1. The core concepts needed in Onomantics, as described in Part I of this article, are reproduced here -- for easy reference, they are repeated in this note:

• {1} any form used to identify units of nomothetic knowledge: concept representation; representation
• {1.1} a representation {1} that specifies the essential characteristics of a concept: concept description; description
• {1.2} a representation {1} that succinctly identifies a particular concept: concept cue; cue
• {1.2.1} a cue {1.2} that identifies a general concept without reference to how it may be linked to other concepts: concept tag; tag
• {1.2.2} a cue {1.2} that identifies a general concept as part of a system of concepts: concept notation; notation

 
      concept representation: {1}  
             description: {1.1} 
             cue: {1.2} 
                tag: {1.2.1} 
                notation: {1.2.2} 

In any Onomantic context, 'cue' should be understood as a short form for 'concept cue,' and 'tag' as short for 'concept tag.' This caveat is needed because, of course, these words -- like many others drawn from ordinary language -- are polysemes which already have other meanings. If we think of a concept as an idea most fully and adequately represented by a description (definition), then any word or phrase that can be used for that concept is a kind of "tag," something added on to identify the tagged item. Apart from its everyday meaning as something attached to a suitcase to identify its owner, we know that a speech can end with a summarizing "tag" or a tag may refer to a final quotation, or the moral of a fable.

The word also has special meanings in Lexicography and Computer programming. Dictionary entries often contain labels or "tags" that indicate a field of study in which the defined word has a special meaning: e.g., Chemistry, Logic, Sports, etc. Computer programmers use "tag" (or "sentinel") to mean a symbol (like < and >, or "..", or &..;) that can mark the beginning and end of an item of information or text.

More recently, "tag" has gained widespread acceptance, because of the INTERNET and World Wide Web, as a term standing for the markup directives or special instructions found between angle brackets in the coding system of the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and related schemes like SGML, MARTIF, etc. The increasing use of INTERNET and WWW to post terminological information means that this new meaning of "tag" will become increasingly familiar. However, as yet it has no special meaning in Terminology although, of course, terminologists make extensive use of computers and hence need to use 'tag' in that context.

However, modifiers can easily be used to distinguish between the different senses of "tag" whenever ambiguity is possible. In the Onomantic context, "concept tag," as listed above, is appropriate. Perhaps some phrase like "markup tag" could be adopted to overcome possible ambiguity when the same word is used in HTML, and "sentinel" appears to be preferrred to "tag" in this word's earlier computer programming sense. So long as the different senses of any word can easily be distinguished clearly from each other by contexts and modifiers, no dificulties need arise from their use as polysemes and, of course, so long as, within each subject field (discourse community) a word has only one meaning, it is unequivocal and, therefore, can be used without ambiguity in that field.

2. These three concepts overlap those identified in the well- established triangle of meaning developed by Ogden and Richards and others. In the detailed analysis subsequently offered by John Lyons in Semantics, the triangle includes three basic elements -- to follow this discussion, please first draw a triangle and identify their points as A, B and C.

A. signs (terms, tags)

B. concepts (descriptions, definitions, connotations, intensions)

C. significata (referents, denotations, extensions, objects)

3. We need a generic concept to identify the constituent parts of a glossary, whether they be semantic entries, onomantic records or some mixture of both. Using gloss for this concept is, admittedly, a neologism but I think it is justifiable and quite easy to remember. Etymologically, glosses were originally notes used to explain an obscure text, and we still use the word in this sense. However, when a set of glosses were compiled into a separate text, the resulting compilation was called a glossary and the word came to be used for any set of notes (including entries and records) that provide information about unfamiliar words or concepts.
Semantic entries define the headwords entered in an alphabetical glossary or dictionary. By contrast, the onomantic records found in a conceptual glossary are usually arranged in a systematic way, i.e. by notations, as they are in ISO 1087. The word, gloss, when used to mean any item of information glossed in a glossary -- whether it be a lexeme (entry) or a concept (record) -- can help us clarify an often confusing pair of closely related ideas and it also enables us to avoid repeating "entry or record" whenever it is not important to distinguish between them.
Admittedly, "entry" and "record" are polysemes with other senses so readers are urged to notice the specific meanings assigned to them here, in an onomantic context. If their other meanings block recognition of these special meanings, please think of preferable terms and recommend them to all of us -- the distinction is fundamental regardless of what one chooses to call it.

4. Henry Burger's Wordtree is an exceptional dictionary because, by defining every transitive verb by means of two other transitive verbs, it establishes comprehensive chains of interdependent concepts: for example, lexiconize is defined as "lexify and roster"; lexify as "semanticize and systemize"; semanticize as "intend" and "sensify"; etc. The rule that dictionaries have independent definitions is tested by this exception. I might add that Burger supports his claim that none of the words defined in the Wordtree are neologisms by providing citations to published texts for all of them.
By contrast, most of the words used in the definitions found virtually all other dictionaries are intended to be understood without the need to consider other definitions, but there are exceptions: for example, the definition of synonym typically has a cross reference to antonym. However, genus and species are likely to be used, reciprocally, in the definitions of these words, without cross-references -- i.e., to understand the definition of "genus" lexicographers will assume their readers know what a "species" is, and vice versa. By contrast, in interdependent definitions, such words should be entailed so that the description of a concept called "genus" would automatically show where to find the description of a linked concept called "species".

