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Модальность возможности и необходимости в русском жестовом языке
The article discusses manual and non-manual means used to express the modal meanings of possibility
and necessity in Russian Sign Language (RSL). It is shown that due to the combination of manual
signs, non-manual markers, and means of non-concatenative morphology (in particular, manner
of movement), RSL is able to express subtle shades of modal semantics. RSL also clearly distinguishes
between semantic domains of subject-oriented modality and epistemic modality: the first one is obligatorily
expressed by manual signs while the second one is obligatorily marked by non-manuals. The
article also discusses the origin of manual markers of possibility and necessity in RSL: some of them
are native signs, in which the modal meaning is mainly expressed by the visual metaphor “from image to meaning”, typical for sign languages, while others are lexicalized borrowings from spoken Russian
or have been derived from gestures used by hearing people. It is also shown that in the division of the
sematic area of modality, RSL differs both from the surrounding spoken Russian language and a number
of sign languages.