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<article article-type="research-article" dtd-version="1.2" xml:lang="ru" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><front><journal-meta><journal-id journal-id-type="issn">2313-8912</journal-id><journal-title-group><journal-title>Research Result. Theoretical and Applied Linguistics</journal-title></journal-title-group><issn pub-type="epub">2313-8912</issn></journal-meta><article-meta><article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.18413/2313-8912-2023-9-2-0-5</article-id><article-id pub-id-type="publisher-id">3137</article-id><article-categories><subj-group subj-group-type="heading"><subject>APPLIED LINGUISTICS</subject></subj-group></article-categories><title-group><article-title>&lt;strong&gt;Language complexity across sub-styles and genres in legal Russian&lt;/strong&gt;</article-title><trans-title-group xml:lang="en"><trans-title>&lt;strong&gt;Language complexity across sub-styles and genres in legal Russian&lt;/strong&gt;</trans-title></trans-title-group></title-group><contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author"><name-alternatives><name xml:lang="ru"><surname>Blinova</surname><given-names>Olga V.</given-names></name><name xml:lang="en"><surname>Blinova</surname><given-names>Olga V.</given-names></name></name-alternatives><email>o.blinova@spbu.ru</email><xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1" /></contrib><contrib contrib-type="author"><name-alternatives><name xml:lang="ru"><surname>Tarasov</surname><given-names>Nikita A.</given-names></name><name xml:lang="en"><surname>Tarasov</surname><given-names>Nikita A.</given-names></name></name-alternatives><email>nkt.tarasov@yandex.ru</email><xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2" /></contrib></contrib-group><aff id="aff1"><institution>Saint Petersburg University, Russia</institution></aff><aff id="aff2"><institution>St. Petersburg State University, Russia</institution></aff><pub-date pub-type="epub"><year>2023</year></pub-date><volume>9</volume><issue>2</issue><fpage>0</fpage><lpage>0</lpage><self-uri content-type="pdf" xlink:href="/media/linguistics/2023/2/Лингвистика_9_2_2023-73-96.pdf" /><abstract xml:lang="ru"><p>The purpose of the paper is to find out the differences in linguistic complexity between legal documents, opposed by domain, sub-style and genre. The authors explore the large and diverse corpus of Russian legal texts and compare (1)&amp;nbsp;international documents and documents of national law, (2)&amp;nbsp;documents of the three sub-styles (administrative, legislative and justiciary), and (3)&amp;nbsp;texts of different genres within sub-styles. To obtain complexity scores, an automatic model is used whose modules are capable of predicting complexity either by using the fine-tuned ruBERT model, or by using 133&amp;nbsp;language metrics, or in a hybrid way. The paper analyzes a dataset consisting of 43,804&amp;nbsp;documents, 118,768,028&amp;nbsp;words. National law documents are classified into&amp;nbsp;three sub-styles. In addition, each document is characterized according to the genre and to the issuing body. Thus, 68 genres were identified. All documents were assigned complexity scores ranging from &amp;ldquo;0&amp;rdquo; to &amp;ldquo;12&amp;rdquo;. The vast majority of all documents were scored as maximally complex. The hybrid model assigned a complexity level of &amp;ldquo;12&amp;rdquo; to 97.1% of administrative sub-style documents, 94.5% of legislative sub-style documents, and 99.7% of judicial sub-style documents of national law. For&amp;nbsp;all international law documents, the proportion of documents with a&amp;nbsp;level of complexity of &amp;ldquo;12&amp;rdquo; is 94.1%. The set of legislative sub-style texts is the most varied in&amp;nbsp;complexity. On average, the most complex documents in the dataset are of justiciary sub-style ones. Linguistic features successfully contrast international and national documents, as well as legislative and justiciary sub-styles. When comparing documents by genre, the authors interpreted only the average values of the 22&amp;nbsp;syntactic metrics. In general, a comparison of the genre-based document groups showed that it is not the genre itself that may be decisive for the complexity score, but the issuing body.</p></abstract><trans-abstract xml:lang="en"><p>The purpose of the paper is to find out the differences in linguistic complexity between legal documents, opposed by domain, sub-style and genre. The authors explore the large and diverse corpus of Russian legal texts and compare (1)&amp;nbsp;international documents and documents of national law, (2)&amp;nbsp;documents of the three sub-styles (administrative, legislative and justiciary), and (3)&amp;nbsp;texts of different genres within sub-styles. To obtain complexity scores, an automatic model is used whose modules are capable of predicting complexity either by using the fine-tuned ruBERT model, or by using 133&amp;nbsp;language metrics, or in a hybrid way. The paper analyzes a dataset consisting of 43,804&amp;nbsp;documents, 118,768,028&amp;nbsp;words. National law documents are classified into&amp;nbsp;three sub-styles. In addition, each document is characterized according to the genre and to the issuing body. Thus, 68 genres were identified. All documents were assigned complexity scores ranging from &amp;ldquo;0&amp;rdquo; to &amp;ldquo;12&amp;rdquo;. The vast majority of all documents were scored as maximally complex. The hybrid model assigned a complexity level of &amp;ldquo;12&amp;rdquo; to 97.1% of administrative sub-style documents, 94.5% of legislative sub-style documents, and 99.7% of judicial sub-style documents of national law. For&amp;nbsp;all international law documents, the proportion of documents with a&amp;nbsp;level of complexity of &amp;ldquo;12&amp;rdquo; is 94.1%. The set of legislative sub-style texts is the most varied in&amp;nbsp;complexity. On average, the most complex documents in the dataset are of justiciary sub-style ones. Linguistic features successfully contrast international and national documents, as well as legislative and justiciary sub-styles. When comparing documents by genre, the authors interpreted only the average values of the 22&amp;nbsp;syntactic metrics. In general, a comparison of the genre-based document groups showed that it is not the genre itself that may be decisive for the complexity score, but the issuing body.</p></trans-abstract><kwd-group xml:lang="ru"><kwd>Language Complexity</kwd><kwd>Legal Russian</kwd><kwd>Complexity Assessment Model</kwd><kwd>Sub-styles</kwd><kwd>Genre Analysis</kwd><kwd>Administrative sub-style documents</kwd><kwd>Legislative sub-style documents</kwd><kwd>Justiciary Sub-style Documents</kwd></kwd-group><kwd-group xml:lang="en"><kwd>Language Complexity</kwd><kwd>Legal Russian</kwd><kwd>Complexity Assessment Model</kwd><kwd>Sub-styles</kwd><kwd>Genre Analysis</kwd><kwd>Administrative sub-style documents</kwd><kwd>Legislative sub-style documents</kwd><kwd>Justiciary Sub-style Documents</kwd></kwd-group></article-meta></front><back><ack><p>The research is supported by the Russian Science Foundation, Project #19-18-00525 &amp;ldquo;Understanding official Russian: The legal and linguistic issues&amp;rdquo;.</p></ack><ref-list><title>Список литературы</title><ref id="B1"><mixed-citation>Bhatia,&amp;nbsp;V.&amp;nbsp;K. 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