Balanaieva O.
PhD in Philology, Donetsk Law Institute of MIA of Ukraine, Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine
Mamonova O.
PhD in Pedagogics, Donetsk Law Institute of MIA of Ukraine, Kryvyi Rih,
Ukraine
THE SEMANTIC FOUNDATIONS OF GERMAN LEGAL TERMS
Introduction. The present study deals with the process of forming the
terminological units of law. Among the variety of ways of forming terminological
units, we have singled out the method of de-symbolization that is associated with the
loss by a word of its symbolic meaning and the transformation of that word into a term
at the expense of the narrowing of the scope of its use. We will examine the diverse
manifestations of that method and establish its importance for the formation of legal
terminology, since it is the law as a system of generally binding social norms
established by the state that regulates nearly all fields of human activity. The very
existence of the modern civilized society is hard to imagine without a legal system.
The body of the German legal terminology constitutes the lexical basis of our analysis.
The relevant importance of the present study is determined by the following: 1) the
circumstances of the globalization and integration processes of the present-day society;
2) the objective need to establish legal relationships on an international scale. The latter
is possible under the condition of ensuring an adequate understanding of the content of
the terminological expression as a phenomenon of the legal practice across social
environments. The philological support of this process seems to be fundamentally
significant and objectively in demand.
It is appropriate to emphasize that the issue of forming national legal
terminologies is always of relevant importance. Hence, it seems justified to address
analyzing the functioning of the language of law in its terminological component (in
various aspects). In particular, the present study will primarily examine the broad
possibilities for creating legal terms through the loss of the symbolic foundation by the
respective words that are the carriers of certain meanings.
Speaking of the typology of the researchers' interest in the set of issues outlined,
one can conditionally identify the following schools of thought in its analysis: 1) the
diachronic one (V. M. Zhyvov [1], M. A. Britsyn [2], etc.) and 2) the paleontological-
etymological one (N. Y. Marr [3], N. A. Lutsenko [4], [5], etc.). We have taken into
account, whenever possible, the achievements of the proponents of each of those
schools.
The objective of the current research is a multifaceted study and description of the
semantic foundations of lexical units of law. The requirement to implement this
- 342 -