The paper outlines, comments and illustrates some new subjects (prototypicality, cognitive models, etc.) which cognitive linguistics offers to the traditional theory of terminology and to the semantic analysis of specialized terms. By making use of the findings both of traditional lexicology and semantics and of the cognitive sciences and by using the material of medical terminology, the paper presents the processes of direct and indirect nomination in their relation to terminologisation and determinologisation.
The processes of categorisation and nominalisation of objective reality are considered also as reflected in onomasiological structures of terms.