Don Cossack army charters of the mid 18th century via the category of modality

The article deals with the language means of modality in the texts of military charters of the mid 18th cent. from the “Mikhailovsky stanitza hetman” archive (State Achieve of Volgograd Region). Military charters used to be major documents of legislation within Don Cossack Host, as being at that time an administrative unit in the territory of Russian Empire. The results of the contextual analysis verify the following facts: the charter texts are mainly characterized by an imperative tone of regulation that is caused by coordination between dominant meanings of a propositional (situational) modality of necessity and pragmatic modality of volition, that are thought to be interrelated in utterances. The modal meaning of necessity is marked by the verbal construction with an independent infinitive or the combinations of modal verbs ( imet’ / possess; nadlezhat’ / be to ), modal predicatives with a dependent infinitive ( dolzhen, nadobno, etc. / must ( have to )). Modality of volition is presented with a set of lexical units that possess the meanings of ordering, permission, offers, verbal forms that are used as performatives, or point to the status of a subject, etc. The texts under study represent some other modal meanings: possibility (with the words moch’ / be able to; mozhno / could / may combined with an infinitive), in subordinate clauses with a particle li ( if / wether, etc. ) in an interrogative clauses. In complex sentences with subordination combinations of various modal meanings are observed.