MEDICAL TERMINOLOGY OF CASE RECORDS: LEXIS, SEMANTICS AND CONTEXT

Abstract

The paper highlights lexical and semantic specifics of the medical terminological units extracted from the thoracic patient cases. The stages of analysis encompass the part of speech classification, the lexical patterns of the word combinations and semantic groups’ analysis. The study sheds light on the contextual use of the terms thus specifying their meaning. The word combinations are more frequent than the one-word terms. The former involve nouns that outnumber verbs. The prevalence of nominal word combinations revealed in the research is predetermined by the descriptive nature of the patient cases lacking verbal narration, unlike surgical ones, for instance. According to the semantic classification, the texts of clinical reports contain a set of topic groups, namely, anatomy, diseases, symptoms, and examinations. Obviously, these nominations are relevant to the given context. The units pertaining to the anatomical notions are also very frequent and manifested by the names of the blood vessels, organs, bones and structures.