Sublanguage Terms: Dictionaries, Usage, and Automatic Classification

The use of terms from natural and social scientific titles and abstracts is studied from the perspective of sublanguages and their specialized dictionaries. Different notions of sublanguage distinctiveness are explored. Objective methods for separating hard and soft sciences are suggested based on measures of sublanguage use, dictionary characteristics, and sublanguage distinctiveness. Abstracts were automatically classified with a high degree of accuracy by using a formula that considers the degree of uniqueness of terms in each sublanguage. This may prove useful for text filtering or information retrieval systems.