Aspect and subjectivity in the modal readings of tenses in Russian

Leiden Papers in Linguistics. 2006. Vol. 3. No. 1. P. 51–73.

Trnavac R.

 

In the aspectual linguistic literature, a connection between imperfective aspect and modality/subjectivity is quite often mentioned. This article investigates a possible counterargument to this connection by analyzing modal readings of tenses in Russian. Two types of uses of tenses are described: (1) temporal reading of the tense with a modal inference and (2) strictly modal reading of the tense. Modal readings are classified according to the semantic map of modality (van der Auwera & Plungian 1998) and, on the basis of three different tests, estimated on the scale of subjectivity. The sentences with epistemic inferences are evaluated to be the most subjective. It has been argued that the occurrence of perfective aspect in them does not represent the counterargument against the hypothesis in question, since these modal readings are just inferences and not strictly modal meanings. 

Keywords: subjectivity, Russian language, modality, aspect