Social and Legal Studios

Abstract

The article deals with the phenomenon of synonymy in legal terminology, namely, analyzes the term “crime” in English and Ukrainian legal discourse. It is emphasized that the emergence of synonymy of some legal terms is due to the change of legal norms in the society, as well as the disappearance of concepts that correspond to these terms. There is an opinion that legal terms-synonyms may not refer to absolute, grammatical or syntactic synonyms. Rather, they can be categorized as “relative synonyms” if they are regarded as synonyms syntactic similarity of which does not extend to all meanings. One of the types of paradigmatic relations existing in the lexical-semantic system of language is synonymy – coincidence in the fundamental meaning, as a rule, while maintaining the differences and shades of stylistic characteristics of words; synonyms are words that denote the same phenomenon of reality. However, by calling the same thing, synonyms usually call these things differently – either by highlighting different things in the designated thing, or characterizing the thing from different points of view. That is why, synonyms are usually not the words exactly identical to one another. But often the possibility of assigning different words to one phenomenon is determined not only by their own equivalence or semantic closeness, but by a different attitude or evaluation of the phenomenon. When dealing with legal texts, we often find that a number of words defining the same concept are translated into Ukrainian equally. English legal terminology has a century-old history and was formed in the first stages, both from the words of German origin, and from the Latin and French languages, and the borrowing data gradually converged in its meaning. This was due to the change of legal norms in the society, as well as to the disappearance of the concepts that corresponded to these terms. There is an opinion that legal terms-synonyms cannot refer to absolute, grammatical or syntactic synonyms. Rather, they can be categorized as “relative synonyms” if they are regarded as synonyms whose syntactic similarity does not extend to all meanings

Keywords: terminology, synonymy, crime, offense, equivalence

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