IN DEPTH ANALYSES OF SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES SERVING AS HINDRANCES TO EFFECTIVE LEGAL READING

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF LAW GRADUATION THESIS B.A DEGREE IN ENGLISH Major: Legal English IN-DEPTH ANALYSES OF SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES SERVING AS HINDRANCES TO EFFECTIVE LEGAL READING Supervisor: CAO ĐANG QUYNH TRAM, M.A Student: NGUYEN NGOC HUYNH ANH Student ID: 1652202010008 Class: LE - 41 Ho Chi Minh City, 2020 MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF LAW GRADUATION THESIS B.A DEGREE IN ENGLISH Major: Legal English IN-DEPTH ANALYSES OF SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES SERVING AS HINDRANCES TO EFFECTIVE LEGAL READING Supervisor: CAO ĐANG QUYNH TRAM, M.A Student: NGUYEN NGOC HUYNH ANH Student ID: 1652202010008 Class: LE – 41 Ho Chi Minh City, 2020 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First of all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor Cao Dang Quynh Tram for guidance and support in completing this dissertation She taught me professional standards and solved many dilemmas in the course of my research and writing Without her expert advice and encouragement throughout this difficult time, I would not have been able to finish my thesis In addition, I wish to pay my special regards to my head teacher Le Thi Xuan Thu, who helped me a lot in the process of writing the dissertation Furthermore, I would like to show my gratitude to Ho Chi Minh City University of Law and Legal Language Faculty, which offered me the best opportunity of studying and working on this exciting dissertation, which has been one of the most memorable experiences in my tertiary education I whole-heartedly appreciate the great advice I received from all of my friends and seniors on previous courses which has proved fundamental to the success of this study Especially, I wish to thank two of my friends Vo Minh Nga and Nguyen Ngoc Minh Trang, whose assistance and encouragement has been a milestone in the completion of this thesis Simultaneously, I would also like to thank Le Thi Hoang Chau, who gave me insightful comments and feedback on earlier drafts of this dissertation Last but not least, I would like to acknowledge the support and great love of my family, particularly my parents and my brother Their spiritual support throughout my life is a precious thing to which I am indebted They kept me going and this dissertation would not have been possible without their input Nguyen Ngoc Huynh Anh May 25, 2020 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Adj Adjective Art Article Det Determiner e.g For example etc Et cetera i.e That is LE Legal English N Noun Nom Nominal NP Noun Phrase O Object p Page Prep Preposition PP Prepositional Phrase S Subject V Verb V3 Past Participle VP Verb Phrase Table of Contents INTRODUCTION i Background information ii Research objectives iii Scope of the research iv Literature review………………………………… …………………………………….2 v Research questions vi Research methodology vii Structure CHAPTER ONE: THE IMPORTANCE AND EFFECTS OF SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES IN EFFECTIVE LEGAL READING GENERAL THEORY OF SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES IN ENGLISH 1.1 The concept of syntax 1.2 Specific syntactic structures in English THE IMPORTANCE AND EFFECTS OF SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES IN EFFECTIVE LEGAL READING 12 THE NECESSITY OF READING LEGAL DOCUMENTS EFFICIENTLY 15 CHAPTER TWO: IN-DEPTH ANALYSES OF COMMON SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES WHICH HINDER READING LEGAL DOCUMENTS EFFICIENTLY 18 COMMON SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES IN LEGAL READING 18 1.1 Length and complexity 18 1.2 Combinations of clauses 19 1.3 Unusual sentence structures 19 1.4 Collocations 20 1.5 Abundant use of the passive voice 21 1.6 Conditionals and hypothetical formulations 22 1.7 Binomial expressions 233 1.8 Relative clauses 24 1.9 Prepositional phrases 24 1.10 Nominalization 25 1.11 Separation of subject and verb 26 1.12 The use of modal verbs 27 ANALYSIS OF SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES IN CONTRACTS 277 CHAPTER THREE: THE COMMON DIFFICULTIES WHEN READING A LEGAL DOCUMENT AND READING STRATEGIES FOR IMPROVING STUDENTS’ LE COMPREHENSION 33 A HOLISTIC OVERVIEW OF DIFFICULTIES WHEN READING LEGAL DOCUMENTS 33 STRATEGIES FOR IMPROVING COMPREHENSION IN LE READING 37 2.1 Effective personal reading strategies 37 2.1.1 Connect to a purpose 37 2.1.2 Preview the text 37 2.1.3 Skimming and scanning 38 2.1.4 Atmosphere is key 38 2.1.5 Resolve confusion before moving on 39 2.2 Institutional approaches 39 2.2.1 Aptitude tests and remedial classes 39 2.2.2 Syllabus design: syntax and semantics 40 2.2.3 Syllabus design: reading levels………………………… ………………………40 CONCLUSION 42 References 44 IN-DEPTH ANALYSES OF SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES SERVING AS HINDRANCES TO EFFECTIVE LEGAL READING INTRODUCTION i Background information Language is a vital tool in communication Humans use language to communicate with the purpose of understanding each other These days, international integration among countries is dramatically increasing, so the demand for people fluent in English is also going up because English is used widely in many countries all over the world as a means of communication To be able to communicate in the English language, learners need to consider two things: grammar