Lexical Semantic features in English and Ukrainian language.

Legal translation is understood as the translation of technical materials within the field of law. Correspondingly, legal language is a distinct language easy to some extent to those familiar with it, but to whom with which are unfamiliar is of certain difficulty. In other words, Legal language is characterised by a specific language and therefore a specific terminology. So, the would-be translator of this particular type of language must add to his or her knowledge some lexical features of English legal language and this will be the chief concern of this article.

Terms of Latin and French origin:

One of many noticeable features of English legal lexicon is the existence of Latinisms (Latin terms) in its terminology. Alcaraz & Brian (2002: 5)¹ link the presence of such terms to certain reasons; we briefly consider them. In the first place, it was inevitable for English law to escape the influence of Latin which was supported by the power of the Roman church over Europe at that time, and also to its widespread use throughout this place of earth as a language of learning and literature. In addition to the incredible power of the Roman law which was a coherent written system, and had strength of an institution over a considerable area of Europe. Here are some Latin phrases and words in common use:

- Bona fide (good faith or in good faith)

- Res judicata (an issue adjucated)

- Bes nova ( a new thing; an undecided question of law)

- Actus reus (guilty act)

- Alibi (elsewhere; the fact or state of having been elsewhere when an offence was committed) (Garner, B. A, 2001)²

Like Latinisms, the existence of legal French terms within English legal language is also apparent. After the Norman Conquest in 1066, the language of the invaders gained an undeniable position in the legal sphere of England, bringing with it a wealth of legal French terminology (Crystal & Davy 1986: 208) ³. As a case of illustration, the following terms are originally French:

- Contract, proposal, schedule, terms, conditions, policy, alias, quash and so on.

Archaic diction of legal English:

Legal English lexicon is considerably made of archaic legal terms. However, this touch of Archaism is not in vain, it is done on purpose. There are reasons behind this tendency towards archaic words. Tiersma (1999)⁴ states that “legal language often strives toward great formality, it naturally gravitates towards archaic language” p. 95.

According to this quotation, archaisms give a flavor of formality to the language to which they belong. Some lawyers prefer to use antique terms instead of new ones. For example, they use ‘imbibe’ as an alternative of ‘drink’, ‘inquire’ rather than ‘ask’, ‘peruse’ instead of ‘read’, ‘forthwith’ as a substitution of ‘right away’ or ‘at once’ and so on. (Examples are used by Alcaraz & Brian, 2002)⁵. Another convenient example is the use of the verb ‘witnesseth’ with the preservation of an ‘eth’ ending for the third person singular of the present tense as an alternative of the current morpheme ‘es’ ‘witnesses’.

There exist also some archaic adverbs, they are actually a mixture of deictic elements: ‘here’ ‘there’ and ‘where’ with certain prepositions: of, after, by, under etc

Another way of analyzing lexical meaning is to decompose word meanings into more basic parts. This process is called lexical decomposition. The idea is that most words have meanings that are "built up" from simpler meanings.

For example, the words mare, stallion, hen, and rooster all have the common meaning of ANIMAL in them. We could say that these four words share the common semantic feature ANIMAL. In addition, mare and hen share the common feature FEMALE while stallion and rooster share MALE.

We can analyze the meaning of the verbs in terms of causes. In Robin boiled the water, the transitive verb boil can be analyzed as X CAUSES Y to BOIL.

The late Stan Starosta at UH Manoa introduced his brand of semantic features as a series of plus or minus characteristics to compare words. Once we graduate students learned about semantic features, we began to see them in nearly every word we ever heard or read.

For example, consider the difference in meaning between cement and concrete. Although many of use them interchangeably, they actually mean different things.

The difference between cement and concrete is that cement is a wet while concrete is dry. There are other ways to describe the two words (cement is a mix combined with water while concrete is the hardened after-product), but you can see how narrowing words down to their basic differences opens up a new way in which to view words.

Contrastive lexicology is systematic branch of linguistics which deals with similarities and differences of two or more related and non-related languages. Contrastive lexicology studies various lexical units. They are: morphemes, words, variable word-groups and phraseological units. We proceed from the assumption that the word is the basic unit of the language system , the largest on morphological & the smallest on syntactic plane of linguistic analyses . Other labels that have been used in the literature are: comparative semantics; comparative synonymies; lexical/semantic comparison; differential lexicology; lexical contrastive analysis; semantic/lexical interference.

The vantage-point varies, depending on whether the aim is to enlighten semantics, translation, lexicography, bilingualism, or foreign language teaching, but "inherent in all these approaches is the belief that lexical patterns can be studied synchronically and descriptively by assessing the similarities and differences in the structure of the vocabulary of two or more languages.

There are seven stages in the development of contrastive lexicology. These are:

1. prelinguistic word studies;

2. semantics;

3. lexicography;

4. translation;

5. foreign language learning;

6. bilingualism;

7. contrastive analysis.

Contrastive lexicology is directly connected with contrastive analysis at the level of lexis, conducting the studying of perception and categorization of the real word around us.

Contrastive analysis can be carried out at three linguistic levels: phonology, grammar (morphology and syntax) and lexis (vocabulary). The word is a structural & semantic entity within the language system. The word as well as any linguistic sign is a two-faced unit possessing both form & content or, to be more exact, sound-form & meaning.

When used in actual speech the word undergoes certain modification & functions in one of its forms. The system showing a word in all its word- forms is called a paradigm. The lexical meaning of a word is the same throughout the paradigm. The grammatical meaning varies from one form to another. Therefore when we speak on any word as used in actual speech we use the term “word” conventionally because what is manifested in the utterances is not a word as a whole but one of its forms which is identified as belonging to the definite paradigm . Words as a whole are to be found in the dictionary (showing the paradigm n – noun, v – verb, etc).

There are two approaches to the paradigm: as a system of forms of one word revealing the differences & the relationships between them.

In abstraction from concrete words the paradigm is treated as a pattern on which every word of one part of speech models its forms, thus serving to distinguish one part of speech from another .

-s -‘s -s’

-ed -ing

nouns of-phrases verbs

Besides the grammatical forms of words there are lexical varieties which are called “variants” of words .Words seldom possess only one meaning, but used in speech each word reveals only that meaning which is required

e. g. to learn at school to make a dress

to learn about smth. /smbd. to make smbd. do smth.

These are lexico-semantic variants.

There are also phonetic & morphological variants.

e. g. “often” can be pronounced in two ways, though the sound-form is slightly changed, the meaning remains unchangeable. We can build the forms of the word “to dream” in different ways:

to dream – dreamt – dreamt.

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LEXICAL AND SEMANTIC FEATURES OF HORROR-NOVELS BY R.L. STINE IN ENGLISH AND UKRAINIAN

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 1562