The syntax of the Balkan Slavic Future tenses

Abstract

The paper discusses the structure of the Balkan Slavic Future tenses, with a particular reference to the Future tenses with modal clitics and finite verbs. It is shown that all the Balkan Slavic Future tenses have developed from restructuring configurations in which subjunctive constructions appear in complement positions of forms of the Old Slavic verb xotěti ‘will/want’. The development has gone through three stages, though not all Balkan Slavic languages have gone through all of them. In the first stage, represented in contemporary Serbo-Croatian, we have finite modal clitics plus infinitives or subjunctive constructions. In the second stage, which is to some extent represented in the South-Eastern Serbian dialects, non-finite modal clitics are followed by subjunctive constructions. In the third stage, represented in Macedonian and Bulgarian, non-finite modal clitics are followed by finite verbs. In contemporary Serbo-Croatian, the Future tense is constructed by finite modal clitics plus infinitives or subjunctive constructions. The Serbo-Croatian Future tense with subjunctive constructions is a mono-clausal raising configuration with a finite auxiliary and a finite lexical verb. Like the Macedonian and Bulgarian Future tenses, it has evolved from a restructuring configuration with two finite lexical verbs, though the evolution of the Macedonian and Bulgarian Future tenses has passed through three stages. In the first stage, the Macedonian and Bulgarian Future tenses had a structure such as the one in the Serbo-Croatian Future tense; in the second stage, they had another intermediate structure—the one witnessed in the contemporary South-Eastern Serbian dialects, in which a non-finite modal clitic is followed by a subjunctive construction; in the third stage, the non-finite modal clitics came to be followed by finite verbs. The change from finite to non-finite modal clitics relates to the loss of the subjunctive mood complementizer: When the ϕ-features of the modal clitics disappeared and T/AgrSP reappeared to the left of the lexical verb, the subjunctive mood complementizer became superfluous.