Motivation Characteristics of English Oil Refining Terms of the 1960s – 1970s

The purpose of this research is to identify the motivation characteristics of English oil refining terms, the focus being on lexical units that entered the English terminological system in the mid-20th century as a result of active development of the oil refining industry. Special attention is paid to the concepts of inner form and motivation: key approaches to the definition of these phenomena are analysed, their essential properties are revealed, and the main types of term motivation are considered. The collected material included both motivated and unmotivated terms; however, unmotivated units remained outside the research scope. Methodological tools applied in this study are both general scientific and linguistic methods proper. In the course of the analysis, the conceptual areas containing the largest number of motivated terms were identified. Within the framework of semantic motivation, based on the conceptual metaphor theory, metaphorical models of industrial terms were reconstructed, and the most productive ones were named. When studying morphological motivation, a projection was made from the word-forming affixes of terms to the conceptual areas of technical knowledge expressed by them, and it was concluded that the information potential of the affixal and root segments, as well as the conceptual space of the term system, act as motivational attributes. In addition, we found prevalence of morphological motivation over semantic motivation. The results obtained can help us to understand the role of terms’ motivation in the verbalization of technical concepts, to further study the formation sources and development patterns of specialized vocabulary, as well as to streamline the oil refinery term system and harmonize the language for specific purposes.