Elliptical lists in legislative texts

Abstract

Legal texts consist of hierarchically ordered and labeled (numbered) structural units (sections, subsections, paragraphs, etc.). Using the ordered layout and the labels the different parts of structural units can be easily localized and clearly referred. Nearly one-third of the structural units in the statutes we have examined are list items that can be considered as elliptical. In such cases the list items---each with unique identifying label (number)---are not complete propositions. We have trained the computer to recognize these lists and the different units and elements in them, and to create complete sentences from these. We will introduce some logical considerations that have to be reckoned with if we intend to use these complete sentences to create logical assignments to the legal regulation's content: we show how this technique influences the logical description of norms.