Grammaticalization and universalization of the semantic category of modality in modern Russian on the basis of diachronic-synchronic description of FSF modality

Abstract

The article deals with the issue of the semantic category of modality, represented as a functional-semantic field which structure and content are formed by three particular meanings: ‘desirability’, ‘opportunities’ and ‘obligation’. The universal nature of modality gives us the opportunity to trace the process of formation of this category in the grammatical system in the diachronic aspect. The authors overview and analyze the theoretical works of home and foreign linguists who consider the category of modality in various aspects: formal, functional-grammatical and comparative. The practical purpose of the article is a comparative analysis of the core and the periphery of private microfields in the Old Russian and modern Russian languages, presented in the National Corpus of Russian language with the use of a number of general scientific and linguistic methods and techniques, in particular, descriptive and comparative. The structure of the functional-semantic field is monocentric: the core of the field is formed by verbs and modal words, and there are syntactic constructions and prosodic elements on the periphery as well. The analysis of the functional-semantic field of modality showed that changes in the quantitative composition of the field of modality in the Old Russian compared to the Modern Russian may be associated with the peculiarities of the formation of the language picture of the world / linguistic consciousness of the Russian. Thus, the functional-semantic field 'desirability' in the Old Russian is represented by 10 words, while in the modern Russian there is an increase in the field ‘opportunities’ (from 3 to 6) and in the functional-semantic field of  ‘obligation’(from 3 to 6). The authors come to conclusion that the noted changes in the quantitative and qualitative parameters of the composition of microfields of the modality functional-semantic field in Russian language are the results of the grammaticalization and universalization processes.