Aspect and subjectivity in modal constructions

Utrecht : LOT, 2006.

Trnavac Radoslava

This books deals with the interaction of aspect and subjectivity in modal constructions. In the linguistic literature dealing with the connection between aspect and modality, a link has often been observed between imperfective aspect and modal readings (Townsend 1979, Caenepeel 1989, Fleischman 1995, Smith 1997, Boogaart 1999, 2006, Ippolito 2004, Giannakidou & Zwarts, to appear). However, as I will show in this study, both aspect prominent languages, such as Slavic languages, and tense prominent languages, such as Germanic languages, present exceptions to this hypothesized rule, since perfective aspect can appear with modal readings in both types of languages1. There are two main questions which should be answered in this book: (1) Can the hypothesis about a link between imperfective aspect and modality be confirmed or rejected? (2) Is imperfective aspect attracted to more ‘subjective’ modal readings? As an answer to these two general questions of this book, I would like to show that modal meanings can actually be expressed with both imperfectives and perfectives in aspect and tense prominent languages. However, modal readings that are more subjective (in the sense of Langacker (1985) most often correlate with imperfective aspect. The data which will be the focus of my attention involves modal infinitive constructions in Russian, German and Dutch, imperative constructions in Russian and Dutch, and modal uses of tenses in Russian and Serbian.

Keywords: subjectivity, aspect, modal constructions, tense-prominent languages, aspect-prominent languages