Abstract
For several years now, historical studies of specialized discourse have gained momentum, yet the domain of French customary law remains largely unexplored. Baldinger (1951) already pointed to the important role of customary law in the development of the French lexicon, but only few studies have subsequently addressed this issue. By studying the Grand Coutumier de Normandie, a private compilation of regional legal practices that once enjoyed a quasi-official status, this article aims at closing this research gap. The study focuses on specific syntactic schemata in the text, namely verb-noun constructions in the immediate co-text of particular legal terms. The usage, frequency and transformations of these constructions are analyzed and compared to data from the ConDÉ corpus to establish the extent of their institutionalization in legal discourse of the time.