Category of certainty / uncertainty in the Yoruba language

The article deals with the status and ways of expressing the category of certainty / uncertainty in the Yoruba language. The authors conduct a comparative analysis of the manifestation of the category of certainty / uncertainty in different types of languages: in Yoruba, Russian, and several European analytical languages. The results of the analysis allow us to conclude that the category of certainty / uncertainty in the Yoruba language at the present stage of its development is undergoing a stage of conceptual and grammatical metamorphosis, which is characterized by the fluctuation of its usage when the means of its manifestation in the language vary, the preservation of the lexical meaning by language units with a noticeable tendency to the consolidation of formal indicators of certainty / uncertainty and the irregularity of their use as noun actualizers in speech.