Synonymy in the rhetorical terminology of Cicero

Abstract

In this particular article we have examined some types of Latin synonymy in the rhetorical tractates of Cicero. One of the most disputed questions in the linguistics is the question of existence of synonymy in the terminological systems. Analysis of the rhetorical term system has not displayed any conceptional difference between terminological and common literary synonymy. Existence of synonymic terms as the feature of scientific language can be explained by several factors such as insufficiently formed terminological apparatus of science, active process of it’s formation, existence of different concepts and ideas, historical changes in the scientific language, foreign borrowings and parallel existence of it’s translations. Despite of taking into consideration the research that has been made in the field of synonymy, for now we do not possess one explicit point of view on this specific subject. Talking about synonymy in terminology we should notice that the same kinds of systematic chains are fixed in the terminological systems. For the rhetorical terminology of the Latin language the development of synonymic fund and establishment of synonymic relations was typical. For the terminological system of synonyms such types of synonyms are typical – duplicate, conceptional, hierarchical and stylistic.