Модалността преизказност и начини за предаването £ в съвременния френски език в съпоставка с българския

The sender of the message in Bulgarian (either in the spoken or in the written media) enjoys the opportunity to encode morphologically his objective or subjective attitude towards the contents of the message by alternatively using two morphologically marked verb forms within the framework of one and same grammatical tense. A three-way correlation is defined among the past tense forms based on their identical referential value. The correlation is characterized by the following componential features: objectivity + eye-witness perception by the speaker (седеше ‘He was sitting’); objectivity + second-hand information, supplied to the speaker (седял е ‘I was informed he had been sitting’); subjectivity + lack of information by the speaker (седял ‘He may have been sitting’). Citational modality varies from a minimum to a maximum degree of subjectivity, i. e. from the purely narrative function to the emphatic uses of the verb forms. When the speaker suddenly switches from the ‘lack of information’ state to the ‘eye-witness perception’ state he reacts emotionally to the objective entity he is witnessing (че той седял / бил седял! ‘He might have been sitting’, ‘Sitting he was, indeed!’). This general semantic outline is used as a starting point for the contrast of linguistic means used to render the various semantic components of the Bulgarian citational modality forms in French.