A synchronic and diachronic study of American and British legal discourses for ESP in legal education based on corpus linguistics.

本研究考察了英美两国法律的话语在200年中的历史进程，并阐明了这两种法律的话语的共时性和历时性差异。本研究在Biber（1988）提出的五个维度的框架内进行，并阐明了200多年来英美法律的语篇中所特有的词汇语法特征。本研究发现，英美两国法律的语篇经历了独特的历史进程，表现为：1）名词短语变得更加精细和复杂; 2）名词化现象增多; 3）被动化现象减少。

This project has investigated the historical progress of British and American legal discourses over 200 years and clarified the synchronic and diachronic differences of these two legal discourses. The research has been done within the framework five dimensions proposed in Biber(1988), and clarified the lexico-grammatical features which have been characteristically used in British and American legal discourses over 200 year. This project has found that American and British legal discourses have followed uniquely different historical progress, and that 1) noun phrases have become more elaborate and complicated, 2) nominalizations have been on the increase, and 3) passivizations have been on the decrease.