LEXICAL ECONOMY AND EXPANSION OF THE MEANINGS OF TERMS

This article examines the twin phenomena of lexical economy – minimizing redundancy by reusing existing lexical entries – and semantic expansion – broadening or adding new senses to terms to meet communicative needs in specialized domains. Drawing on classical economy principles (Zipf, 1949; Martinet, 1955), generative lexicon theory (Pustejovsky, 1995), and recent corpus-based studies of lexical innovation (Sornig, 1981; Renouf & Bauer, 2000), it analyzes mechanisms of polysemy emergence and strategies for balancing brevity and expressivity in terminography. Practical recommendations for corpus-driven term extraction and dynamic definition drafting conclude the study.