Conflict-Prone Time Frame Nominations in Business Discourse: Linguistic Expert Approach

The practice of conducting linguistic examinations on documentary disputes reveals the urgency of the issue connected with interpretation of time frames nominations by the parties. Time frame nominations starting from ... to ..., through ..., from ... to ..., and similar word combinations have a conflict potential, which is explained by their polyinterpretability. The article is devoted to the description of particular temporal meanings and identification of semantic regularity in the functioning of these word combinations. The research was carried out employing the information from lexicographic sources, the National Corpus of the Russian Language, and the author’s practice of linguistic expertise. The lexicographic description of prepositions involved in the formation of temporal structures was analyzed. Turning to the data from the National Corpus of the Russian Language made it possible to identify two opposite types of functionally actual precise meanings of the studied temporal structures: time frame nomination with the right boundary included in it; and the one not included. The regularity and conditions for the formation of these meanings have been established. Significant factors that influence the realization of one of the meanings within the distinguished antinomy include the semantic signs of the structure components: “pointiness” or “extension” of the object that denotes the right boundary of the time frame, as well as the duration or extension of the process within the time frames. The dominant meaning of the model under study was determined: the structure from ... to ... and the corresponding semantic model with the right boundary included in the time frame nomination. To demonstrate specific expert situations, cases are presented, in which the subject of dispute was the interpretation of constructions indicating the time frames of legally significant processes. Recommendations are given for eliminating ambiguity in time period nominations in documentary texts.