A Corpus-Based Study On Modal Verbs In Intellectual Property Law English

Under the background of economic globalization, science and technology develop rapidly, and people pay more and more attention to the protection of intellectual property rights, so China Intellectual Property Law (hereinafter referred to as CIPL) and its translation of English version arise, and the modal verb is an important instrument for expressing meaning in legal English. This paper aims to study the distribution and use of modal verbs between CIPL Corpus and Brown Corpus, and compare their similarities and differences. First, a CIPL Corpus is established.which is taken as the observed Corpus and mainly made up of the following parts:the Copyright Law, the Patent Law, the Trademark Law, the Countering Unfair Competition Law and some other laws and administrative regulations or rules, judicial interpretation, etc. The Brown Corpus of USA is regarded as the reference Corpus. Then, Based on the theory of Halliday’s systemic-functional grammar and research method of Corpus, the method of qualitative and quantitative analysis are used to contrast and analyze if there is a significant difference on the use of the modal verbs in two corpora, through processing the software AntConc and statistical tools SPSS.The analysis shows that there is a significant difference on the modal verbs use between CIPL and Brown Corpus. Three types of modality expressions are employed more frequently in Brown Corpus than that in CIPL; two English corpora employ adopt low and median value modal verbs, however, the frequency of low and median value modal verbs in CIPL is higher than that in Brown Corpus. Because basic characteristics of legal language are:accuracy, strictness and logicality. In additional, the use of modal verbs in the legal corpus plays a major role in achieving a variety of interpersonal meanings,. And they can not only safeguard the interests of the rulers, But also fully embodies the unique interpersonal meaning of legal English.This paper explores the use and distribution features of modal verbs between CIPL and Brown Corpus. It is helpful for us to obtain better understanding of the rights and obligations in the CIPL. Meanwhile, we hope that this thesis can contribute to the teaching and translators to some extent.