Volleyball as a producer of terminology

English is the language of international communication, so studying any aspect of so important language is the actual task of philology. Vocabulary is the most changeable part of the language and terminology contributes to this change most of all. 90 % of new words are terms. Specialists counted that there are 2 mln. of terms just in Chemistry.

World tendency to globalization causes active penetration of terminology to the word stock of languages to be in contact with each other. Sport creates terminological sub-systems for every definite kind of sport as they have specific instruments, names of motions, processes, participants. Because of having great popularity with different nations sport promotes it’s terminology penetration to vocabulary of different languages. So, our efforts on systematizing volleyball terms have topicality.

Today many thousand words in a vocabulary belong to the special scientific, economical, military or other terminological sub-systems and their meaning isn’t clear for ordinary people. Sport forms its own sub-system of words, the meaning of which is familiar mostly for sportsmen and fans. We call these words – the terms.

Terms can be defined as the words naming specific conceptions and processes of science, economics, agriculture, sport and other spheres of human activity [2, p. 220]. They are made artificially and have such peculiarities:

• They belong to definite system and their meaning can be different in different systems. For example: The term “unit” in Pedagogy means one theme or lesson, while in Medicine it means a doze of pills.
• Terms tend to monosemantic meaning within the same terminological system, however the cases of synonyms are not rare. For example: the term “paint” means a process of creating a picture, the substance, with the help of which the picture is made, and at last – the picture itself.
• Terms mustn’t have emotive component [1, p. 34].

Terms structure can be simple, complex and multi-worded. Simple terms are not numerous in any language. So are multi-worded ones. Complex terms are made by suffixes and prefixes. The analysis of terms proves that their creation follows all the rules of a language word-building and there is no barrier between terms and other words of the vocabulary. Standard words can become terms and terms can become a standard word. For example: standard word theatre in medicine means a room for surgeon operations. Most of astrologic terms came to standard using. For example a term disaster in astrology means “bad star in horoscope”, in everyday use it means – an unexpected and very bad event, a synonym of catastrophe.

Development of science and techniques causes rapid growth of terminology, so many scientists study these new words. Studying of terminology in modern sense means it’s unification, explaination and classification. Our research will contribute a little to this process.

Volleyball was created in the USA in 1895. Unlike other sports games, the name of the inventor of volleyball is well known – he is William G. Morgan, a physical education director in YMCA in Holyoke . Being charmed with basketball, Morgan created volleyball as easier game for weak or aged sportsmen. Firstly, it was called “Mintonette”. In 1896 Alfred S. Halstead renamed the game "Volleyball", because the point of the game is to volley the ball back and forth over the net. Just under this name the game became widely known and played [3].

In the process of examining the theme we have found more than 140 terms, 86 of which we have studied and classified by their pragmatic use in the game. Since volleyball is a field game, we have outlined the names of the field sectors (attack zone, service zone, substitution zone, different lines – 13 terms); the tools for a game (ball, net, net poles etc. – 6 terms); names of players (attacker, blocker, hitter, etc. – 12 terms); names of hitting the ball (attack hit, dig, angle, etc. – 20 terms); names of a player’s actions on the field (block, bump pass, cross court attack, etc. – 28 terms); names of playing technics (four-two offence, five-one offence, etc. – 6 terms) [4]. As we see, the most numerous are the terms meaning the game actions – hitting the ball and types moving on the field.

To summarize the article we can say that any type of people activity produces a number of terms which form the terminological systems of this type of activity. Being not the exception, volleyball contributes to this process of terminology making greatly. Various volleyball terms are thrown around between players, coaches, referees and people who enjoy the sport. Linguists have their own task and pleasure to study the world of words of this popular sport game.