This article,based on authentic data from Chinese and American constitutions as two samples of typical legislative texts,measures the length of each sentence before an independent-samples T-test is carried out.The statistical test demonstrates that there is no significant difference between the two samples in terms of sentence length.This finding reveals that legal Chinese resembles legal English in sentence length,in spite of the fact that the sentence length of ordinary English texts is much longer than that of ordinary Chinese texts.Our explanation to this convergent evolution is the result of joint effects of language contact and legal transplantation.%本研究以中美两国的宪法文本为语料,比较分析其句长,结果显示:两样本的句长没有显著差异.这一发现表明尽管在普通文本中,汉语的平均句长小于英语,但汉语立法文本与英语立法文本在句长特征上趋同.这种趋同演化现象可能是语言接触和法律移植两方面因素共同作用的结果.
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