Les relations sémantiques au carrefour des champs conceptuels du droit

Abstract

The present study concerns the analysis of semantic relationships that exist between legal concepts in Czech and French law. The study combines textual approach, which is necessary for identification of relationships, and the approach of constructing conceptual fields by applying the theory of semic analysis, which help to distinguish terminological and conceptual units from other linguistic units in the texts. Two corpora of legal texts serve as source of legal concepts. These corpora concern the same thematic domain and were established for the purpose of this study. After the theorical and methodological delimitations of the key notions (the definition of concept and term, conceptual field, semic analysis, content of corpora), the study proceeds to a detailed description of linguistic relations within the corpora. This paper focuse on semantic relationships and analyses the following ones: synonymy, opposition (antonymy and contrastivity) and hierarchical relationships (hyperonymy, meronymy and hierarchy of conceptual fields). The analysis concerning two languages and two legal systems enables to compare the data related to the given corpora. For each relationship this study offers a short explanation of the nature of the relationship, its frequency in the two corpora, examples borrowed from the corpora and, if present, the description of other phenomena encountered during the research. These phenomena include, among other things, different types of synonymy, the absence of hyperonyme or holonyme in some hierarchical structures or different types of meronymy.