A CORPUS-BASED STUDY ON PREPOSITIONAL PHRASES IN LEGAL VOCABULARY IN ENGLISH AND BULGARIAN

Abstract

An examination into the linguistic specificities of legal terminology and phraseology asks for an in-depth expertise of legal vocabulary and profound awareness of the distinctive features of legal matters and procedures. Since it is a strict formulaic language that is used in legal papers and documents, the majority of single-word terms, notions and concepts are literally translated into the target language, that is, word-for-word interpretation without losing or lacking any grammatical or semantic meaning of the source language. Nevertheless, there is a group of lexical items, namely, particular prepositional phrases, which require a particular research approach while being transferred to the receptor language (Alcaraz, Hughes 2002, Muller 2016). In this case the grammatical form often cannot be reproduced though the meaning and content may remain intact. Furthermore, there could be a case for saying that the source language may represent a number of prepositional phrases bearing the same propositional attitude while the target language may reveal only a limited set or no identical phrase at all (Bajcic 2017). The present article focuses on two corpora of database taken from the official legal framework concerning the European investigation order and its Bulgarian translation with regards to particular formulaic linguistic conventions, multiword prepositional phrases, in particular. As the study is both corpus-based and corpus-driven it does not only validate or refute previous theoretical research findings but also involves the inductive reasoning to draw conclusions (Iglikova 2017). Specifically, the paper dwells on six prepositional phrases in English which are a typical and integral part of any legal file though their translation equivalents may vary in grammatical meaning and deviate from the source language propositional meaning (Alexandrova 2018). They are as follows: in accordance with, pursuant to, for the purpose of, without prejudice to, subject to, according to. Additionally, the paper makes an attempt to identify their translation variants in the target language corpus considering the level of identicality, their similarities and discrepancies. The expressions are analyzed and examined quantitatively and qualitatively, the latter focusing on the syntax and semantics of the phrases.The paper initiates with a brief theoretical overview of prepositional and multiword prepositional phrases regarding their grammatical form and structure followed by an analytical part divided into two sections examining English and Bulgarian corpora separately. The same pattern of analysis is used in evaluating and interpreting both sets of data.The paper targets primarily MA students in Linguistics and Translation and aims to help learners get a closer look into prepositional phrases which do not bear a central meaning in a sentence but can turn to be a stumbling block if not translated adequately.