

The work that these classes did on the NSL terminology of physics was in accordance with the general principles of terminology creation, as these are outlined by Pitch and Draskau (1985) and in the Nordic Minisymposium on Terminology (Myking, Sæbøe et al. 1996). Even if no linguist was present and the students were not experts in the field for which they were making the terms, they based their term making on the conceptual content and the principles of NSL, or principles that the classes themselves laid down for this class of signs.

Finally, another quote from Picht and Draskau (1985):

'For the organization of knowledge, it is essential for people to be able to make themselves understood through the medium of language. But language can only fulfill its task if the concepts are defined and related unambiguously to the terms.'(p. 178)

July, 2000
Ingvild Roald
ingvild.roald@statped.no