When Modality and Tense Meet. The Future Marker budet ‘will’ in Impersonal Constructions with the Modal Adverb možno ‘be possible’

Abstract

This paper examines Russian impersonal constructions with the modal word možno ‘can, be possible’ with and without the future copula budet ‘will be,’ i.e., možno + budet + inf and možno + inf. My contribution can be summarized as follows. First, corpus-based evidence reveals that možno + inf constructions are vastly more frequent than constructions with copula. Second, the meaning of constructions without the future copula is more flexible: while the possibility is typically located in the present, the situation denoted by the infinitive may be located in the present or the future. Third, I show that the možno + inf construction is more ambiguous and can denote present, gnomic or future situations. Fourth, I identify a number of contextual factors that unambiguously locate the situation in the future. I demonstrate that such factors are more frequently used with the future copula, and thus motivate the choice between the two constructions. Finally, I illustrate the interpretations in a straightforward manner by means of schemas of the type used in cognitive linguistics.