STRUCTURAL AND SEMANTIC LEXICAL SYNONYMS IN MODERN ENGLISH-LANGUAGE LEGAL TERMINOLOGY (BASED ON THE MATERIAL OF ENGLISH-RUSSIAN DICTIONARIES, REFERENCE BOOKS AND GLOSSARIES)

Abstract

The article presents the results of a structural and semantic analysis of modern English-language terminological units related to the relations of synonymy used in modern English-language legal terminology. The paper describes semantic, structural and cross-variant types of synonymy, identified both in the language for general purposes and in the legal language for special purposes; more productive and less productive types of synonymy have been identified within the framework of the studied material (relative and multi-root synonymy are more productive, single-root (affixal, morphological and orthographic) synonymy are less productive); the frequency of combining different types of synonymy in the formation of a synonymic unit (mainly in combination with an inter-variant synonymy) has been established. The study confirms the predominance of the phenomenon of relative synonymy in the field of semantics, in the field of structure – multi-root synonymy, as well as a high degree of productivity of inter-variant synonymy, characteristic of modern English for general purposes and demonstrated, in comparison with the language for special purposes, a lower productivity of types of single-root synonymy, representing the lexical specificity of English-language legal terms as a vocabulary of a language for special purposes.