Language and the Law: polysemy, disambiguation, and suffixal productivity in legal texts, over the centuries

Abstract

As is generally recognized, Portuguese derivational morphology has benefitted very little from systematic historical research. This study aims to analyze the most common lexical products to be found in the medieval legal technolect, particularly those which show variation, and thus diverge from or resemble present-day Portuguese. In our view, this process can provide the key to understanding the motives and mechanisms of derivational changes, and to interpreting current diversity and variation. We shall attempt to show how, from about 1450 onwards, the new sociocultural horizons opened up by the Portuguese Discoveries and by Italian Humanism caused the resurgence of the suffixes -mento, -ção and -ria (which existed in Latin), resolving cases of polysemic ambiguity and even weakening euphemistically the expression of disagreeable ideas (such as the idea of ‘death’). This ambiguity was frequently a result of the ‘routinizing’ process of juridical language, and, in cases where contractual relations expressed an imbalance of power, of the social conventions associated with certain concepts.