The Modality of Complete Certainty in Bunin's Novel The Life of Arseniev: Types and Methods of Its Expression

Abstract

The article is devoted to the description of sub-modes of complete certainty about evaluation of the informative component, revealed in the content structure of utterances. The article also covers the ways of their objectification in Bunin's novel The Life of Arsenyev. Modality of complete certainty is understood as a kind of non-predicative modality which forms ‘the external modal frame’. It is accepted that markers of complete certainty are modal parentheses, whose functioning conditions and lexical meaning allowed the author to single out certain sub-modes, taking into account the degree of evaluation certainty: ‘absolute certainty’, ‘expected certainty’, ‘certainty, determined by the thinking process of the modal subject’, ‘certainty, formed by the knowledge of society’. The markers of absolute certainty are parentheses of the following synonymic set: surely, in fact, really, certainly, undoubtedly, it is true, obviously and predominantly certainly, as well as the lexical unit I repeat. The sub-mode of ‘expected certainty’ is objectified by the introductory words it is known, clearly, consequently. The sub-mode of ‘certainty based on an individual’s thinking process’ is represented by the lexemes think, remember and sentences in the position of parenthesis I think, I suppose. The level of evaluation certainty depends on whether or not the modal subject takes into account the features characterizing the subject of predication. Apart from the function of evaluation objectifier of complete certainty in the novel, the text-building function of the parentheses really, in fact and undoubtedly has also been emphasized.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n5s4p55