Where do legal terms come from? Contrastive analysis of the English, Lithuanian and Russian one-word terms of constitutional law

Abstract

The aim of the article is to present the results of the contrastive analysis of the one-word terms of the English, Lithuanian and Russian constitutional law focusing on their sources and means of formation. The terms were collected from the major UK legal acts of constitutional nature translated into Modern English, namely Magna Carta (1297), Habeas Corpus Act (1679), the Bill of Rights (1689) and the Act of Settlement (1700), including the amendments as in force today, and the original text of the Human Rights Act (1998), the Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania (1992) and the Constitution of the Russian Federation (1993). The research is based on the principles of the descriptive-contrastive analysis and quantitative analysis of the collected data. The results of the investigation reveal what internal and external sources have been used for the formation of the English, Lithuanian and Russian constitutional law terminology and show what languages have mostly influenced their development. The investigation also highlights the dominating patterns and the most important regularities of the formation of the English, Lithuanian and Russian constitutional law terms. The findings of the contrastive analysis are expected to be useful for the development of legal terminology in the investigated languages, as well as for the users, translators, interpreters of the English, Lithuanian and Russian legal terminology.