Case alternation and polarity sensitivity with necessity modals in Poshkart Chuvash

Mikhail Knyazev
Institute for Linguistic Studies RAS / National Research University Higher School of Economics — St. Petersburg

Abstract. The paper discusses two modal necessity markers, lexical and morpho­logical, in the Poshkart dialect of Chuvash (Turkic) and their interactions between the type of modality (root/deontic vs. epistemic) and the type of subject marking (genitive vs. nominative). While previous work has established that genitive subjects, as opposed to nominative ones, are restricted to root necessity, it is here proposed that the lexical modal shows a further restriction, namely it can occur with a genitive subject only in negative/in­terrogative environments. The paper also offers a unified formal account of the two abovementioned necessity markers and their observed restrictions within a realizational morphological framework (DM).

Keywords: deontic necessity, epistemic necessity, oblique subjects, negation, Turkic

For citation: Knyazev M. Case alternation and polarity sensitivity with necessity modals in Poshkart Chuvash. Typology of Morphosyntactic Parameters. 2021. Vol. 4, iss. 1. Pp. 100–117.