and intelligibility The most effective way to get messages across is by using verbal language: speaking and writing It seems that writing is more difficult than speaking for people to understand since we cannot use body language, emotions and intonation to communicate ideas in writing Language has four different aspects namely phonology (the study of sounds and sound systems), morphology (the study of how morphemes are combined together into words), syntax (the study of how words are combined together to form sentences) and semantics (the study of meaning) As one aspect of linguistic analysis, the study of syntax is fundamental to linguistics and language study Syntax is one major component of grammar as it governs the ways in which words are combined to form phrases, clauses, and sentences Therefore, syntactic structures play an important role in reading comprehension If readers not have adequate knowledge of syntactic structures, they may not fully understand the meaning of the text (Fitri and Maisrul, 2011) To reach an effective reading level in English as the second language is not easy, so readers need ample time to practice improving this skill Reading general English is difficult but reading specialized English is more difficult Legal writing is a particularly specialized form of English but as the governance of society has become more sophisticated, so law has become an essential part of life Simultaneously, legal English (LE) has become vital in business, diplomacy, IT and many other aspects of modern life that require international transactions in which English has become the Lingua Franca IN-DEPTH ANALYSES OF SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES SERVING AS HINDRANCES TO EFFECTIVE LEGAL READING Thus, legal reading comprehension in English is an important skill, and knowing about syntactic structures is a big advantage in legal reading Therefore, this thesis will analyze the ways in which syntactic structures may serve as hindrances to effective reading, with the aim of helping law students and general readers improve comprehension capability in legal texts ii Research objectives This dissertation aims to: a) Identify important syntactic structures that affect reader’s capability in legal reading; b) To access students’ attitudes towards grammar and syntax while reading; c) Suggest some reading tips to increase efficiency in legal reading iii Scope of the research This research focuses on language and syntactic structures commonly found in contracts and other legal documents including labor contracts, company charters, supply of services agreements, sales agreements, etc found in civil law because this is the branch of the law where international transactions are most common in Vietnam Criminal law poses a separate range of cultural problems and has been excluded to keep the research project to a manageable size In that respect the research objectives are extremely important in defining the scope of the research which is based on a study of people working in the legal field and students studying in the English Department of Ho Chi Minh City University of Law (LE students) but is intended to benefit people working in the wider legal professions, law students, business people and the general public iv Literature review Regarding syntactic structures, there are many relevant books and articles A ground breaking work was Chomsky (1957) His overview of syntactic structures had a major impact on the study of knowledge, mind and mental processes, coming to be known as the single most influential work in the formation of the field of cognitive IN-DEPTH ANALYSES OF SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES SERVING AS HINDRANCES TO EFFECTIVE LEGAL READING science In his work, Chomsky established the independence of syntax (the study of sentence structures) from semantics (the study of meaning) Recently, linguists and language teachers have begun to pay increasing attention to the effects of varied syntax on the reading comprehension skills of second language learners Huggins (2007) is an influential recent study of the “Syntactic aspects of reading comprehension” In this work, syntax is seen as a tool for adjusting the complexity and compactness of a message to achieve the best balance between economy and clarity, taking into account the level of competence and processing ability of the perceiver At the same time, the research reviewed constantly points up the importance of meaning, and its interaction with syntax Turning to the specific syntactic structures commonly found in LE, there are also numerous related materials However, researchers have tended to concentrate on grammar in legal language Tiersma (1999) has proved particularly influential This book aims to provide a relatively comprehensive description of legal English, including how it got to be the way that it is, its present characteristics, how lawyers use language in the courtroom, and the movement to reform it The major theme running through the book is how well legal language functions as a means of communication Besides Tiersma’s work, the study by Chovanec (2013) has also played a significant role in setting the foundation for further research into syntactic structures in legal texts More recent studies, of varying quality, have tending to focus on the structure and influence of particular syntactical features of LE For example, Khairy and Hussein (2012) looked at binomial expressions, Kalinowski (2015) studied lawyers use of