Tradition and Change in Legal English (2nd ed.)

In this volume the author examines verbal constructions in prescriptive legal texts written in English. Modal auxiliaries such as shall , may and must are analysed, as well as indicative tenses such as the present simple, and also non-finite constructions such as the -ing form and -ed participles. Results are based on specially compiled corpora of prescriptive texts coming from a wide range of English-speaking countries and also international organizations such as the European Union and the UN.