The Opposition of Certainty/Uncertainty in the Semantic Structure of the Disjunctive Sentences
The article describes one of the main oppositions in the semantic structure of disjunctive sentences - the opposition of certainty-uncertainty. The concept of certainty is applied to these structures on an assumptive base, since an important component of the semantics of the disjunctive structures, in addition to the alternative, is of the hypothetical nature in terms of their verbal character. The results of the research demonstrate that the degree of assumption in the alternatives may be different. In this regard, to distinguish between certainty and uncertainty of the speaker in the correctness of the potential options used to refer to the situation, we distinguish the semes “certainty” or “uncertainty”in the semantics of the structures. If the author of the statement knows exactly that one of the situations he mentioned takes place for sure, an alternative and defining meaning is foregrounded. If he doubts about the adequacy of the represented alternatives to the denotative situation and offers, as a rule, more than two options, then we can talk about the alternative and assumptive meaning of the structure. The correlation of partial disjunctive meanings is partly based on typical vocabulary with the meaning of certainty or uncertainty. Alternative and defining and alternative and assumptive meanings are semantic varieties of the general categorical meaning of the alternative: they completely correspond to it. In the structures with these meanings the events, equally probable in terms of the correspondence to the denotator, are thought to be incompatible in the general plane of implementation.