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Dedicated Non-Epistemic Possibility Oppositions and Ossetic Modal Constructions1

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Dedicated Non-Epistemic Possibility Oppositions and Ossetic Modal Constructions1 Dedicated non-epistemic possibility oppositions and Ossetic modal constructions1 Arseniy Vydrin* 1. TERMINOLOGY Modality and its types are understood in typological studies in different ways, but I will not discuss this matter here (see Nuyts 2005; 2006). In the paper, I will use the terminology proposed by Johan van der Auwera and Vladimir Plungian (1998: 80-81). van der Auwera and Plungian define modality as a large semantic domain with two main meanings, viz. possibility and necessity. Both of the meanings can be epistemic (judgment of the speaker) or non-epistemic (participant oriented modality). The latter has sub-meanings of participant- internal modality and participant-external modality. As this article deals with possibility, I will not define the necessity sub-meanings. Participant-internal possibility is understood as “possibility internal to a participant engaged in the state of affairs” or participant’s ability / capacity (e.g. Boris can get by with sleeping five hours a night) (van der Auwera and Plungian 1998: 80). Participant-external possibility “refers to circumstances that are external to the participant, if any, engaged in the state of affairs” (ibid.) and that make this state of affairs possible (e.g. To get to the station, you can take bus 66). Deontic possibility is a special case of participant-external possibility which “identifies the enabling or compelling circumstances external to the participant as some person(s), often the speaker, and/or as some social or ethical norm(s) permitting… the participant to engage in the state of affairs” (ibid.: 81) (You may come in). van der Auwera and Plungian offer a semantic map of modality which shows the grammaticalization paths of possibility and necessity, cf. Figure 1. * Institute for Linguistic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russia: [email protected], www.ossetic-studies.org/en. 1 This research is carried out with the financial support of the fellowship of the President of the Russian Federation (MK-1920.2014.6), the program of fundamental studies of the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences “Corpus linguistics” and the financial support of the RFBR grant 11-06-00512, the RFH grant 13-04-00342 and the grant of the Russian Institute for Advanced Study in Humanities and Technology. I thank Vladimir Plungian, Yury Lander, Corey Miller and the independent reviewers for their critics. I appreciate the patience of my consultants – Ossetic native speakers living in the village Dargarvs, Prigorodnyj region of the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania, Russia. Downloaded from Brill.com09/27/2021 10:57:14PM via free access 94 Arseniy Vydrin Figure 1. Semantic map of modality by van der Auwera and Plungian (1998). As shown in the map, the modal meanings of possibility can be derived out of the following premodal meanings: ‘be strong’, ‘know’, ‘arrive at’, ‘finish’, suffice’, ‘be permitted’, ‘dare’, ‘be’, ‘become’, ‘happen’, ‘befall’, ‘stand’, ‘I don’t know’ and ‘like’. Among the postmodal meanings of possibility the map mentions future, condition, concession and complementation. One can see a hierarchy of the possibility meanings: participant-internal possibility can be grammaticalized to participant-external possibility, which can turn to deontic or epistemic possibility. The sources of necessity are the following: future, ‘if it becomes’, ‘perfect’, ‘owe’, ‘duty’, ‘belong’, ‘be good/proper’, ‘have’, ‘be supposed’, ‘need’. Necessity can grammaticalize to the markers of future, condition, concession, complementation and imperative. Note that necessity and possibility share most of the postmodal meanings. van der Auwera and Plungian mention an interaction between possibility and necessity: deontic necessity can develop out of deontic possibility and, vice versa, deontic necessity can turn to deontic possibility. There are also some other observations of van der Auwera and Plungian (1998) on grammaticalization paths of possibility and necessity which are important for the typology of modality; however, they are not relevant for this paper. There were some updates to the semantic map of modality by van der Auwera and Plungian, e.g. van der Auwera, Kehayov, Vittrant 2009. However, the discussion of it is beyond the scope of the paper. Downloaded from Brill.com09/27/2021 10:57:14PM via free access Non-epistemic possibility oppositions and Ossetic modal constructions 95 2. NON-EPISTEMIC POSSIBILITY OPPOSITIONS This paper aims to study dedicated oppositions of participant-external possibility and participant-internal possibility. The dedicated opposition is a kind of opposition when participant-external