5. See note #5 in Part I of this article in which I argue that including objects (and their individual concepts) within the scope of Terminology undermines the useful distinction between Onomantics and Onomastics. In situations where problems involving both the naming of objects and the representation of general concepts need to be considered, a cross-disciplinary methodology using concepts from both fields could be used. However, no attempt is made here to introduce concepts drawn from Onomastics. From an exclusively onomantic perspective, all cues (designations) refer to general concepts, not to objects (or their "individual concepts").

6. John Lyons gives us a thorough semantic analysis of the role of names of objects (individual concepts) as distinct from the signs (terms, tags) used for general concepts. He writes, in a section of his book on "Naming," that "the relation which holds between a proper name and its bearer is very different from the relation which holds between a common noun and its denotata [referents]" (Lyons, 1977, I: 216). While admitting that some philosophers of ordinary language, including Wittgenstein, Ryle and Austen, have criticized this distinction, it remains unquestioned, he writes, in many works on semantics.
However, Lyons does mention a common use of "name" to mean designation, traced to Biblical usage as when Adam "named" animals so that "whatsoever the man called every living creature, that was the name thereof" (Genesis 2.19). Nevertheless, "proper names," according to Lyons, "identify their referents, not by describing them in terms of some relevant property or properties which the name denotes, but by utilizing the unique and arbitrary association which holds between a name and its bearer" (p.214). No doubt, there are marginal cases: when someone is called "Junior" this probably means that he bears the same name as his father, but a girl called Rose is not a kind of flower, nor is Sarah a princess. Lyons' point is that designators identify properties of something, but names do not.
In a recent paper, Dahlberg discusses statements that can be made about the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, and bells in general, characterizing the former as an individual concept and the latter as a general concept (Dahlberg, 1995). She would agree, however, that "Liberty Bell" is a name (capitalized) applied to a single object ("individual concept") and "bell" is a term (tag) applied to a (general) concept.
The issue cannot be resolved here, but I shall follow Lyons in treating names as arbitrarily chosen expressions that identify but do not characterize an object (or "individual concept") and using designations (terms, tags) to characterize general concepts only -- the description of these concepts do characterize the referents to which they apply, something that names do not. Of course, sometimes names are chosen in the hope that they will, indeed, characterize the object (person) named, but such hopes are often frustrated: thus a girl named 'Charity' or 'Faith' may grow up to be uncharitable or faithless.

7. Terms are equivocal when, within the same special language (discourse community) they have two or more meanings. By contrast, they are unequivocal when they have only one meaning within such a community. I consider this concept necessary for Onomantics, but unnecessary for Lexicography where, by contrast, a lexeme is polysemic if it has more than one meaning, as reflected in the various sense definitions assigned to an entry word in a single entry. Clearly, a term (tag) can be polysemic and also unequivocal in the context of a special language. ISO 1087 contains an entry for "polysemy" but not for "equivocalness". The reasons for this and its consequences are examined in Part III of this article.

8. If, as I argue here, both 'name' and 'designation' are sometimes used equivocally to refer either to (general) concepts, or to objects (individual concepts), it might help clarify the problem to introduce new terms that are unequivocal: e.g., tag (or "concept tag") for cues that represent only general concepts (see {1.2.1}); and nom for expressions that identify a single object. 'Nom' is a loan word from French that has already come into English in such phrases as nom de guerre and nom de plume. Etymologically, it can be traced, like 'name,' to the Latin word, 'nomen.' A 'mis-nomer' is a wrong name, and 'Onomantics' comes from the Greek form of the same word, onoma. We could, I believe, use "nom" to mean only the name of an object, and (concept tag) or "tag" to designate only general concepts. In similar fashion, we could take onom from the Greek root of Onomasiology to stand for a generic concept that includes both noms and tags -- i.e. the items treated in both Onomastics and Onomantics, both individual and general concepts.
Armed with this vocabulary, we could point out that "name" is normally used in English to mean "nom", but it is sometimes also used for "tags" (as in Genesis, 2.19 -- see note #6); and "designation" usually refers only to "tags," but sometimes it also includes "noms", as in [5.3.1 / 5.3.1.3]. Both of these words, therefore, are equivocal in Terminology. No doubt introducing tag and nom will be difficult, but if they could be accepted by terminologists, they would provide a simple way to explain why both name and designation are used so confusingly in ISO 1087.
As for individual concept, it may well be useful in philosophy and classification, but is it necessary in Terminology? Although some philosophers of language, like Wittgenstein, Ryle and Austen, use this term and concept, others like John Lyons (see note #6) reject it. Because of its focus on general concepts, Onomantics does not need it and, I think, even Onomastics ignores it, preferring to name objects as "objects," not as "individual concepts". Similarly, I think, Terminology might be better off by disregarding the notion.

9. Consider that one may transliterate the name of an object but one cannot translate it. Thus Calicut became Calcutta in English usage, and Frankfurt can be spelled the same way in both languages. However, products named for a place can be translated or transliterated: the fabric, "calico," is named for its city of origin, as a transliteration, but it may also be translated as "cotton cloth". A particular kind of sausage may be called, by transliteration, a "frankfurter" but many Americans translate this concept by using the phrase, "hot dog".

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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revised 29 July 1996