Anna
Daugavet
St
Petersburg State University
A corpus-based study of the Latvian
debitive vs vajadzēt
A
corpus-based study of the two main verbal expressions of necessity in Latvian
shows that the much more frequent debitive is commonly used in the present
tense without negation while the less frequent vajadzēt is usually found in the subjunctive. An analysis of
randomly selected examples of the present, past and future tense and the
subjunctive demonstrates an almost identical distribution of deontic and
dynamic uses of both modals with respects to grammatical forms without
negation. With negation, there is a striking difference between vajadzēt, expressing prohibitions
and criticism of past actions, and the debitive, conveying lack of necessity.
The article also provides a discussion on how to distinguish between various
types of modal meanings in authentic examples from a corpus.
Keywords: modality,
modal verbs, dynamic and deontic necessity, debitive, Latvian