ON VARIABILITY OF THE MEANS OF EXPRESSION OF MODALITY OF POTENTIALITY AND WISH IN GOTHIC
The article focusses on the means of expression of modality of potentiality and wish in Gothic and a tendency that developed in its system has been determined. The tendency shows the function of expressing the meanings of possibility, necessity and wish from grammatical means, i. e. moods, transferring to the lexical ones, i. e. verbs. To explain this process, the “weakest” parts of the modal subsystem of Gothic are being established. They are involved in changes: these are optative, imperative and preterite-present verbs. The analysis of various “shades” of meaning of potentiality and wish, verbalised by the contemporary lexical and grammatical means allowed to establish semantic relations of variability between grammatical and lexical means as well as within the former ones thus it allowed to define the status of preterit-present verbs involved in the process of appearing modal verbs in Gothic as means expressing the internal modality.
Keywords: preterite-present verbs, optative, imperative, possibility, necessity, wish, variability, internal modality
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Issue: 4, 2015
Series of issue: Issue 4
Rubric: GERMANIC LANGUAGES
Pages: 13 — 16
Downloads: 835