Cover not available
Article published In:
Terminology
Vol. 25:1 (2019) ► pp.32–59

Lexical chunks in English and Spanish sales contracts

A corpus-based study

| Universidad de Valladolid
| Universidad de Valladolid
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.” (Gläser 1994/1995, 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.
Keywords: lexical chunks, sales contrasts, corpus-based studies
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
Published online: 24 July 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/term.00027.lop
References
Alcaraz, Enrique and Brian Hughes
2002 El Español Jurídico. Barcelona: Ariel.Google Scholar
Alcaraz, Enrique, Miguel Ángel Campos, and Cynthia Miguélez
2007 El Inglés Jurídico Norteamericano [North-American Legal English]. Barcelona: Ariel.Google Scholar
Biber, Douglas
1993 “Representativeness in Corpus Design.” Literary and Linguistic Computing 8 (4): 243–257. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Biber, Douglas, Susan Conrad, and Randy Reppen
1999 Corpus Linguistics: Investigating Language Structure and Use. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Biber, Douglas, Ulla Connor, and Thomas A. Upton
(eds) 2007 Discourse on the Move. Using Corpus Analysis to Describe Discourse Structure. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Biel, Łucja
2014 “Phraseology in Legal Translation: A Corpus-Based Analysis of Textual mapping in EU Law.” In The Ashgate Handbook of Legal Translation ed. by Le Cheng, King Kui Sin and Anne Wagner, 177–193. Surrey/Burlington: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Borja Albí, Ana Isabel
2000 El Texto Jurídico Inglés y su Traducción al Español [English Legal Texts and their Translation into Spanish]. Barcelona: Ariel.Google Scholar
Bowker, Lynne, and Jenifer Pearson
2002 Working with Specialized Language: A Practical Guide to Using Corpora. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
California Association of Realtors
[URL]). Accessed 21 March 2018.
Corpas Pastor, Gloria, Miriam Seghiri Dominguez, and M. Maggi
2007 Recor. Software.Google Scholar
Corpas Pastor, Gloria, and Miriam Seghiri Dominguez
2009 “Virtual Corpora as Documentation Resources: Translating Travel Insurance Documents.” In Corpus Use and Translating, ed. by Alison Beeby, Patricia Rodríguez, and Pilar Sánchez Gijón, 75–107. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2010 “Size Matters: A Quantitative Approach To Corpus Representativeness.” In Lengua, traducción, recepción. En honor de Julio César Santoyo [Language, Translation, Reception. In honor of Julio César Santoyo] ed. by Rosa Rabadán, 112–146. León: Secretariado de publicaciones, Universidad de León.Google Scholar
Cowie, Andrew P.
1998 “Phraseology.” In The Encyclopaedia of Language and Linguistics, ed. by Ronald. E. Asher, 3168–3171. Oxford: Pergamon.Google Scholar
Dobrić Basaneže, Katja
2017 “Interpreting Phraseological Units in Contracts: The Case of Extended Term-Embedding Collocation.” Suvremena lingvistika 43(84): 199–216. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
The Florida Bar
[URL]). Accessed 21 March 2018.
Glässer, Rosemarie
1994/1995 “Relations between Phraseology and Terminology with Special Reference to English.” ALFA 7–81: 41–60.Google Scholar
Glässer, Rosemarie
1998 “The Stylistic Potential of Phraseological Units in the Light of Genre Analysis.” In Phraseology: Theory, Analysis and Application ed. by Anthony P. Cowie, 125–143. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Goźdź-Roszkowski, Stanislaw, and Gianluca Pontrandolfo
2015 “Legal Phraseology Today: Corpus-Based Applications across Legal Languages and Genres.” [Editorial Preface of the Special Issue of Legal Phraseology Today. A Corpus-based View ]. Fachsprache, 3–41: 130–138. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jones, Christian, and Daniel Waller
2015 Corpus Linguistics for Grammar. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kageura, Kyo
2017 “Terminology and Lexicography.” In Handbook of Terminology, ed. by Hedrick J. Kockaert and Frieda Steurs, 45–59. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
L’Homme, Marie-Claude
1995 “Processing Word Combinations in Existing Term Banks.” Terminology 2 (1): 141–162. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
López Arroyo, Belén, and Roda P. Roberts
