PECULIARITIES OF TRANSFORMATION OF MODAL SEMANTICS OF THE VERB MÜSSEN IN GERMAN
DOI: 10.23951/1609-624X-2017-6-56-60
The research of means verbalizing the modal semantics, and in particular of modal verbs remains urgent in modern linguistics as they express modal values of the possibility and need which are ones of the most important in the cognitive and communicative relation. In its turn, cognitive and communicative needs of society remain variable and that causes semantic function extension of the language means, which are constantly to respond to the needs of society noted above. In this regard the semantics studying of the verb müssen is especially significant. The purpose of the research presented in this article is to reveal specifics and to define the mechanisms of the past and current semantic changes of the verb müssen that have ensured its development as a modal verb according to cognitive and communicative needs of the German society. To that effect the original Old, Middle, Early New and New High German texts were studied. In the selected examples from the given texts by means of the method of semantic interpretation and using the method of contextual analysis the meanings of preterite-present verb müssen functioning as modal verb in the correspondent periods of the development of German language were determined. Due to the consistent usage of the method of comparison and collation in the process of analysis of the meanings their similarities and differences were determined. For more detailed reflection on the transformation development tendency in the semantics of the verb müssen appearing in modal function the methods of mathematical statistics were also used. As a result of the conducted research semantic peculiarities of the verb müssen functioning in various periods of German were specified and the mechanism of the past and current changes is defined. The basic semantic transformation mechanism of the verb müssen into both modal objective and, from Early New High German, into modal subjective semantic is context-induced reinterpretation.
Keywords: müssen, subjective modality, objective modality, necessity, probability, context-induced reinterpretation
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Issue: 6, 2017
Series of issue: Issue 6
Rubric: GERMANIC AND ROMANCE LANGUAGES
Pages: 56 — 60
Downloads: 875