Relativism and Universalism in Linguistics - Fachbereich 10 ...

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(3) mog uspet’, ‘could manage’, mog ugovorit’ ‘could persuade’ etc.
1.2. Verbs of state are also admissible in the context of epistemic moch’. In this context the
aspect of the verb is inevitably imperfective:
(4) On mog naxodit’sya v bedstvennom polozhenii ‘he could be in a disastrous situation’; on
mog ot etogo stradat’ ‘he could suffer because of that’.
Now, in the context of epistemic moch’ negation changes the modal meaning of the modal
verb: in (1) the speaker was in the state of lack of knowledge – (s)he accepted both
possibilities; while (1′) excludes one of the possibilities and (s)he is, thus, in the state of
knowledge. But the modality remains epistemic: this knowledge is arrived at by inference:
(1′) On ne mozhet oshibit’sja, obmanut’, opozdat’, najabednichat’, donesti, sovrat’,
uklonit’sja, promaxnut’sja, etc.
Thus, in case of moch’, negation has no direct influence upon the aspect of the verb in the
infinitive.
2. Now with nado the situation is entirely different: nado, in its primary meaning, occurs
exclusively with verbs denoting actions (and activities) and negation drastically influences the
choice of aspect in its dependent infinitive.
Namely, in non-negated contexts both aspects are possible (cf. Rassudova 1968):
(5) a. nado varit’kartoshku[Ipf] ‘it is necessary to boil[Ipf] potatoes’;
b. nado svarit’[Pf] kartoshku ‘it is necessary to boil[Pf] potatoes’
(6) a. nado chinit’[Ipf] kryshu ‘it is necessary to repair[Ipf] the roof’;
b. nado pochinit’[Pf] kryshu ‘it is necessary to repair[Ipf] the roof’.
The difference in meaning between a and b examples in (5), (6) is thoroughly described in
Paducheva 1996: 53-65; in fact, in (5a), for instance, the activity is in the center of attention,
while in (5b) the focus is transferred to the resulting state.
In the context of negated nado the only possibility is imperfective:
(5′) a. ne nado varit’[Ipf] kartoshku ‘it is not necessary to boil[Ipf] potatoes’;
b. *ne nado svarit’[Pf] kartoshku ‘it is not necessary to boil[Pf] potatoes’
This co-occurrence restriction can be regarded as semantically motivated. In fact, in order to
say that the action as a whole makes no sense it is sufficient to say that this is true about the
very beginning of the activity.
Thus, we arrive at the conclusion that aspect is independent of negation + modality
combination in the case of epistemic modality, while negation+deontic modality places a
severe restraint on aspectual choice. It would be interesting to find out whether there are
typological parallels to this effect in other languages.
References
Auwera, Plungian 1998 – Auwera J. van der, Plungian V.A. Modality’s semantic map. In:
Fr.Plank (ed.) Linguistic typology. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1998.
Paducheva 1996 – Paducheva E.V. Semanticheskie issledovanija. Semantika vremeni I vida.
Semantika narrativa. Moscow: Jazyki russkoj kul’tury, 1996.
Rassudova 1968 – Rassudova O.P. Upotreblenie vidov glagola v russkom jazyke. M.: MGU,
1968.