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CHAPTER TWO LITERATURE REVIEW
This chapter will provide a review of previous studies of terminological variation from functional aspect. The first part presents the researches of functional variation of terminology; the second part is the review of previous studies of terms in environment discourses; the third part provides the studies of sustainability reports.
2.1 Previous Studies on Terminological Variation from Functional Aspect
There are popularly domestic terminologists such as Zheng Shupu, Liang Ailin, Sun Huan and so on. Russian and Germany researchers lead the development of terminology science, but because of the limitation of author’s language ability, so the Chinese transcripts of Russian and Germany researches are read. Indeed scholars such as Zheng Shupu, Liang Ailin and Sun Huan have already summed up the general development of terminology theory and been following the research hotspots, which provide enough supports for this thesis.Variation is the property of language so it is no surprising that terms keep changing over time in their forms, meanings and functions. By reading the previous studies on terminology, the author found that terminological variation was usually studied from morphological variation (for example, “measure” and “measurement”; “analysis method” and “analytical method”), syntactic variation (for example, “cell fraction” and “fraction of cells”; “autoimmune disease” and “disease with autoimmune”) and semantic variation. Recently, terminologists absorb the theoretical achievements of functional linguistics and study the terminological variation from the functional aspect in order to explore the law and principles of terminological usage.
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2.2 Previous Studies on Terms in Environmental Discourse
