On the problematic modality of evidentiality in the Russian language (on the material of I.A. Bunin's novel The Life of Arseniev)

In the article, the author considers a certain variety of epistemic modality, one of those which are objectivized by parenthetic constructions and shape an outer modal frame of utterance. United by the seme of supposition, parenthetic constructions with verno, veroyatno, vidimo, vidno, dolzhno byt', dopustim, kazhetsya, mozhet, mozhet byt', ochevidno mark the modality of problematic evidentiality. In the sub-modi they represent, the level of evidentiality in the evaluation of an informative component of the utterance (or one of its components) turns out to be different. Such sub-modi as veroyatnee vsego and vpolne vozmozhno demonstrate a smaller level of uncertainty whereas the other ones, vozmozhno, predstavlyaetsya, show a higher degree of uncertainty in their evaluation. A number of factors influence the level of problematic evidentiality of evaluation and they are to be taken into consideration by a modal subject. These coefficients depend on the personal qualities of predicative property bearers (subjects of predication), their amount of knowledge and experience which let them give more objective judgments and take into account positional schemes with modifiers mozhet byt', kazhetsya, pomnitsya, ochevidno, pomnitsya objectivizing the sub-modi 'veroyatnee vsego' and 'vpolne vozmozhno'. In this case a modal subject either coincides with the subject of predication (represented by the 1-st person singular pronoun which is a distinguishing feature of this autobiographical novel about the youth of I.A. Bunin) or not. But in the latter case personal traits of the subject of predication have also been taken into account and represented by the author. The impossibility to take into consideration the properties of the predicative subject or absence of trustworthy cognizance of the objects or situations to be qualified increase greatly the degree of evaluation unreliability, inaccuracy and hypotheticity. The possibility of objectivizing a sub-modus with a bigger or smaller degree of uncertainty depends partially on the etymology of parenthesis that keeps the seme of a derivative stem in its meaning: the seme 'obligation' in its vocabulary meaning veroyatno gives an opportunity of marking the sub-modus 'vpolne vozmozhno' with a higher degree of objectivity in evaluation. At the same time the seme 'possibility' is connected with the presence of a higher degree of uncertainty in the modal evaluation of the sub-modus 'vozmozhno'. The occurrence of the seme 'authenticity' in the lexical meaning of such parenthetic constructions as dolzhno byt' and pomnitsya is also explained etymologi-cally. The place of modal parentheses in positional schemes of sentences is not fixed: a modifier gives evaluation with a different degree of veracity to the whole proposition if it begins a sentence (as a predicative unit) or in the preposition to the predicate. If a parenthesis is related to other components of a positional scheme, only these separate components of a proposition are certified as problematic. Along with the function of a modal modifier, a text-forming role of parenthetic constructions found its consideration in the article.

Keywords

Authors

References