prepositional phrases and Shiflett (2017) investigated the passive which she misleadingly refers to as the passive tense There are a number of studies of difficulties facing students of English for academic purposes including LE One strand of the literature looks at translation Alcarz Varo and Hughes (2002) is a useful general introduction to the difficulties students and legal practitioners may encounter Among more detailed studies those involving Arabic as the L1, such as Al-Tameemi (2016) tend to predominate These are useful in that they point out the difficulties which may arise with terminology from legal systems with IN-DEPTH ANALYSES OF SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES SERVING AS HINDRANCES TO EFFECTIVE LEGAL READING different underlying philosophies A second strand of the literature deals specifically with reading comprehension difficulties In this area much important work has been done by Christensen (2007, 2010) He focused on the relationship between reading comprehension skills and success in law school demonstrating that high levels or reading comprehension ability are a strong predictor of success However, it should be noted that much of the follow up work such as McCallum et al (2017) has been carried out in western countries It should be noted that there is as yet no study of either translation or reading comprehension difficulties in LE encountered in Vietnamese law schools There is a huge literature on reading strategies for learners of English as a second language in general but very little specific to LE and nothing specific to LE among students whose L1 is Vietnamese This thesis aims to begin filling these gaps by posing the following research questions v Research questions - Whether syntactic structures play an important role in effective legal reading? - Whether there are specific types of syntactic structures which hinder reading comprehension in contracts and other legal texts and why? - Whether there are practical strategies that can help readers, both law students and the general public, understand legal documents more easily and accurately? vi Research methodology The overall approach to the research is qualitative In particular, this dissertation gathers information about legal reading experiences, emotions and behaviors of readers from legal materials and books using both primary and secondary sources It assists in gaining a better understanding of complex concepts, social interactions and cultural phenomena by using the following main methods: - Oral history or life stories: informal interviews were carried out in the spring of 2020 with the writer’s classmates (N=30), face to face or by smartphone The aim was to pinpoint difficult syntactic structures that served as IN-DEPTH ANALYSES OF SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES SERVING AS HINDRANCES TO EFFECTIVE LEGAL READING of the difficulties in legal reading is because each country has its own legal terminology as well as legal system These are embedded in national cultures and may differ even if the language they speak is identical, (Sonawane, n.d.) For example, there are considerable differences in contract law between Britain and the United States which a number of interviewees found confusing Thus, legal terminologies are various and difficult to understand in order to ensure the accuracy of the legal texts from sentence structure and syntax to word selection Although the language used in law is changing and many lawyers are now adopting a plain English style, there are still legal phrases that baffle non-lawyers Some of them also have more than one meaning depending on the context Here are some examples of legal terminologies taken from UK civil law which Vietnamese students reported as being unfamiliar (PEC, 2020b) Legal terminology Authorized share capital Meaning The highest amount of share capital that a company can issue The amount is set out in the company's Memorandum and Articles of Association Bill of exchange A signed written order, instructing the person to whom it is addressed to pay an amount of money to someone A cheque is a type of bill of exchange Compulsory winding up The liquidation of a company by order of the court It usually happens because the company has not been able to pay its bills on time and a creditor has presented to the court a petition for winding up the company 34 IN-DEPTH ANALYSES OF SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES SERVING AS HINDRANCES TO EFFECTIVE LEGAL READING Defamation Making a statement, either orally or in writing, which damages someone's reputation Endorsement a) A change to the original terms of a contract, such as an insurance policy b) An agreement by a celebrity or sports star to promote a product or brand in return for a fee Freehold Describing land or property that only the owner has any rights over LE also has a lot of borrowings in its terminology as well There are a considerable number of foreign words and phrases in legal English, which are mainly of Latin and French origin We have already met a French term, force majeure in Chapter and the influence of Latin can be seen in a number of words and phrases which remain in current use in legal writing nowadays The foreign legal terms listed below are responses from interviewees when asked to give examples which had caused them comprehension difficulties during their studies Loan words Amicus curiae Meaning A person who is not a party to a legal dispute but who offers helpful