Syntactic Features of Legal Documents of Business English

Abstract: It has been many years since China adopted its policy of reform and opening to the outside world. More and more people are beginning to attach importance to studying business English. The purpose of this paper is to quest for syntactic features of legal documents of business English.  

Key Words: Syntactic Features   Legal Documents   Business English

Business English is an important language tool for people to pursue international business activities. With China’s successful entry into WTO (the World Trade Organization), business English is more widely used. The legal documents of business English refer to the law-oriented documents during the course of international business activities. Merchandisers or relevant translators may use them in business transactions. The legal documents use the written form to set forth the involved rights and obligations, which are stipulated in the laws. They are an indispensable part for people to carry out international business activities. Syntax refers to the rules for ordering and connecting words into sentences. It allows various possibilities to be exploited for effective linguistic communication. A systematic description of syntactic features should include: sentence types, clause types, phrase types, etc. Here, it is only necessary to mention the syntactic features of legal documents of business English. 

1. Long Sentences

Long sentences are common in legal, political and theoretical writing, which depends on modification for accuracy. In legal documents of business English, you can find the sentences used are long and quite often the entire document is composed in the form of a single sentence. In legal documents, long sentences are more than anywhere else and in fact, a deed is usually written in one long sentence. Long sentences are capable of expressing complex ideas with precision, because they may contain many modifiers. The structures of the long sentences are often intricate, which often include several clauses or modifiers. When an independent clause comprises one or more dependent clauses as its element(s), this makes a complex sentence. Long sentences are often complex sentences, which include relative clauses or adverbial clauses, etc. The following example will be used to illustrate this point.

The present Agreement is concluded for a period of two years and will be automatically renewed for successive two years unless denounced by one of the Contracting Parties in writing by an advance notice of four months, and shall thereafter be renewable accordingly. Subject to special provisions explicitly provided for in this Agreement, if either party has been prevented from performing its obligations under the Agreement because of an event of force majeure such as earthquake, storm, flood, fire, other acts of nature, epidemic, war, riot, hostility, public disturbance, acts of public enemies, prohibition or acts by a government or public agency or labour disputes, or other unforeseeable events beyond the control of the parties, and their occurrence is unpreventable and unavoidable, the party so prevented shall notify the other party in writing within eight days after the occurrence of such event of force majeure, act to mitigate damages, if possible, and within fifteen days thereafter provide detailed information of the event, a certificate of evidence thereof issued by the relevant authorities and a statement explaining the reason for its inability to perform all or part of its obligations under the Agreement.

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