Université de Montréal - Thèse sous forme numérique

228gives information on the function of the verb that follows it. Because it does not have anautonomous lexical meaning per se or any morphological derivatives, we decided to notretain this verb. As for pagar, this verb does not have a meaning that relates to the subjectfield of law, in general, and to what the macro-scenario of a judgment involves, inparticular, although the outcomes of judgments may consist in a punishment in form ofremuneration. The linguistic occurrences of the actants of this verb can vary to the extentthat no relevant patterns of terms related to the law and to the judgments are identifiable.For these reasons, the verb was not retained.5.1.1.2. Retained candidate termsAll selected verbs have a meaning that is related to the subject field of the law, namely towhat happens in the judgments, and the linguistic occurrences of their actants typicallycorrespond to legal terms (Appendix 14). However, some terms are not morphologicallyand semantically related to other terms of the subject field, and some terms do not haveparadigmatic relations to other terms of the subject field. Therefore, the Portuguese termsthat we selected can be grouped into three categories: the first category contains verbs thatmeet all four criteria (section 5.1.1.2.1); the second one contains verbs that do not meet thecriterion of morphological derivation (section 5.1.1.2.2); and the last category groupstogether verbs that do not establish paradigmatic relations to other terms (section 5.1.1.2.3).5.1.1.2.1. Verbs that meet all four criteriaThe vast majority of terms, i.e. 84% of the Portuguese terms, meet all four criteria set out inchapter 4. Some selected terms relate to the subject field of law in general such as estatuir 1(to enact) and violar 1 (to violate), but for the most part the selected terms are specific towhat happens in a judgment. As the subject field of law is very broad we relied on thegeneral characteristics of legal discourse as well as on the specificities of the judgments as