information on that case This Latin phrase literally means ‘a friend of the court’ In rem Relating to rights in an object or property as opposed to rights in a person Noscitur a sociis The principle that if the meaning of a word is doubtful or disputed, it should be 35 IN-DEPTH ANALYSES OF SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES SERVING AS HINDRANCES TO EFFECTIVE LEGAL READING understood in relation to the words that surround it Ratio decidendi The main reason or reasons contained in a judge’s decision The writer was unable to find anything in the secondary literature to explain this problem But one possible hypothesis is that among Asian students, part of the problem is cultural assumptions They are often in awe of English and regard it as an all knowing, definitive language and therefore resist teachers to who try to explain that English actually borrowed a lot from other languages and cultures they may not even have heard of LE teachers may have to teach a bit of history to get over this problem Another example of an issue which is both semantic and cultural is the appearance of legal neologisms A neologism is defined as a new word, a new use for an old word, or the act of making up new words (Shrives, 2020) The objective of law is to regulate the rights and obligations of legal persons Legal concepts are thus drawn from all types of social activities that require regulation The need for new concepts often arises as a result of innovative developments for instance in technology, business practices or financial markets The need for new legal concepts arises when these developments require amendments in existing legislation or the elaboration of new legislation The life span of a neologism is limited because the neologism will either be formally accepted into mainstream language (at which point, it ceases to be a neologism), or it will fade into obscurity due to lack of use (Roald and Whittaker, 2011) Because LE textbooks available in Vietnam are often dated and the law is not always perceived to be dynamic or malleable, the majority of readers not know new legal concepts, which leads to failure in effective legal comprehension Recent examples cited by Simpson (2020) include identity theft, intellectual property rights and sexting all of which have been used to define newly criminalized actions in the UK and other western countries The extent of the overlaps between semantic, syntactical and cultural barriers to reading efficiency revealed in this research requires than a holistic approach is required 36 IN-DEPTH ANALYSES OF SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES SERVING AS HINDRANCES TO EFFECTIVE LEGAL READING to improve students LE reading skill set This will involve a combination of morphological and syntactical approaches to teaching It will also involve changes at both an institutional level and in students personal reading strategies These elements will be described in more detail below STRATEGIES FOR IMPROVING COMPREHENSION IN LE READING 2.1 Effective personal reading strategies The research in this study supports the conclusion of much of the secondary literature such as Christensen, 2007; SurviveLaw, 2013; McCallum et al, 2017; The Legal Duchess, 2018 that effective legal readers know what to pay attention to and what to let go of In other words, they can identify which details are relevant to the decision in a legal judgement, for example, and which details are irrelevant Therefore, in order to maximize the effectiveness of their legal reading, the following suggestions are the best methods to make law students and general users more discerning and effective readers 2.1.1 Connect to a purpose In the present study, those students who connected to the purpose of the legal reading (e.g preparing for a client meeting) were more engaged and active in their legal reading overall When students internalized a purpose for reading other than simply reading the case in preparation for class, they read differently The results of this study appear to show a qualitative correlation between success, both in test scores and selfassessment, on the one hand and the ability to use note taking, highlighting, discussing with classmates and the application of critical thinking techniques to achieve their purpose Students should be encouraged to set themselves a purpose whenever possible and this study supports the view of Christensen (2010, p.209) that doing so improves retention of important detail 37 IN-DEPTH ANALYSES OF SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES SERVING AS HINDRANCES TO EFFECTIVE LEGAL READING 2.1.2 Preview the text Previewing is used to get a general idea of what the text is about without engaging closely with the body of the text Students should be taught to use the table of contents, headings, the abstract and chapter summaries to put together what the text is about and what parts might be relevant to their purposes Where useful abstracts or summaries are not available, reading the first and last paragraphs of sections, or first and last lines of each paragraph can also be a way to preview a text (SurviveLaw, 2013) 2.1.3 Skimming and scanning These are two basic skills which are necessary in reading comprehension for all reading materials, not only for legal documents Skimming is useful after previewing the text to search for important information that is elaborated on in the body of the text Skimming basically involves casting your eyes quickly over the text and looking for