On nature of the multicomponent term (on English sublanguage of biotechnologies)

The article is devoted to investigation of nature of the multicomponent term. It considers different points of view on the problem of the multicomponent term, makes the terminological status and role of terminological word-groups in forming terminological systems of various sublanguages more precise, differentiates between the concepts «Multicomponent term» and «Multiword term», and reveals the main characteristics of the multicomponent term. In the work linguistic and extralinguistic factors determining the length of the multicomponent term are regarded. The longer multicomponent terms are, the fewer their number in the scientific text is. The author gives grounds of her own definition of the multicomponent term and the way of distinguishing its components.