Specificity of Functioning of Adverbs in Regulatory Legal Acts

Abstract

This article elicits the specificity of functioning of adverbs in the texts of regulatory legal acts which can be regarded as a discourse marker of a text. The basis of the research is the thesis that the sphere of communication, in which the texts of the analysed profile function, predetermines their language features. Adverbs, being a typical means of expressing evaluative meanings, have stable correlations with the type of discourse and the genre of the text. According to the results of the research, the legal sphere of communication and texts of regulatory legal acts as its part are a medium for discourse-specific modifiers, which are adverbs with the meaning of normative evaluation, adverbs with the meaning of time, adverbs with modal meanings proper, among which epistemic modality with its sub-meanings dominates, as well as adverbs expressing intellectual evaluation. Within the semantically heterogeneous class of adverbs of intellectual evaluation, microgroups were singled out with the meanings of evaluation of the strength/intensity of the attribute or action, evaluation of the state of affairs, and adverbs expressing an assessment on the scale of importance. The analysis allowed the author to conclude that the general classes of adverbs found in the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation and the Model Penal Code of the United States are identical; however, mismatches were identified within the sub-categories of meanings and adverbs expressing them. For instance, the meaning of necessity is repeatedly expressed by adverbs in the Model Penal Code of the United States, while no examples of this kind were found in the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. The research also revealed selectivity of adverbs in terms of collocation, manifested in the combinatorial adherence of adverbial lexemes to verbs. Taken together, the identified properties can serve as guidelines for researchers who specialize in analysing the speech functioning of the studied class of lexemes and complex nominatives in different genres of legal discourse.