2.3 Formal Big Lengthy Words
Since law documents are often concerned with matters related to grave themes values,they usually occur in written form presented in formal overtone, which is another outstanding lexical characteristic of legal English. DingDaoWang(1994:23)writes,the words that are often used may be pided,from a stylistic point of view, into three types: formal , common, colloquial. There are a large number of big long-tailed words and heavy turns of expression in any legal document. Legal English excludes coarse language in the streets and lanes. For example, If a party neither implements the decision on penalty nor institutes proceedings within the above time limit, the State administrative department of software copyright may apply to people’s court for enforcement. Formal language is one of the characteristics of legal English. This formal language indicates that legal English is a special occasion,quite different from ordinary discourse. Formal words may also be called learned words, or literary words, or‘ ‘big” words. They mainly appear in formal writing, such as scholarly or theoretical works,formal lectures and addresses,political and legal documents.Many such words contain three or more than three syllables, and most of them are of Greek or Latin origin. They are seldom used in daily conversation, except for special purpose. Wangzuoliang suggest, very often, some big words or formal words are used in Legal English to make the form and style solemn and stately. Instead of coarse or vulgar words, flowery words are fill with Legal English.
III. The Syntactic Features of Legal Language
3.1 The Basic Sentence Structure of Legal English
HuZhuanglin states:Syntax is the study of the rules governing the ways words. Word groups and phrases are combined to form sentences in a language,or the study of the interrelationships between elements in sentence structures. The peculiarity of the sentence structure in the legal English may be sensed at the first sight. We may discover that these practical styles tend to use a string of comparatively short clauses or sentences to convey a complete idea, and these fragments are linked together by the conjectures,adverbs or other cohesion devices. However legal text takes another way which is obviously opposite to the common usage.One single legal text may be filled with the long and interweaving sentences whose structures seem to be impossible to work out. Even worse, sometimes, a legal text contains only one compound sentence which is even more difficult to tell one inner fragment from another.The character of legal English is that the structure of those prolix sentences is very flexible, and the sentences are often embedded with various modifying elements which make contribution to the complexity. Although often being long and complicated,there are still several basic rules to obey for the understanding of a legal text. The basic sentence structure is one key to the solution. If one is aware of the fundamental construe of the sentence structure, it will be much easier for him to find out the main clause by distinguishing the modifiers, and then to expose the primary meaning of sentence.
.3.2 The Preponderance of Long and Declarative Sentences 法律英语文体研究(3):http://www.751com.cn/yingyu/lunwen_9113.html