THE MODAL CAPACITY OF THE INDICATIVE IN THE CONTEMPORARY RUSSIAN LITERARY LANGUAGE

This investigation attempts to illustrate the modal capacity of the indicative in the contemporary Russian literary language. Any discussion of the indicative must be prefaced by a definition of mood and modality. Mood as a morphological property of the finite verb is defined as the attitude of the speaker toward the expressed thought, whereas modality is defined as a lexical-syntactical category which complements the category of mood.; An historical survey of Russian grammar traces the History of the treatment of the indicative mood from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. In the first grammar of the Russian language, Lomonosov treated the indicative as a monolithic category expressing the occurrence or the nonoccurrence of an action in time. By the end of the nineteenth century theorists considered the indicative an amodal category. The dichotomy between the indicative and the oblique moods is traced to Potebnja's distinction between real and ideal actions to which Marxists now refer as the subjective-idealist interpretation of mood.; In the twentieth century Saxmatov broke with tradition, when(' )^he demonstrated the modal capacity of the indicative through his psycho-semantic interpretation of mood in which he explored the different types of links in the finite verb. Jakobson reinforced the concept of the amodality of the indicative through his semiotic theory of binary opposition which contrasts the privative or unmarked features of the indicative with the marked features of the oblique moods. However, the paradoxical treatment of the indicative is best reflected in Vinogradov's works. Although he specifically defined the indicative as a neutral or zero category of modality, he insisted that every statement contains an expression of modality. To this end, he explored the modal capacity of the statement through modal words and particles as a specific category within the Russian lexicon.; Nikitevic, in turn, asserted the modal capacity of the indicativeby distinguishing between direct and oblique modality. However, hebegs the question when he insists on the necessity of consideringthe indicative a modal category per se. In light of this historical; debate, the twelve monthly issues of(' ) (, )(1969) were; investigated in an attempt to prove the modal capacity of the indicative as compared to the formal definition of mood.; The author rejects the frequent Soviet claim, based on the copy theory of knowledge, that indicative statements reflect objective reality. The category of reliability is explored as a linguistic concept which encompasses both real and eventual actions. It provides a means of investigating the value judgments of the speaker in declaratory, interrogative, and exclamatory statements.; The indicative is characterized by its reliability, which is defined as the speaker's perception of an action as real. The modal capacity of the indicative can be illustrated lexically by means of modal words, particles, and parenthetical expressions or grammatically through the use of tense, aspect, and syntax.; A study of the indicative also demonstrates that modality is a contextual phenomenon which reflects the correlation between semantics and syntax. Modality is the mainspring of language through which one can examine the attitude of the speaker toward the expressed thought. Further, the indicative mood is a complex category which encompasses a range of real and eventual actions.; Mood is described as a double abstraction consisting of two concepts or entities: the link in the finite verb and the attitude of the speaker toward that link. Thus, the proof of the indicative as a genuine mood can be found in the formal definition of mood.; Finally, this investigation of the indicative demonstrates that the speaker is the agent of modality who controls the mode of narration and the stylistic composition of the context.