Linguistic Universals in Legal Texts (English, French, and Russian)

About the author:

Zverev Alexander G., Assistant, Department of English, Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Tyumen; antikrizis00@list.ru

Abstract:

This article describes a study of legal texts (in English, French, and Russian) to confirm J. Greenberg’s linguistic universals № 11 and 14. The linguistic universal № 14 refers to the ordering of subject, object, and verb in a conditional clause. Anna Wierzbicka refers the predicate “if” (which forms the conditional) to the number of semantic primitives. The linguistic universal № 11 asserts in declarative sentences with nominal subject and object, the predominant dominant order has the subject followed by the object.
This study revises some of the most important provisions set forth by J. Greenberg for the languages with SVO word order. Some languages use relatively restrictive word order, often relying on the order of constituents to convey important grammatical information. Others — often those that convey grammatical information through inflection — allow more flexibility, which can be used to encode pragmatic information such as topicalisation or focus. It is hypothesized that, due to genre-stylistic and historical-cultural specificity, the texts of laws in French and English do not have a dominant word order. Texts of laws in Russian for the same reasons also do not have a dominant SVO word order.

References:

1. Adoskina M. A. 1991. “Inversion of the complement to the starting position in the English narrative sentence”. Cand. Sci. (Philol.) diss. abstract. Moscow. [In Russian]

2. Hakobyan A. A. 2011. “Features of the linguistic representation of the logical and philosophical category of conditions (English and Russian)”. Cand. Sci. (Philol.) diss. abstract. Pyatigorsk. [In Russian]

3. Vezhbitskaya A. 1996. Language. The Culture. Cognition. Moscow: Russian Dictionaries. [In Russian]

4. Givon T. 2015. “Complexity and development”. In: Language and Thought: Modern Cognitive Linguistics. Moscow: Languages of Slavic Culture. [In Russian]

5. Zhiltsov A. N., Maggs P. B. (trans.). 2003. RF Civil Code: Parallel Russian and English Texts. Moscow. Norma.

6. RF Civil Code: part one of 30 November 1994 No 51-FZ; part two of 26 January 1996 No 14-FZ; part three of 26 November 2001 No 146-FZ; part four of 18 December 2006 No 230-FZ. Accessed 12 October 2018. http://ivo.garant.ru/#/document/10164072/entry/0:7 [In Russian]

7. Greenberg J. 1970. “Some grammatical universals, mainly related to the order of significant elements”. In: New in Linguistics. Vol. 5, pp. 114-162. Moscow. [In Russian]

8. Yeseleva A. A. 2016. “Constructions with triple verbs in the Old English language: on the example of verbs with the meanings of transmission and deprivation”. Cand. Sci. (Philol.) diss. Saint Petersburg. [In Russian]

9. Espersen O. 1958. Philosophy of Grammar. Translated from English by V. V. Passek and S. P. Safronova. Edited and the foreword by B. A. Ilyish. Moscow: Publishing House of Foreign Literature. [In Russian]

10. Ivanov V. V., Toporov V. N. 1978. “On the language of ancient Slavic law”. Proceedings of the 8^th International Congress of Slavists “Slavic Linguistics”. Moscow. [In Russian]

11. Kolyadin E. A. 2012. “Old English legislative code as a type of text”. Cand. Sci. (Philol.) diss. abstract. Nizhny Novgorod. [In Russian]

12. Kostyushkina G. M. et al. 2006. Conceptualization and Categorization in the Language. IGLU. [In Russian]

13. Dovgert A. (ed.). 2004. The New Civil Procedure Code of France. Translated from French by V. Zakhvataev. Introduction by A. Dovgert and V. Zakhvataev. Kiev: Istina. [In Russian]

14. Palashevskaya I. V. 2010. “Structural and syntactic features of the expression of norms of behavior in legal discourse”. Vestnik IGLU, no 2 (10), pp. 137-143. [In Russian]

15. Sannikov V. Z. 2008.Russian Syntax in Semantic-Pragmatic Space. Moscow: Languages of Slavic Cultures. [In Russian]

16. Seyfulina N. A. 2009. “The text-forming function of complex sentences in the text of the law”. Bulletin of the Stavropol State University, no 1, pp. 128-133. [In Russian]

17. Uryson E. V. 2011. Experience of Describing the Semantics of Unions: Linguistic Data on the Activity of Consciousness. Moscow: Languages of Slavic Cultures. [In Russian]

18. Fedorov V. A. 2010. French Words with the Pronoun il in the Mirror of the Russian Language. Voronezh State University.

19. Khrakovsky V. S. 1993. “Conditional constructions (problems of typological analysis)”. In: Typological and Comparative Methods in Slavic Linguistics, pp. 82-98. Moscow: Institut slavyanovedeniya i balkanistiki RAN. [In Russian]

20. Cheyff U. 2015. “On the way to linguistics based on thinking”. In: Kibrik A. A. et al. (eds.). Language and Thought: Modern Cognitive Linguistics. Moscow: Languages of Slavic Culture. [In Russian]

21. Bybee J., Perkins R., Pagliuca W. 2004. The Evolution of Grammar: Tense, Aspect, and Modality in the Languages of the World. Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press.

22. Civil Code of Québec. Accessed 12 October 2018. http://legisquebec.gouv.qc.ca/en/pdf/cs/CCQ-1991.pdf

23. Code civil du Québec. Accessed 12 October 2018.http://legisquebec.gouv.qc.ca/fr/showdoc/cs/CCQ-1991 [In French]

24. Code de commerce. Accessed 12 October 2018. https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/telecharger_pdf.do?cidTexte=LEGITEXT000005634379 [In French]

25. Code de procédure civile. Accessed 12 October 2018. https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/telecharger_pdf.do?cidTexte=LEGITEXT000006070716 [In French]

26. Dryer M. S. 2013. “Order of subject, object and verb”. In: Dryer M. S., Haspelmath M. (eds.). The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Accessed 7 October 2018. http://wals.info/chapter/81