Macrostructure: Semasiological and Onomasiological Approach

As there are many researchers from various disciplines (speech sciences, descriptive linguistics, computational linguistics, and electrical engineering) involved in the EAGLES project, it is very difficult to provide a flexible structure of a standard terminoloy if you have to decide on one approach.

The concept of hypertext makes it possible to combine the previously separated semasiological and onomasiological approaches to terminology.

• Semasiological Principle: organisation based on the form of words, e.g. traditional dictionary
• Onomasiological Principle: organisation based on the meaning of words, e.g. thesaurus

An example of a combined termbank