Abstract
The article presents the study of Modal verb constructions with the modal verbs of “obligation” must, have to+ Inf., be to + Inf. functioning in the scientific and technical discourse texts. The material of the research are three technical text corpora, which belong to engineering fields scientifically and technically unrelated to each other – “Electrical Engineering (Energy Supply and Power Management)”, “Automotive Industry” and “Chemical Engineering” – and compiled on the basis of scientific journals of the United States and Great Britain. This allows to obtain the results that are supposedly of a universal nature and can be applied practically to any field of scientific discourse. The goal is to consider: firstly, which semantic groups of verbs (in different grammatical forms) are attached to a particular modal verb, i.e. the following interrelationship is defined: the semantics of a modal verb – semantics and form of a main verb (the second constituent of the modal construction); secondly, to what extent this interdependence affects the usage frequency of the various semantic groups of the main verbs that make up certain MVCs. The results of the research have demonstrated that in Modal verb constructions of this type functioning in the scientific technical discourse texts the predicative meaning of modal verbs is determinant for the semantic features of main verbs connecting to them (modal verbs). The main verb semantics in its turn influences on their (main verbs) grammatical and statistical characteristics. The modal verb must has the highest frequency of use in scientific texts. It gives imperative which underlines the author’s stability of position and faultlessness of the obtained and presented results. Have to + Inf. MVC is much less frequent and it is a result of the modal component semantics of this construction. Modal verb constructions where the modal verb is be to + Inf. are used by the authors of scientific articles quite rarely, which can be also explained by semantic peculiarities of the verb be to + Inf. In Modal verb constructions with the modal verbs of “obligation” must, have to+ Inf., be to + Inf. the passive voice is more preferable than active voice because in the scientific and technical discourse texts human activity does not manifest evidently since the authors should take second place and be present indirectly through their scientific achievements.
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