2015 “Unusual Sentence Structure.” Languages in Contrast 15 (2): 162–180. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2016 “Differences in Wine Tasting Notes in English and Spanish.” Babel 62(3): 370–401. ( DOI logo).Google Scholar
López Arroyo, Belén, Roda P. Roberts, and Leticia Moreno Pérez
2018 “The Use of -ing and -ndo Forms in Legal Language: An English-Spanish Contrastive Analysis.” Languages in Contrast 19(2): 256–279 ( DOI logo).Google Scholar
McEnery, Tony, and Andrew Hardie
2012 Corpus Linguistics: Method, Theory & Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Molina Plaza, Silvia
2009 “English & Spanish Phraseology: A Translation and Lexicographic Perspective.” Verbeia. Revista de Estudios Filológicos 01: 119–138.Google Scholar
O’Keeffe, Ane, Michael McCarthy, and Ronald Carter
2007 From Corpus to Classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pontrandolfo, Gianluca
2015 “Investigating judicial phraseology with COSPE: a contrastive corpus-based study.” In New Directions in Corpus-based Translation Studies, Translation and Multilingual Natural Language Processing ed. by Claudio Fantinuoli and Federico Zanettin, 137–160. Berlin: Language Science Press.Google Scholar
Roberts, Roda P.
1998 “Phraseology and Translation”. In La Traducción: Orientaciones Lingüísitcas y Culturales [Translation: Linguistic and Cultural Perspectives], ed. by Purificación Fernández Nistal, and José María Bravo Gozalo, 61–77. Valladolid: Servicio de Publicaciones.Google Scholar
Sager, Juan Carlos
1997 “Term Formation.” In Handbook of Terminology Management, ed. by Sue Ellen Wright, and Gerhard Budin, 25–41. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schmitt, Norbert
2000 “Key Concepts in ELT: Lexical Chunks.” ELT Journal 54(4): 400–401. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schmitt, Norbert, and Ronald Carter
2004 “Formulaic sequences in action: An introduction”. In Formulaic Sequences: Acquisition, processing and use ed. by Norbert Schmitt, 1–22. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Searle, John Rogers
1989 “How Performatives Work.” Linguistics and Philosophy 12 (5): 535–558. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Seghiri, Miriam
2015 “Determinación de la Representatividad Cuantitativa de un Corpus ad hoc Bilingüe (Inglés-Español) de Manuales de Instrucciones Generales de Lectores Electrónicos.” In Corpus-Based Translation and Interpreting Studies: From Description to Application / Estudios Traductológicos Basados en Corpus: De la Descripción a la Aplicación, ed. by María Teresa Sánchez Nieto, 125–146. Berlin: Frank & Timme.Google Scholar
Sinclair, John
2000 Lexical Grammar. Darbai Ir Dienos ([URL]). Accessed: 12 January 2018.
Swales, John
1990 Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Tabares Plasencia, Encarnación, and Juan Manuel Pérez Vigaray
2007 “Fraseología Terminológica: Estado de la Cuestión y Ejemplo de Análisis Contrastivo.” Revista de Filología 251: 567–577.Google Scholar
Temmerman, Rita
2017 “Verbalizing Sensory Experience for Marketing Success.” Terminology 23(1): 132–154. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Timmis, Ivor
2015 Corpus Linguistics for ELT: Research and Practice. London: Routeledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Thomas, Patricia
1993 “Choosing Headwords from LSP Collocations for Entry into a Terminology Data Bank.” In Terminology. Applications in Interdisciplinary Communication, ed. by Helmi B. Sonneveld, and Kurt L. Loening, 43–68. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wright, Sue Ellen
1997 “Term Selection: The Initial Phase of Terminology Management.” In Handbook of Terminology Management, ed. by Sue Ellen Wright, and Gerhard Budin, 13–24. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 3 other publications

Fan, Yan & Yumei Zou
2021. 2021 5th Annual International Conference on Data Science and Business Analytics (ICDSBA), ► pp. 499 ff. DOI logo
López Arroyo, Belén & Lucía Sanz Valdivieso
2022. The phraseology of wine and olive oil tasting notes. Terminology. International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Issues in Specialized Communication 28:1 ► pp. 37 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2022. Theoretical Perspectives on Terminology [Terminology and Lexicography Research and Practice, 23], DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 11 october 2023. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.