The German modal verb <i>müssen</i> and the Slavonic languages— The reconstruction of a success story

Hansen, Björn

doi:10.1080/00806760008601152

Cited by 6 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…Impersonal modal auxiliaries are common across the Slavic languages, and were already present in the oldest documented Slavic language, Old Church Slavonic (Hansen, 2000).…”

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confidence: 99%

How to Propose an Action as Objectively Necessary: The Case of Polish Trzeba x (“One Needs to x ”)

Zinken

Ogiermann

2011

Research on Language and Social Interaction

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The present study demonstrates that language-specific grammatical resources can afford speakers language-specific ways of organising cooperative practical action. On the basis of video-recordings of Polish families in their homes, we describe action affordances of the Polish impersonal modal declarative construction trzeba x ('one needs to x') in the accomplishment of everyday domestic activities, such as cutting bread, bringing recalcitrant children back to the dinner table, or making phone calls. Trzeba x-turns in first position are regularly chosen by speakers to point to a possible action as an evident necessity for the furthering of some broader ongoing activity. Such turns in first position provide an environment in which recipients can enact shared responsibility by actively involving themselves in the relevant action. Treating the necessity as not restricted to any particular subject, aligning responsive actions are oriented to when the relevant action will be done, not whether it will be done. We show that such sequences are absent from English interactions by analysing (a) grammatically similar turn formats in English interaction ("we need to x", "the x needs to y"), and (b) similar interactive environments in English interactions. We discuss the potential of this research to point to a new avenue for researchers interested in the relationship between language diversity and diversity in human action and cognition. Acknowledgments:We are grateful to two anonymous reviewers for their detailed and helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper. We also want to thank Alan Costall, Alessandra Fasulo, Giovanni Rossi, Matylda Weidner, and Katarzyna Zinken for their feedback on earlier versions of the paper.

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“…Impersonal modal auxiliaries are common across the Slavic languages, and were already present in the oldest documented Slavic language, Old Church Slavonic (Hansen, 2000).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

How to Propose an Action as Objectively Necessary: The Case of Polish Trzeba x (“One Needs to x ”)

Zinken

Ogiermann

2011

Research on Language and Social Interaction

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The Germanic Languages and Areal Linguistics

Auwera¹,

Olmen²

2017

The Cambridge Handbook of Areal Linguistics

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Modality across semantic spaces

Gvozdanović

2024

Current Issues in Linguistic Theory

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This paper investigates the principles of modal development across modal domains, and the capacity of modal maps to account for these developments. The starting point is a relative newcomer in Slavic, the modal ‘have to’ + infinitive construction, which came to partially replace the older dative plus infinitive and ‘so as to’ constructions during the Middle Ages and developed across the full modal spectrum in its kernel area of West Slavic. What were the sources and the principles of this development? The paper answers these questions and draws some general conclusions about modal domains and the role of language hierarchies. The first section gives a contemporary survey, the second discusses the historical development, and the third section discusses theoretical implications.

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The German modal verb müssen and the Slavonic languages— The reconstruction of a success story

Cited by 6 publications

References 4 publications

How to Propose an Action as Objectively Necessary: The Case of Polish Trzeba x (“One Needs to x ”)

How to Propose an Action as Objectively Necessary: The Case of Polish Trzeba x (“One Needs to x ”)

The Germanic Languages and Areal Linguistics

Modality across semantic spaces

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