La sinonímia en unitats verbals del discurs jurídic (Synonymy in verbal units of juridical discourse)

The Communicative Theory of Terminology (Cabré, 1998), theoretical framework where this paper is located, postulates that terminological units are lexical units of the language that, within a specialized communicative context, acquire a specific semantic and pragmatic value allowing them to be configured as linguistic expressions transmitting specialized knowledge. Therefore, this terminological view, not distinguishing between words of general language and specialized terms, allows us to explain the relations between terminology and the general lexicon of a language as well as to account for phenomena obviated or forgotten by other terminological perspectives. In this paper, we deal with the intersection between three of the aspects sometimes left aside in terminology studies: juridical discourse, synonymy and verbs. Therefore, we start a research path joining the study of terminological variation with the study of verbal units within the framework of juridical discourse analysis. Apart from increasing the comprehension of the variation phenomenon and of the use of specialized verbs in discourse, we want this path of analysis to offer us answers to the following questions: a) in which aspects is verb synonymy different?, which semantic features of verbal units are different from the semantic features of other units, for example noun units?, in which sense do verbs and nouns have different ways to signify, and in which way does this affect their variation possibilities? b) which analysis clues can the study of verb variation offer?, from a theoretical point of view, how can it contribute to the definition of the concepts of synonymy and conceptual equivalence?, from a methodological point of view, how can it contribute to the detection of synonymy relation and different synonymy levels? In this paper, we obviously only offer some first answers to that and clues for future ones.