Realization of the text category of modality in Germanic languages (as exemplified in German and English stories)

Moscow Region State University, 10A, Radio str., 105005, Moscow, Russia

^* Corresponding author: taniasemina@gmail.com

Abstract

In this article the authors studied how the TEXT CATEGORY OF MODALITY can be expressed by grammatical and lexical language features possessed by Germanic branch of Indo-European language family. As a subject of study we chose two primary languages in this group - English and German - functioning in short stories. Through the method of segmental text analysis as well as statistical method conducted on English and German short stories it has been discovered that despite some frequency characteristics’ differences in the text category of modality in English and German, both languages, however, have estimately the same number of features for the formation of modal architectonics in the literary text which is explained by the fact that both languages used for the study belong to the same language group. This article confirms the authors’ theory about common and invariant characteristics of the text modality expressed in the stories being formed under the influence of the text’s genre types - specifically having two narrative systems: author’s plan and characters’ plan. Specific aspects of the modality pictures discovered during this study are shown in the summary tables.