Evaluation as a Source of Deontic Modality

Abstract

The present article discusses various types of the interaction of deontic modality and evaluation, based on the semantic shift “good → necessary”. Our source data are constructions with German modal verbs and their Russian translation models containing an evaluative component. Evaluative lexical units appear in translation mainly in place of the German verb sollen, which expresses a deontic modality based on the idea of a “right” course of events. In the Russian translation, the emphasis shifts to ‘good’, and the meaning ‘should’ is present in the form of an implicature, more or less conventionalized; that is why modal words can be translated by evaluative ones. We also consider the mechanisms of semantic derivation that ensure the appearance of units with evaluative semantics in translation in place of other modal verbs.