Compound future tense in “prosta mova” texts of the XVI century

The article describes various modal meanings expressed by one grammatical construction of compound future tense, using three sixteenth-century manuscripts written in the “prosta mova”, the literary language of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The special focus is placed on Compound Future I, namely the “маю + infi nitive” construction and its meanings in the “prosta mova” clerical and regulatory manuscripts. In all the studied texts this construction has modal semantics with diff erent meanings depending on a particular text - e. g., obligation, possibility/impossibility, inevitability or vow. In the clerical manuscripts, the constructions using the linking verb in the past tense (мель + infi nitive) express both the modal meaning and the future-in-the-past meaning. Two most common meanings for the studied grammatical construction are prediction (inevitability) in the clerical texts and obligation in the regulatory text. This kind of research is important for studying the Slavic languages interference, which obviously had a signifi cant impact on the “polysemy” of the studied construction in the XVI century.