Abstract

The aim of this paper is to account for the indeterminacy of legal texts brought about by the peculiarities of the language in which they are formulated. From the start, I asume that legal language is a special language, that is, it is an ordinary language with some specific semantical features. On this assumption, the semantical features of legal texts and the syntactycal ones are dealt with separately. In this account, however, I omit the pragmatical function of such language. Concerning the semantical features that give rise to indeterminacy, I deal on the one hand, with the problems raised from legal terms in general, and the other hand, with the problems raised from terms expressing deontic relations at their deep structure. To conclude, an analysis of ambiguity derived from the syntactycal structure of legal sentences is proposed, on the basis of several exampIes.