possibility and participant-internal possibility are expressed in a language by different markers (or constructions, or lexemes) and the markers concerned convey nothing but the intended meaning. Such markers, constructions or lexemes I will call dedicated ones. A dedicated marker or construction does not mean that the marker or the construction is the only way to express the intended meaning. Though the grammaticalization paths of participant-external possibility and participant-internal possibility are well-studied (Bybee, Perkins, Pagliuca 1994; van der Auwera and Plungian 1998; Palmer 2001; Traugott 2006, van der Auwera, Kehayov and Vittrant 2009 among others), there are no special studies of the manifestation of dedicated oppositions of the two possibilities in a language. When we speak about dedicated oppositions of participant-internal possibility and participant-external possibility, logically, there can only be four options, viz. to oppose the non-epistemic possibilities a) only lexically, b) lexico- grammatically c) no opposition d) only grammatically. A language is not obligatorily restricted to one of the oppositions. From a logical point of view a language can have the following opposition combinations: 1. (a) and (b); 2. (a) and (d); 3. (a), (b) and (d); 4. (b) and (d). The only opposition which cannot be combined is the opposition (c). In what follows, each of the oppositions will be examined. 2.1. Lexical strategy Bybee, Perkins, Pagliuca argue that agent-oriented modality (to which participant-external and participant-internal possibilities belong) “tend to have non-bound, periphrastic expression” (1994: 241). Lexical opposition seems to be the most typical one. In Indo-European languages, participant-external and participant-internal possibilities are often conveyed by different modal verbs or modal expressions. However, usually modal verbs either express both possibility meanings or more broadly, both non-epistemic and epistemic possibilities; cf. the English verb can, which expresses both participant-internal and participant- external possibilities; it also can convey epistemic possibility. As it was noted by van der Auwera, Ammann and Kindt (2005), non-epistemic vs. epistemic polyfunctionality is typical for Standard Average European. In some languages, there are two modal verbs, one used only for participant- internal possibility, another one - for participant-external possibility, but one or both of the verbs have other, non-modal meanings and thus cannot be considered dedicated lexical markers of non-epistemic modality. E.g., in Ossetic (East Iranian), the verb fɜražǝn conveys the modal meaning of participant-internal possibility and has other, non-modal meanings (‘bear’, ‘stand’, ‘endure’), cf. (1)- Downloaded from Brill.com09/27/2021 10:57:14PM via free access 96 Arseniy Vydrin (2). The modal verb ɜmbɜlǝn is a dedicated verb for deontic modality, both deontic possibility and necessity, (3)-(4) (Vydrin 2011)2. (1) šabi-tɜ sɜw-ǝn nal fɜrɜžt-oj child-PL.NOM go.PRS-INF no.more be.able.PST-TR.PST.3PL ‘The kids couldn’t walk any more’ (e.g. they were very tired) (Tekhov 1970: 67). (2) bronežilet qwamɜ fɜraž-a aχɜm ɜχšt-ɜn bullet.proof.vest need bear.PRS-CONJ.3SG such shot-DAT ‘The bullet-proof vest must protect you against this shot’. (3) mɜnɜn ɜmbɜl-ǝ ba-sɜw-ǝn? I.DAT may.PRS-PRS.3SG PREF-go.PRS-INF ‘May I come in?’ (4) dɜwɜn ɜmbɜl-ǝ a-sɜw-ǝn you.DAT have.to.PRS-PRS.3SG PREF-go.PRS-INF ‘You have to leave’. As a matter of fact, if we concentrate on modal verbs only, in Indo-European languages, it is difficult to find a dedicated possibility opposition of this type; namely, a language with two dedicated modal verbs, one conveying participant- internal possibility and another, participant-external possibility. Many Indo- European languages oppose non-epistemic possibilities not by modal verbs but by different weakly grammaticalized modal expressions, consisting of a nominal constituent and a copula. E.g. English distinguishes between be able to (participant-internal possibility) and be allowed to (participant-external possibility). The modal expressions of this type can be considered dedicated lexical markers of the opposition (a). 2.2. Lexico-grammatical strategy Some languages can express one of the possibilities under discussion by a dedicated modal verb and another one by a dedicated morphological marker. This strategy is a bit more complicated than the strategy (a). It is located in two different levels of grammar: lexicon and grammar. E.g., in Hungarian, the modal 2 Abbreviations : A — agent or the argument of the transitive construction that correlates most closely with agent; ABS — absolutive; ALL — allative; BEN — benefactive; BNC — British National Corpus; CIT — citative; COM — comitative; CONJ — conjunctive; CONTR — contrastive; DAT — dative; EMPH — emphatic; ENCL — enclitic; EXT — existential; F — feminine;
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