TYPOLOGICAL DIFFERENCES IN THE EXPRESSION OF MODALITY IN FRENCH AND UKRAINIAN

Keywords: deonticity, impersonal constructions, grammaticalization, subjunctive, scientific-technical discourse, language corpus

Abstract

The aim of the study was to identify the structural and semantic regularities in the realization of modal meanings in two languages and to determine the universal and specific features of their grammatical organization. The research methodology combined theoretical-descriptive, corpus-empirical, and typological-comparative approaches. The material included corpus data and official texts of various genres ‒ scientific, technical, academic, and legal. The results showed that in French, modal meanings were mainly expressed through analytical verb constructions devoir, falloir, pouvoir and impersonal formulas il faut, il convient de, il est interdit de, conveying obligation, permission, and prohibition. In Ukrainian, their functional counterparts were мусити / повинен, треба / слід, можна, which exhibited greater lexico-syntactic variability, contextual flexibility, and the ability to express modal nuances through intonational and grammatical means. Comparative analysis revealed that the French system tends toward grammatical stability, a high level of analyticity, and formal standardization, whereas Ukrainian shows greater semantic mobility and contextual adaptability. In technical and scientific discourse, both languages favor depersonalized expression of deontic meanings, while in academic texts, epistemic formulas of assumption (on peut supposer que / «можна припустити, що») predominate, emphasizing argumentative restraint. A functional symmetry of core modal verbs, a shared tendency toward grammaticalization of auxiliary constructions in official genres, and pragmatic similarity in the realization of cognitive and normative meanings were identified. The practical significance of the study lies in its potential use for refining methods of contrastive linguistics, developing curricula in linguistics and translation, and compiling bilingual grammatical reference works. Furthermore, the collected material provides a foundation for creating corpus-based models of automatic modality recognition, with promising applications in machine translation, linguistic expertise, and educational analytics.

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Published
2025-12-30
How to Cite
Brytvin, D. V. (2025). TYPOLOGICAL DIFFERENCES IN THE EXPRESSION OF MODALITY IN FRENCH AND UKRAINIAN. New Philology, (100), 17-30. Retrieved from http://novafilolohiia.zp.ua/index.php/new-philology/article/view/1069
Section
Articles