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Article published In: Terminology
Vol. 25:1 (2019) ► pp.32–59

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Lexical chunks in English and Spanish sales contracts

A corpus-based study

 | Universidad de Valladolid
 | Universidad de Valladolid
Published online: 24 July 2019
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/term.00027.lop
Abstract
This paper focuses on the study of word combinations “of common usage” which are “lexicalized”, have “syntactic and semantic stability, may be idiomatized and carry connotations, and have an emphatic or intensifying function.” (Glässer, Rosemarie. 1994/1995. “Relations between Phraseology and Terminology with Special Reference to English.” ALFA 7–81: 41–60.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, 45). Following previous research on Languages for Specific Purposes (LSP) and legal phraseology, we will define, identify and classify these units in English and Spanish according to their form and meaning, using a comparable corpus of sales contracts. To carry out our study, we will focus on a number of descriptors that are commonly used within these units on the basis of the headwords they collocate with, in order to determine how specific or general they are in their form, use and meaning since this issue poses translation problems. As genres determine matters such as or terminology and phraseology, the results will be useful for specialized translators and legal drafters.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Word combinations and approaches to their study
  • 3.Lexical chunks in legal language
    • 3.1The genre of real property sales contracts
  • 4.Methodology
    • 4.1Corpus
    • 4.2Corpus annotation
  • 5.Analysis and discussion of results
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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