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Some linguistic properties of legal notices

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2016

Nicholas Allott  and
Benjamin Shaer
Nicholas Allott
Affiliation:
University of Oslo
Benjamin Shaer
Affiliation:
Carleton University
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Abstract

In this article, we consider legal notices of various forms, including imperative, indicative, and non-sentential. We argue that these convey various illocutionary forces depending on their particular content. In particular, those that prohibit actions — unlike laws that do so — typically have “directive” illocutionary force, with different linguistic classes of legal notices achieving this force through different means, given their distinct linguistic properties. We propose a “bare phrase” treatment of non-sentential notices, whereby these are underlyingly and not just superficially non-sentential; and a semantic treatment in terms of Discourse Representation Theory, which perspicuously describes their contribution to interpretation. Finally, we argue that assigning such sparse syntactic and semantic representations to non-sentential notices has conceptual and empirical advantages over analyses that posit richer underlying structure, capturing a broader range of data, including patterns involving default case and the absence of articles, and minimizing the need to posit linguistic ambiguity.

Résumé

Résumé

Dans cet article, nous considérons une variété d’annonces juridiques dont des formulations à l’impératif, à l’affirmatif et non sentencielles. Nous affirmons que ces formulations comportent diverses forces illocutionnaires selon leur contenu spécifique. En particulier, celles qui interdisent des actions — à la différence de lois qui interdisent—ont une force illocutionnaire “directive”; cette force est déterminée différemment selon les caractéristiques linguistiques particulières de chacune. Nous proposons de traiter les annonces non sentencielles en tant que syntagmes «nus», ce qui fait que celles-ci sont non pas seulement superficiellement mais fondamentalement non sentencielles; et nous proposons un traitement sémantique en termes de la théorie de représentation du discours, ce qui décrit clairement leur contribution à l’interprétation. En dernier lieu, nous soutenons que l’attribution de représentations syntactiques et sémantiques minimales à des annonces non sentencielles comporte des avantages conceptuelles et empiriques sur des analyses qui postulent une structure fondamentale riche; notre analyse permet de rendre compte de plus de données, y compris la manifestation des cas par défaut et l’absence d’articles, et minimise le besoin d’invoquer l’ambiguïté linguistique.

Keywords

illocutionary forcedirectivelegal noticenon-sententialsmall clause analysisforce illocutionnairedirectifannonce légalenon sentencieianalyse de petites propositions
Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 58 , Issue 1: Temporal and modal dimensions of legal discourses , March 2013 , pp. 43 - 62
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association 2013

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