A corpus-based study of determinologization

The active development of science and the integration of the terminological apparatus of different branches of it as well as the connection of the scientific metalanguage with general language make it necessary to define terminological units and describe the methodology for their study. The purpose of the article is to characterise the processes occurring with the linguistic term ‘alphabet’. The data from the Google Books corpus and Now Corpus were used as the research material. The use of these corpora made it possible to perform a diachronic and synchronous description of the lexical units. The analysis of the material allowed determining the time of appearance of the term, the development of its meanings, and also to designate the spheres of use of the lexical unit 'alphabet' after its determinologization.