Some Aspects of Expressing Necessity or Obligation in Slovenian and Russian

Abstract

This article addresses some aspects of modality in Slovenian and Russian. The frst part analyses the basic lexical means through which Slovenian and Russian express two modal meanings: necessity and possibility (or ability). The second part describes the syntactic and semantic characteristics of the Slovenian predicative construction treba je, which stands out among other Slovenian means of expressing necessity. Its features are compared to those of the corresponding Russian construction.