On means of expressing author’s modality in “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign”

The article considers specificity of implementing one of the major structure- and-substance constituent of the semantic category of modality - the author ’s modality in the Old Russian epic “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign”. In the focus of attention there is a functional and semantic analysis of actual modality modifiers that might be represented with various language unit meanings of situational modality (possibility, necessity, desirability in their fragmental variations containing) and might get an additional function in the entire context, that is communicating subjective evaluation with the aim to express values and author ’s intentions. In “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” such function is performed by a variety of evaluative means, including old Russian token - modal verb мочи, adverb лѣпо, modal predicate нелзѣ, grammatical modality modifiers like rhetorical questions, sentences with an independent infinitive; their modal meanings are supported with high expressiveness and emotionality. Special attention is given in the article to the predicative adverb лѣпо, that is marked in known text translations into modern Russian with a variety of equivalents and are justified in Historical dictionaries of the Russian Language. The author concludes that the impersonal verb pristalo is used as an equivalent to this adverb, thus adequately revealing the author’s patriotic line in “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign”. The research has proved that the modality modifiers function as text-forming constituents and point to the accurate interpretation of the author’s modality in this epic work.