Respondent
Theme
Lexical and semantic, linguistic and pragmatic peculiarities of German Christian theological terminology.
Defence Date
Annotation
Thesis for the Candidate Degree in Philology, Specialty 10.02.04 – Germanic
Languages. – Lviv Ivan Franko National University. – Lviv, 2016.
The thesis is devoted to the study of lexical and semantic, linguistic and pragmatic
peculiarities of German Christian theological terminology.
For the first time, the German terms of professional theological language at the
level of vocabulary and text have been analyzed. The properties of German Christian
theological terminology according to the systematic aspect and the aspect of definitiveness
have been studied. While studying the German Christian theological terms a content-
conceptual classification was created. The grouping of words was performed according to
the conceptual and logical principle co-thematically taking into account the hyper-
hyponymic relations of terminological units in the studied terminology. According to this
classification the German Christian theological terms form the following thematic groups:
1) terms denoting historical theology: patristic and church history; 2) terms of Dogmatic
theology 3) terms of the field of practical theology denoting the notions of pastoral
theology, catechetics, moral theology, canon law, liturgy, including: feasts, worship,
church utensils and prayer; 4) biblical theology and biblical studies.
Structural and semantic features which formed the new German Christian
theological terminology units have been recorded. Professional communication in
theology takes place within the discourse of theology, which is interwoven with religious
discourse. Elements of theological discourse are professional theological texts and
extralinguistic factors. The theological discourse contains instructions for the spiritual and
moral life based on the Holy Scriptures, Divine Revelation and the Tradition of the
Church. There are oral and written forms which occur within specific channels of
communication. The discourse of theology is regulated by specific strategies: profession of
faith (tactics: belief in one God, the dogmas of the Church, the truth of faith); prayer (the
tactics of praise, confession, thanksgiving, request); Sacraments (tactics: the life in God
through the Sacraments); Decalogue (tactics: observance of the Ten Commandments of
God, the perfection of moral and theological virtues).
At the level of professional theological text cohesion, coherence, the theme and
rheme division of the text, the means of content, formal and logic coherence have been
observed, their peculiarities discovered. Quantitative analysis of the use of terminological
units under the terminological aspect of their saturation and frequency has been
performed. The author determined structural and morphological characteristics of prayer
texts.
Keywords: Christian theological terminology, theological term, professional
theological language, structural model, derivational feature, semantic feature, the
discourse of theology, professional text.