markings that may indicate important information This could be in the form of formatting like italics, bolding or underlining Meanwhile, scanning is a technique that involves using a pointer (your finger, a cursor or a pen/pencil) to help regulate the speed at which you read This technique can help readers immensely in focusing their reading and increasing their reading speed To scan, you first need to have an idea of why you are reading the text and what you’re looking out for Having this in mind, use your pointer to skim through the text for key words or phrases Given the prevalence of collocations in legal texts, key phrases are likely to be more useful than single words Stop when you locate keywords and read more carefully before taking notes, or highlighting (SurviveLaw, 2013) 2.1.4 Atmosphere is key Understanding what time during the day you are at your best will help you read better Besides, location is also very important, so readers need to know best what locations make them the most productive Some people study best at home; some have to be at school Some people prefer a quiet coffee shop and others like to be outside Whatever works best for you to be focused - your reading there Make yourself as comfortable as possible, then your reading will be more effective (The Legal Duchess, 38 IN-DEPTH ANALYSES OF SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES SERVING AS HINDRANCES TO EFFECTIVE LEGAL READING 2018) However, reading preferences and atmospheres may be culturally specific The respondents in this study were overwhelmingly of the opinion that the density and complexity of legal texts requires a different time of day, location and atmosphere to fiction There was a strong preference for a quiet, formal setting such as a library with good supporting facilities such as broadband and back up resources such as legal dictionaries and reference books 2.1.5 Resolve confusion before moving on If readers not understand a sentence, they should work through it before moving on Revisit the text before and after the new or difficult word or phrase for context Looking at the text surrounding the sentence for context clues is one method to clear up the confusion If readers not recognize a word in the sentence, they should try to garner its meaning from context and then look it up for confirmation Then, with knowledge of the word’s meaning, make sure they understand the sentence One way of doing that is to try to paraphrase the sentence without changing the meaning If students still not understand, then they ought to consult with a colleague or professor At a minimum, make a note about the confusion to resolve later With time, you will become more fluent in the language of the law, which means you will have more context clues available and you will need to look up fewer terms (Wilson, n.d.) However, this does not happen automatically over time It needs to be guided by syllabus planners and teachers which brings us to the institutional strategies need to improve LE student’s reading skill sets 2.2 Institutional approaches 2.2.1 Aptitude tests and remedial classes Legal reading in English is a challenging task for any new law student, especially in a foreign language studying unfamiliar legal systems and cultures Therefore, law students with any learning disability should develop this skill as soon as possible after beginning law school (Christensen, 2010) This could be achieved by making greater use of purpose written aptitude tests There is some evidence from our results that Vietnamese LE students with poor reading comprehension who are struggling on their 39 IN-DEPTH ANALYSES OF SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES SERVING AS HINDRANCES TO EFFECTIVE LEGAL READING LE courses have failed to develop complete syntactic awareness in high school The university should consider the provision of remedial classes for those so identified by aptitude tests 2.2.2 Syllabus design: syntax and semantics As we have seen student reading levels not improve automatically or merely as a result of spending time reading Students need to be guided through a planned syllabus The first aspect of this is to include systematic teaching of the general theory of English syntax This can be done through the use of syntactic trees similar to those described in Chapter That should be followed up with exercises to teach specific skills for parsing long, complex legal sentences For example, students can be taught to blank out dependent clauses or non-defining relative clauses in order to more easily understand the main point of the sentence and then return to the other clauses if necessary A program of action research with the students at Ho Chi Minh City University of Law could be devised to prove or disprove this technique the effectiveness of detailed methodologies The systematic teaching of syntax should be supplemented by systematic teaching of aspects of morphology and semantics related to syntax such as nominalizers and the etymology of legal terms 2.2.3 Syllabus design: reading levels The theory of frustration, guided and independent reading levels and IRIs to assess them is crucial here Basically, frustration reading occurs when students are able to understand less than 70-80% of lexical items and syntactical structures in a passage Comprehension will be patchy at best and serious misunderstandings are likely If students are forced to read at this level for any length of time demoralisation is almost inevitable The next level is