The thesis is focused on a linguistic reconstruction of the cognitive terminological
structure REFUGEE / БІЖЕНЕЦЬ in the English-Ukrainian legal corpus.
The thesis offers a new comparative and corpus approach to the terminology, within
the framework of which a methodological basis was developed for performing linguistic
reconstruction of the cognitive terminological structure of a legal term in various
languages (English and Ukrainian) using methods of comparative-historical, structural,
cognitive, corpus and contrastive linguistics. The term ‘cognitive terminological structure’
is introduced to define a unit of consciousness in which a fragment of the professional
worldview is concentrated and which has a verbal realization in the form of terms.
The cognitive terminological structure of the legal discourse REFUGEE /
БІЖЕНЕЦЬ is characterized by the dynamism of its nature, manifested in the cognitiveverbal specificity of the legal terms, which represent a fragment of the legal worldview.
The absence of a material unit and a high level of abstraction of cognitive processes
created the need for the development of reconstruction (lexicographic and frame-based)
techniques with the subsequent interpretation of individual cognitive structures in order to
maximize the structuring of the specialist’s mental space. Linguistic reconstruction of the
cognitive terminological structure REFUGEE / БІЖЕНЕЦЬ in English and Ukrainian
legal discourse through the procedure of lexicographic and frame-based modelling results
in the generalized models of cause-and-effect semantics: ‘CAUSES: REFUGEE :
EFFECTS’ and ‘ПРИЧИНИ : БІЖЕНЕЦЬ : НАСЛІДКИ’.
Observation of the names of the cognitive terminological structure REFUGEE /
БІЖЕНЕЦЬ made it possible to identify a common Proto-Indo-European basis – a root
*bheug- meaning ‘to run, flee, seek refuge’, which through the Latin lexeme fugere
meaning ‘to flee’ leads to the units of modern English (*bheug- → fugere → fugitive,
centrifugal, refuge) and through the Proto-Slavic verbal root *beg- *bēg- *bōg- leads to
the units of the modern Ukrainian language (*bheug- → *beg- *bēg- *bōg- → біг, бігти,
біженець). These results give grounds to speak of common mental roots and purposeful
cognitive motivation for the formation of its conceptual base with subsequent
transformation into the cognitive terminological structure. The lexemes refugee and біженець
are specific lexical units of the English and Ukrainian languages, inherited from the IndoEuropean language, which have gone through an evolutionary path on their own linguistic
soil and have cognates in many modern languages.
The modern lexicographic model of the cognitive terminological structure
REFUGEE / БІЖЕНЕЦЬ is represented through modelling of cause-and-effect
relationships that arise from the legal actions of legal entities and reflect the
interdependence of actions and circumstances and their legal results. The deep cause-andeffect relationships of the semantics of the studied terms are identified through the scheme
‘TO BE PERSECUTED → TO FLEE, LEAVE → TO GET ASYLUM’, which is
reflected in the developed models ‘REFUGEE : CAUSES’ / ‘БІЖЕНЕЦЬ : ПРИЧИНИ’
and ‘REFUGEE : EFFECTS’ / ‘БІЖЕНЕЦЬ : НАСЛІДКИ’, which in turn are
summarized in the generalized models of cause-and-effect semantics ‘CAUSES :
REFUGEE : EFFECTS’ and ‘ПРИЧИНИ : БІЖЕНЕЦЬ : НАСЛІДКИ’.
This corpus is
an experimental source for the extraction and analysis of linguistic units within this study.
The semantic space of discrete terminological units refugee and біженець is
structured in the form of a basic actional frame: “SOMEONE-agent → through stimulus
(causes) → acts / does something → has effects”, which demonstrates the presence of
common features in the conceptual fractal structure.
As a result of the analysis, 3 conceptual features (‘causes’, ‘effects’, ‘legal status’)
of the main verbalizers of the cognitive terminological structure REFUGEE / БІЖЕНЕЦЬ
were identified, which form its basis in the minds of native speakers of the English and
Ukrainian languages confirming the general ideas of native speakers of the both languages
on the content of the main terminological nominations of the cognitive structure
REFUGEE / БІЖЕНЕЦЬ.
The paper formulates institutional features and requirements for the creation of an
English-Ukrainian parallel corpus of legal texts, contains the proposed structure of the
corpus text metadata card, and offers the developed genre and style based classification of
legal texts. This classification considers the characteristics of the service sector (official
style, legal substyle), the type of a legal document / act (regulatory, individual legal, and
interpretative legal), the genre of the text (for each type of legal acts) and takes into
account complex linguistic and legal hierarchical classification criteria for the texts.
