Could you please tell me, which one sounds right to a native speaker and if you see any slightest difference in the meaning?
In the course of the survey of nature of the board of directors it was noticed, that there ARE statements presented in the legislation as well as in the court practice, according to which the board of directors holds rights and obligations, therefore one should conclude that it is has a legal personality. Such a hypothesis was rejected.
In the course of the survey of nature of the board of directors it was noticed, that there WERE statements presented in the legislation as well as in the court practice, according to which the board of directors holds rights and obligations, therefore one should conclude that it is has a legal personality. Such a hypothesis was rejected.
I was hoping someone else would have a good explanation…I vote for WERE.
Since the next verb is ‘presented’ it would be strange to say there ARE statements. If the second verb was different it might make more sense to use ARE. I think here, presented means ‘handed over’ or ‘submitted’ so it is an action that doesn’t continue for a long period. It happens and then it is over. If you had said, “…there are statements on file…” or “…there are statements retained in/by the…” that might be okay. ‘Retain’ is at least a verb that continues into the future for a substantial period of time, ‘present’ does not.
Additionally, “In the course of the survey…there ARE statements…” would only fit if you were talking about something that happened regularly, not about something that happened in a particular instance.
As in most of these nuanced grammar queries, there is no objectively correct choice without knowledge of the intention of the writer. Sorry to disappoint.
ARE (simple present) indicates a durative or routine practice. WERE (past) indicates that it is not relevant whether this is durative.
There are, however, punctuation and subject verb agreement errors. Also the style is a bit clunky. Shorter sentences are better in English, as a rule.
I think here, presented means ‘handed over’ or ‘submitted’
By this I have meant that such statements simply exist in legislation, judicial opinions, etc. Do you find that “presented” won’t do here? (given that the style is supposed to be academical)
there is no objectively correct choice without knowledge of the intention of the writer
Yeah! That is basically what I thought! Attracted sequence has always been presented as a principle English rule in Soviet language learning, even though, it is not really the case.
subject verb agreement errors
Could you please point these?
Shorter sentences are better in English, as a rule.
In most cases they are, but it never happens in jurisprudence. In any language, in fact
I tried only to answer the question asked and didn’t want to pick on the rest of the paragraph or make a statement about ‘legalese’ (law-speak) in general. Presented still sounds like the wrong word to me. “Some lawmakers, judges, etc think that…” won’t do?
If I were writing it I would say instead:
During a survey of…wait a minute. What do you mean by a survey of the nature of the board of directors? Like Imyirtseshem, I have no idea what that actually means.
Starting over…During [something] [someone] discovered statements about…wait again. I’m not sure what you mean by a statement… We need a Legalese - English dictionary…
The point of legal writing (the same applies to legal translation) is to present the legal relationship as exact as it is possible with no room left for ambiguity (within given terms and definitions). To appreciate it using the standards for appreciating literature doesn’t make more sense than doing so with C++.
Notwithstanding, English grammar applies to Legal English and any comments on the sequence of tenses issue remain highly appreciated
For a moment I thought I was reading a text from the Chomskybot…
Example:
“To provide a constituent structure for T(Z,K), most of the methodological work in modern linguistics is not subject to an important distinction in language use. Suppose, for instance, that this selectionally introduced contextual feature delimits the ultimate standard that determines the accuracy of any proposed grammar. In the discussion of resumptive pronouns following (81), the fundamental error of regarding functional notions as categorial can be defined in such a way as to impose nondistinctness in the sense of distinctive feature theory. It appears that the theory of syntactic features developed earlier is, apparently, determined by the requirement that branching is not tolerated within the dominance scope of a complex symbol. We have already seen that the natural general principle that will subsume this case is not quite equivalent to problems of phonemic and morphological analysis.”
Normally, I have no problems with long sentences as long as they are coherent, the punctuation is decent, the word order is understandable, the relative pronouns relate to the proper words/clauses etc.
That’s my point. Whether it’s best to say ARE or WERE in the original post is probably of minor importance since it’s still unclear what the sentences actually mean.
But alas, if the attempt was to eliminate ambiguity in the original two options… It definitely didn’t happen.
This is how I read the original portion:
In the course of the survey of [the] nature of the board of directors, it was noticed that there were statements presented in the legislation as well as in the court practice, according to which the board of directors holds rights and obligation (obligation to what???), therefore(where is the antecedent??) one should conclude that it(what, the board of directors?) has a legal personality(what does that even mean?). Such a hypothesis was rejected (oh, good).
The elimination of ambiguity doesn’t mean that the text has to be understandable to someone not having an idea about corporate law. Vice versa, popular explanations of professional subjects are normally full of ambiguity.
rights and obligation
That was just another pretty obvious typo. Rights and obligationS.
but according to you, the layman should make no assumptions…
Gosh! How could it go that far???
A typo in a professional term is normally obvious to those knowing the terminology. What are we gonna do? Avoid terms and all engage in a subsistence economy so that everyone could understand each other?
Alright @eugrus, I’m gonna make the changes now that I understand what we’re talking about here, and point out the still present errors in basic grammar with square brackets and less attitude:
In the course of the survey of [the] nature of the board of directors, it was noticed that there were statements presented in the legislation[,] as well as in the court practice[,] according to which the board of directors holds rights and obligation[s][.] [T]herefore one should conclude that [the board of directors] has [] legal personality. (Such a hypothesis was rejected).
The hypothesis portion just adds ambiguity, because it is unclear whether you are referring to the “hypothesis” that the board of directors has legal personality, not “a” legal personality (since it is an uncountable characteristic), or to some other unmentioned hypothesis that would be given by the full context.
For the record, rights and obligations are not exclusively professional terms.
Why is it different with [the] nature, by the way?
For the record, rights and obligations are not exclusively professional terms.
Wasn’t going to monopolize them -) But in this case you probably saw “rights and obligation” as a typo of “rights and obligations” at the very beginning. What was the point of “obligation to what???”, then?
We are so far from the issue of the sequence of tenses, anyway…