known as guided reading At this level, students can understand 80-90% of the lexical items and syntactic structures in a passage Reading is likely to be slow but acceptable levels of comprehension can be achieved but only with guidance from a classroom teacher However, good teachers who are able to teach reading skills such as previewing, visual decoding, skimming and scanning and active reading for a purpose can gradually bring students to the final level That is called 40 IN-DEPTH ANALYSES OF SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES SERVING AS HINDRANCES TO EFFECTIVE LEGAL READING independent reading At this level, students can understand more than 90% of the lexical items and syntactical structures in a passage and have the skills to use dictionaries, context clues etc to work out any unknown items Students need to be able to independent reading at a level appropriate to the course requirements for private study and seminar teaching to be worthwhile It is essential to monitor progress by using Independent Reading Inventories to assess the difficult of text at which students can undertake guided or independent reading and select course material accordingly Writing such tests is a highly skilled job but they can be bought online 41 IN-DEPTH ANALYSES OF SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES SERVING AS HINDRANCES TO EFFECTIVE LEGAL READING CONCLUSION SUMMARY The aim of this thesis “In-depth analysis of syntactic structures serving as hindrances to effective legal reading” is to help law students, people working in legal profession and laypeople with a need to know easily read legal documents and fully understand them without worrying about difficult syntactic structures This thesis first determines the importance of awareness of syntactic structures to effective legal reading In Chapter one, this thesis begins by a general view about syntactic structures in English by giving basic concepts and illustrating some examples from the perspective of linguistics Chapter one also identifies the importance of syntactic structures in reading comprehension and the necessity of effective legal reading After that, the thesis analyzes popular syntactic structures in legal documents and depicts some examples found in contracts and sales agreements in Chapter two In this chapter, important syntactic structures which usually appear in legal texts are listed in the first section of this chapter such as unusually long sentences, the passive voice, binominal expressions, relative clauses, prepositional phrases and conditional sentences, etc Next, to make clear the practical characteristics of analyzed syntactic structures, some significant provisions are taken from labor contract and sales agreement to illustrate the syntactic structures used in more detail and help readers apply the theory to legal reading in practice Finally, common difficulties when reading a legal document including semantic, syntactic and cultural difficulties are pointed out and reading strategies for law students and interested laypeople are proposed in the last chapter of this thesis The result of the research indicates how the level of difficulty students face in legal reading and the proposed methods probably help them to overcome these difficulties in terms of syntax 42 IN-DEPTH ANALYSES OF SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES SERVING AS HINDRANCES TO EFFECTIVE LEGAL READING LIMITATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER STUDIES There are some possible limitations in this thesis The lack of professional and academic books and articles related to this project from a Vietnamese perspective has meant that the research carried out has been largely a journey into the unknown Even finding suitable texts as examples for this project has not been easy because every contract contains different syntactic structures and access to corpora of legal English is restricted The second limitation has been time constraints Obviously, the deadline for submission of the thesis is not long enough for the writer to search deeper, so the length and depth of the thesis is also limited Furthermore, a lack of regression analysis to confirm some key elements such as the relative importance of syntactical, morphological and cultural factors as impediments to LE reading is an important limitation Legal English grammar is complicated and flexible based on social demand Therefore, the study of syntax in legal documents will never come to an end It is possible to find new research avenues and applications for this project in the future In particular, it can be expanded by constructing similar projects about syntactic structures in legal writing or in specific contexts, new locations or cultures For instance, one further study may investigate ways in which syntactic structures are serving as hindrances in understanding US Constitutional Law 43 References All About Linguistics, n.d What Does Syntax Study? – All About Linguistics [online] Allabout-linguistics.group.shef.ac.uk Available at: [Accessed June 2020] Alcaraz Varó, E and Hughes, B., 2002 Legal Translation Explained Manchester: St Jerome Al-Tameemi, I., 2016 Difficulties encountered in translating some legal texts from Arabic into English Swift Journal of Social Sciences and Humanity, 2(1), p.1-13 Anderson, S., 2008 The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory Language, 84(4), p.795814 Ashurst, 2020 Force majeure 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