ФОРМИРОВАНИЕ ВТОРИЧНЫХ ПОДСИСТЕМ ТЕРМИНОВ ПРАВА (НА МАТЕРИАЛЕ ТЕРМИНОЛОГИИ МЕДИЦИНСКОГО ПРАВА В РУССКОМ И АНГЛИЙСКОМ ЯЗЫКАХ)

The existing terminological systems vary greatly. There are the following types of them:

1. Terminology systems related to different fields of knowledge (terminology of medicine, informatics, sports, etc.).

2. Terminology systems varying in degrees of remoteness from each other: a) those that are close to each other (e.g., terminology of literary criticism and linguistic terminology), b) remote from each other (e.g., terminology of linguistics and terminology of analytic geometry).

3. Terminology systems that serve the variety of scientific directions, schools, trends within one science (e.g., terminology of comparative linguistics and terminology of structural linguistics).

4. Personal terminological systems developed by one scholar (e.g., terminological system of an outstanding Russian linguist A. A. Potebnya, etc.).

5. Large and small terminological systems that differ in the number of their terminological units. Usually, small terminological systems are subsystems of large terminologies (e.g. terminology of law is a big one consisting of the following subsystems: terminology of civil law, terminology of criminal law, etc.) [1, p. 7-10].

Secondary terminological systems represent a large corpus of terminological units in different languages due to the bidirectional process of integration and differentiation of sciences correlated with various spheres of knowledge. The emergence of secondary terminological systems is due to the following extra-linguistic factors:

1) the influence of foreign legal practices and the terms of the development of law in a given state;

2) complexity of some areas of public life subject to governmental legal regulation;

3) emergence of new phenomena in society;    

4) development of modern legislation and legal science;

5) influence of national legal culture.   

From the point of view of their Genesis, the entire composition of nominative units in scientific texts can be divided into several categories:

1) terms that have arisen in the given terminological system, including those coined on the basis of different ways of term formation (affixation, coining of compound words, abbreviation and shortening, conversion, semantic changes on the basis of metonymy and metaphor, formation of terminological word-combinations, borrowings from other languages;

2) units attracted from other terminological systems for denoting special concepts of another field of knowledge;

3) the so called general scientific words – a set of nominative units, which function in scientific texts of various knowledge spheres, in addition to those expressing the concepts of the specific scientific field; such units are not do not belong to any specific terminological system, but to all of them.

Legal terminology in modern languages is also a very complex system represented by various subsystems of terminological units [4] forming complex fragments of legal world pictures. Law permeates all the spheres of life. The emergence of new socially significant phenomena requires legal regulation. Thus, medical law is designed to regulate the new problems that are important for the society and the state: lifespan and its quality problems, transplantation of organs, active euthanasia problems, etc. Modern medical law is closely associated with social, labor, civil, environmental, and criminal law [2, p. 11-13].

The analysis of extra-linguistic factors influencing the emergence and development of the new secondary terminological systems in different legal systems and languages shows the predominance of common trends in the formation of such terminological systems. The importance of international rules for the development of national law system is particularly noticeable in the fields of medicine and law. In 1967 the World Association for Medical Law: WAML was founded, and its first Congress was held in the same year in Ghent (Belgium).

As far as medical law is part of law as a whole, it uses many traditional legal terms both in Russian and in English: гражданско-правовая ответственность, завещание, дисциплинарная ответственность, законные представители, лицензирование, имущественный вред, моральный вред, незаконное усыновление, недееспособность, опека, охрана труда, добровольное страхование, тайна усыновления, халатность, трудоспособность; breach of contract, homicide, evidence, misdemeanor, felony, responsibility, exemption, negligence, undue influence, institutional liability, professional misconduct, audit.

Terminology of medical law includes a number of medical terms, which denote:

a) socially significant health measures (санитарно-эпидемиологическое мероприятия, sanitary and epidemiological activities, independent medical examination);

b) activities related to the medical services rendered to the population (разработка лекарственных средств, изготовление лекарственных средств, manufacture of therapeutics, development of medicines, production of medicines, development of therapeutics);

c) the activities of medical institutions aimed at protection of health (донорство, искусственное оплодотворение, health care, artificial insemination, transplantation);

g) persons involved in health protection activities (врач, медсестра, пациент, patient, physician, in-patient, nurse).

At the same time, this subsystem of legal terms includes terminological units of a mixed type. These units combine medical and legal terms. They denote:

a) medical law principles and legislation issues (государственные гарантии оказания медицинской помощи, государственное регулирование обращения лекарственных средств, гарантии медицинским работникам, государственные гарантии доступности лекарственных средств; abortion legislation, family health insurance, AIDS legal control, doctor-patient privilege, health insurance, defensive medicine, legal foundations of psychiatric aid, individual health insurance, health insurance plan, legal abortion, license to practice medicine, regulation of transplantation, legal regulation in medicine, legal foundations of transfusion, principles of medical law, medical duties);

b) various violations of legal rules in the health care sphere (некачественное оказание медицинской помощи, незаконное занятие народной медициной, незаконная стерилизация, неоказание медицинской помощи; failure to treat, illegal abortion, failure to attend, illegal trafficking of medicines, illegal prescriptions, failure to monitor treatment, falsified prescription, medical neglect, prenatal tort, medical negligence, abuse of drugs, misuse of drugs);

c) rights of patients (права несовершеннолетних в области охраны здоровья, права граждан в области здравоохранения, права пациента, компенсация донору; eligibility to receive transplant, right to abstain from life-prolonging treatment, rights of HIV-positive people, right to medical aid, right to choose transplant);

d) rights and duties of medical personnel (право на занятие медицинской практикой, права работников здравоохранения, ответственность медицинского работника, responsibility in medicine, rights of medical personnel);

e) other miscellaneous notions (медицинское право, врачебная ошибка, судебно-медицинская экспертиза, medical expense, medical error, court medical expert, medical law, amnestic victim, health authorities, medical evidence, medical examiner, medical officer).

Though the composition of mixed terms differs in the two languages, general logic of mixing legal and medical terms and notions is obvious.

The mixed character of medical terminology units can be observed in their definitions representing not only medical, but also legal components of meaning, e.g.:

«doctor-patient privilege — The right to exclude from evidence in a legal proceeding any confidential communication that a patient makes to a physician for the purpose of diagnosis or treatment, unless the patient consents to the disclosure» [3].

«medical expense — In civil litigation, any one of many possible medical costs that the plaintiff has sustained because of the defendant’s allegedly wrongful act, including charges for visits to physicians’ offices, medical procedures, hospital bills, medicine, and recuperative therapy» [5]. 

«blood alcohol content — Blood alcohol content is used to determine whether a person is legally intoxicated, esp. under a driving-while-intoxicated law» [5].

Despite the fact that units of different terminological systems possess a system-forming function, the role of legal terms and terminological elements is most important in the organization of the terminological system and terminological fields of the secondary legal terminological system. Their place in the terminological system may be different, because they enter relations that are more diverse. They can be generic terms of micro-fields or are used as peripheral terms that enter into syntagmatic relations with terms of various origin and form mixed generic and specific terms. Therefore, legal terms in secondary terminological systems of law are the basic system forming units preserving the logic of law.