The metaphorical terminology database: conceptual design

This paper presents stages and problems of conceptual design of metaphorical terminology database never before being the subject of description. The linguistic databases have been developing rapidly for the past decades but their development has not been completed. The purpose of the article is to define the principles of conceptual design of metaphorical terminology database. The interdisciplinary project presented in the paper is based on the system of methodologic research areas and methods: the theory of conceptual metaphors in research of metaphorical terminology and the theory of conceptual design of relational databases in the process of formation of linguistic resource conceptual structure. The paper presents and explains 1) the conceptual structure of metaphorical terminology database developed from: a range of problems which are solved by this database; the analysis of research areas (metaphorical terminology of various scientific fields: scientific-and-technological - geologic, oil-gas terminology, information technologies, humanitarian - term systems of psychology, linguistics, philosophy, sociology, natural science - medicine, biology, ecology); data represented in works on research of metaphorical conceptualization in term systems. 2) Core and peripheral objects of scientific fields and relations between them are identified on the basis of which infological scheme of the database is formed. 3) The objects’ attributes are identified and datalogical scheme of relational database is formed. The developed structure is originally realized with the use of relational DBMS Microsoft Access.