Modal verbs in Bulgarian Their lexical specification and interaction with tense, aspect and evidentiality Sizen Ertan Lyutfi LING4190 Master Thesis in Linguistics Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies UNIVERSITY OF OSLO Spring 2021 II Abstract This thesis aims to investigate the lexical specification of the modal verbs moga and trjabva in Bulgarian, a Southeast Slavic language. Two of the main components used to describe the meaning of modals are modal force and modal flavour (von Fintel and Matthewson, 2008). Modal force describes a proposition either being possible or necessary. Modal flavour refers to the way in which something is necessary or possible, such as deontic (what can or must be the case based on rules and obligations) and epistemic (what can or must be the case based in light of what the speaker knows). In Bulgarian, the necessity and possibility modals interact with tense, aspect and evidentiality and agree with their subject in person and number. Unlike tense, aspect and evidentiality, the modal verbs in Bulgarian have not been independently investigated before. Two different studies on Bulgarian modals were conducted. In the first one, I adapt the modal questionnaire for fieldwork developed by Vander Klok (2014) to Bulgarian and describe the lexical specification of two modal verbs based on their modal force and modal flavour. Data from 19 different contexts suggests that moga is specified for possibility modal force while trjabva is specified for necessity modal force, but both are compatible with all modal flavours, similar to the English modals can and must. In the second study, I develop an online questionnaire that aimed to differentiate between judgements on speaker commitment towards utterances without a modal, with a modal in its bare form, with a modal with evidential morphology and with the modal verb in its conditional form. The goal of the study was to towards understanding if the different morphology affects the modal force component of the modal verbs. Based on the analysis of 124 responses, there was no difference in the judgements between the modal forms, however there was a significant difference between a modal and non-modal form. Based on these results, I propose a formal semantic analysis based on the standard Kratzerian framework (1981) for the Bulgarian modals moga and trjabva. In addition, I consider Condoravdi’s (2001) approach on temporality in modals with respect to Bulgarian modals’ interaction with tense and aspect. Finally, I take into consideration three different approaches to evidentiality in Bulgarian (Izvorski(1997); Smirnova(2011b) and Arregui et al.(2017)) in light of the data gathered on the modal verbs and offer new empirical data towards the theoretical frameworks on evidentiality in Bulgarian. III Acknowledgements In the work on this thesis, I had been blessed to count on so many people to provide me with academic, moral and nonetheless emotional support. First of all, I would like to thank my main thesis advisor, Jozina Vander Klok. Without her insightful comments, active engagement on my progress, constructive feedback, positive attitude and show of understanding and compassion, I do not think that this thesis would have been in the shape it is now had I had any other advisor. Secondly, I would like to thank my second thesis advisor, Sarah Magdalena Zobel, who joined the “Bulgarian project” later on, but has been a fountain of ideas and feedback. The invigorating discussions on statistics have had a huge impact on the presentation and shape of the results in the thesis and without her advanced knowledge on linguistics and statistics; I doubt that I would have been able to show what I wanted to show in the way it is shown. I want to thank all the five language consultants in the first survey for their patience, willingness and energy when helping me out for absolutely free. Furthermore, I want to thank all 124 participants in the online survey for their willingness to put 15 minutes of their times for the mere reason to help raise awareness on topics around their native language and by doing that also helping an aspiring linguist understand his own native language a bit better. I want to thank my friends Petar, Ivaylo, Aleksandra and Venci for sharing the survey further throughout their social channels and helping me reach the target answers numbers faster. I am humbled to have so many friends that motivated me to progress and provided their feedback and judgments when I needed it most. Thanks is due to Bozhidar, who was willing to discuss Bulgarian grammar with me whenever I asked him, even at 2 am. in the morning. I am also indebted to Jesper, who eagerly helped with his proof writing and formatting wizardry in Word. Finally, I would like to thank my family for the emotional support throughout the writing, believing in me and pushing me to pursue a degree in something that I am truly passionate about. IV Contents 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 1 1.1 Research Topic ............................................................................................................ 1 1.2 Modality ...................................................................................................................... 2 1.2.1 Modal Force ......................................................................................................... 3 1.2.2 Modal Flavour ...................................................................................................... 4 1.3 The role of da ................................................................................................................... 4 2. Background of Bulgarian Tense and Aspect system ............................................................. 7 3. Study 1: Investigation of the lexical specification of the Bulgarian modal verbs .............. 11 3.1 Methods .......................................................................................................................... 11 3.1.1 Participants .............................................................................................................. 11 3.1.2 Procedure ................................................................................................................. 11 3.2 Results and discussion .................................................................................................... 13 3.3 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 20 4. Background of Bulgarian Evidentiality ............................................................................... 22 4.1 General overview of Bulgarian Evidentiality................................................................. 22 4.2 Evidentiality analysed as epistemic modality (Izvorski, 1997) ...................................... 26 4.3 Temporal interpretation of evidentials (Smirnova, 2013) .............................................. 28 4.4 Evidentiality as rooted in aspect (Arregui et al., 2017) .................................................. 29 5. Study 2: Study on the strength of listener belief in connection with modal verbs .............. 31 5.1 Degen et al. (2018) and the core idea of Study 2 ........................................................... 31 5.2 Methods .......................................................................................................................... 37 5.2.1 Participants .............................................................................................................. 37 5.2.2 Procedure ................................................................................................................. 37 5.2.3 Stimuli ..................................................................................................................... 39 5.2.4 Design ...................................................................................................................... 40 5.3 Results ............................................................................................................................ 42 V 5.4 Discussion ...................................................................................................................... 47 6. Formal analysis of the Bulgarian modals trjabva and moga ............................................... 49 6.1 Formal semantic analysis of trjabva and moga .............................................................. 49 6.2 Moga and trjabva in relation to tense and aspect ........................................................... 51 6.2.1 Restrictions to the distribution of the modal verbs .................................................. 56 6.2.2 The perfect tenses .................................................................................................... 56 6.2.3 Aspect opposition (perfective vs. imperfective) in the present tense ...................... 58 6.2.4 Past Imperfect and Past Aorist................................................................................. 59 6.2.5 Future tense and conditional form ........................................................................... 62 6.2.6 Summary of section 5.2 ........................................................................................... 64 6.3 Towards a formal analysis of temporal and evidential marking on trjabva and moga .. 65 7. Conclusion ..........................................................................................................................