2013 Issue №8

This article considers the theoretical problems of modality that do not have an unambiguous interpretation in modern research literature as a functional-semantic and communicative category. These are the issues of the legitimacy and adequacy of identifying subjective and objective modality, the specific features of interaction between objective and subjective modalities in the language and text in view of the communicative orientation, and the function and genre of the latter.

The satirical works of N. V. Gogol, A. Averchenko, and I. Ilf and Ye. Petrov help consider the specific functional features of the microfield of interrogatively imperative modality in a literary text. The author establishes the structure-content correlation of the question and imperative within the given microfield and identifies the most regular means of expression of its specific meanings.

This article considers the category of language modality as a means to implement the author’s intentions in a newspaper text. The modal meanings indicative of the author’s attitude to the message and the means of its expression are identified. The interaction between objective and subjective modal meanings is described for newspaper texts of the second half of the 19th century.

Texts from modern Russian newspapers are used to demonstrate the specific features of explication of objective modality meaning through the forms of indicative mood of the present, past, and future tenses. The expression of situational modality is related to the use of modal verbs and predicatives in combination with a dependent infinitive and direct speech structure. The author examines the explicators of objective modality and specifying situational modality (possibility, necessity, and desirability).