Mockienė, Liudmila

Legal terms have been constantly created and used to name new legal concepts. It is important that they accurately perform their function and are convenient to use. Contrastive research on formation of terms reveals traditions and trends of term-formation in different languages and helps establish prevalent criteria and principles of term-formation in those languages. This dissertation is devoted to a contrastive study of terminology of constitutional law, which to date has not been examined or compared with other languages. The aim of the research is to describe and contrast the linguistic means used to form terms found in legal acts of a constitutional nature in English, Lithuanian and Russian. The object of the research is one-word and multi-word terms used in documents of constitutional law in English, Lithuanian and Russian. There are no works on contrastive analysis of formation of legal terms in several languages so far. The given research attempts to fill this gap. Therefore, it is significant in two major aspects. First, during the research a methodology of contrasting formation of terminology of different languages was created, which helps to reveal traditions, principles and criteria of term-formation in different languages. Second, the research provides a lot of information for developers of terms, it gives new insight into formation of terms of the native language and ideas on how to develop and improve terms that are currently used. Thus, the results are relevant for terminologists, who conduct scientific research, develop terms and perform term management work, for users of legal language, translators and teachers in Lithuania and abroad.