The Verbal Category of Conditionality in B ulgarian and its U krainian Correspondences (2024)

Abstract: Modern Bulgarian shares a conditional mood with the other Slavic languages, but it also has developed a future-in-the-past tense which is structurally analogous to many Western European languages’ category traditionally called a conditional mood in their grammars. The distinction between these two forms is sometimes elusive and can be difficult for native speakers of Slavic languages who are learning Bulgarian. In this paper we consider the uses of the Bulgarian conditional mood and future-in-the-past tense in a parallel corpus of Bulgarian and Ukrainian text, examining the corresponding wording in Ukrainian, where the conditional mood is supplemented by modal verbs, and discuss the breadth of choices open to translators when working in each direction.

## introduction modern bulgarian shares with the other slavic languages a conditional mood whose forms are composed of a specific auxiliary verb (originally one of the aorist series of the copula, inflecting for person and number in some languages and reduced to an invariable particle in others) and the aorist participle of the main verb (inflected for gender and number): бих казал(а) 'i (m./f.) would say', биха казали 'they would say', cf. ukrainian я сказав би / сказала б, вони б сказали. but it also has in its tense system, which is an atypically large one for a slavic language, a future in the past and a future perfect in the past, analogous to the future and the future perfect, except that they use an imperfect form of the future auxiliary instead of the present (reduced to a particle in the affirmative): future in the past щях да кажа 'i would say, was going to say', cf. future ще кажа 'i will say' < ща (да) кажа (originally 'i want to say'). by virtue of combining preterite and future grammar these tenses bear a structural similarity to verb forms of english and the romance languages which are sometimes included into the tense system @xcite but are more often termed a conditional mood, cf. french cond. je dirais 'i would say' < dir(e) 'to say' + (av)ais '(i) had', fut. je dirai 'i will say' < dir(e) + ai '(i) have'. the other slavic languages have simplified the tense system to various degrees. modern ukrainian counts four tenses @xcite . thus the conditional mood (including a past tense form which is to the regular conditional as the pluperfect is to the past: пішов би був 'would have gone (sg. m.)', сказала б була 'would have said (sg. f.)'; @xcite labels it variably as a conditional past tense of the indicative and a past tense of the conditional mood) and constructions with modal verbs, mostly in the past tense, are the chief grammatical ways of expressing conditionality. ## verbal conditionality in bulgarian the conditional mood and the future-in-the-past tense overlap semantically to a high extent: occasionally in translated texts the two forms appear, for no visible reason, side by side in conjoined clauses where the original has identical grammatical forms: ако не беше синът над шахматната дъска […], ужасът, който отдавна бе залегнал в душата ѝ, би се надигнал отново […] и щеше да изсуши безкръвното лице на фрау райхер. 'if it weren't for her son at the chessboard […], the terror that had long lain dormant in her soul would rise again […] and would dry up frau reicher's bloodless face.' || ru если бы не сын за шахматной доской […], ужас, давно прилегший в душе, поднялся бы опять […] и высушил бескровное личико фрау рейхер. (a. tolstoy, 'the hyperboloid of engineer garin') sometimes, however, such apparent inconsistency may be grounded in the conditional mood's tendency to express an inclination, to present the event as a possible rather than a necessary consequence of a (perhaps unexpressed) condition (андрейчин, 1942: 310): (3) защото без мене де щеше да си ти сега? какво би правил? 'for without me where would you be? what would you be doing?' || fr car, sans moi, où serais-tu ? que ferais-tu ? (g. flaubert, madame bovary) (4) а аз на твое място щях да я намразя; и не бих ѝ се подчинявала || en and if i were in your place i should dislike her; i should resist her. (c. brontë, jane eyre) (5) ако тоя негодник ликон се беше нахвърлил върху мен, щях да го разбера, дори бих му простил… 'if that vile lykon had attempted my life i could understand, even forgive him.' || pl gdyby ten podły lykon targnął się na moje życie, jeszcze rozumiałbym, nawet prze-baczył… (b. prus, pharaoh) in these examples one might sense a slight difference between the two verbs, in that being somewhere, dislike and understanding are less controllable and volitional than doing something, resistance and forgiveness, correlating with the use of the first verb in the future in the past and the second in the conditional mood. another difference which can also come up when the forms are coordinated is the future in the past referring to a time following what the conditional refers to: the temporal meaning of the future in the past is, in the well-known scheme of @xcite ), @xmath0, @xmath1: the time of the event e follows the time of reference r, which precedes the time of speech s (figure 1 ). reichenbach points out (p. 297f) that this configuration does not correspond to a tense in the traditional grammar of english, although in i did not expect that he would win the race what is classified as a form of the conditional mood functions as a tense in the indicative, as do the 'transcriptions' in i did not expect that he was going to win the race and the king lavished his favor on the man who was to kill him; he gives this tense the 'new name' first, second or third posterior past depending on whether e precedes, matches or follows s, these three belonging to the same fundamental form. @xcite ) offers the formula @xmath2, @xmath3, which implies that the bulgarian future in the past is reichenbach's first posterior past, although this is neither universal nor essential to its being a future (@xmath4. ## the conditional mood as the verb which appears most often in this tense is бъда 'be (perf.)', followed by съм 'be (imperf.)', имам 'have' and стана 'become; happen' ( a reservation may be made concerning the passive voice, whose building is one of the functions of these two verbs. although they are 'generally synonymous' there as well @xcite , there is a tendency for the passive with съм to describe the result of the event, which happens only once in the bulgarian and twice in the ukrainian sector, ( 26 ) ако имахте късмет, задачата ви щеше вече да е приключена и в тоя час навярно щяхте да се движите нейде между залцбург и виена […] 'if you were lucky, your mission would have been completed already and at this moment you would probably be travelling somewhere between salzburg and vienna' || коли б вам щастило, ваше завдання вже закінчилося б і в цей час ви вже їхали б десь між зальцбургом і віднем […] (b. raynov, you cannot tell the day by the morning) (27) за приказки със стареца повече подхождаше друго време, когато нямаше да е погълнат от риболовното си занимание […] 'another time was better suited for talking to the old man, when he would not have been engrossed in his fishing activity' || для балачок із катратим вибирай зручніший час, коли він не буде поглинутий оцим своїм ловецьким заняттям […] (o. honchar, the cathedral) (28) да не бе тя […,] сигурно душата му нямаше да е претъпкана с долни грехове. 'if it were not for her […], probably his soul would not be packed with vile sins.' || коли б не вона […], певне, його нутро не було б до краю забите усяким гріхоплутством. (m. stelmakh, the four fords) and for the passive with бъда to denote the event itself, which is much more common (14 and 15 examples, respectively, in the two sectors). (29) неочакваното излизане на двамата генерали от приема […] скоро щеше да бъде забравено, ако фред барнаби не беше казал на мисис джаксън […], че се наложило пашите веднага да заминат за фронта. 'the unexpected exit of the two generals from the reception […] would soon have been forgotten, if fred barnaby had not told mrs jackson […] that the pashas had to leave at once for the front.' || раптовий від'їзд двох генералів […] швидко б забули, якби фред барнабі не сказав місіс джексон […], що пашам наказано негайно виїхати на фронт. (s. dichev, the way to sofia) (30) паднеше ли тази най-близка до земята на османовци твърдина на хабсбургите, всичко щеше да бъде забравено: и позорът от неуспехите, и бездарността на сераскера -великия везир […] 'if this fortress of the habsburgs, the closest one to the ottomans' land, were to fall, all would be forgotten: the shame of the failures, the ineptitude of the serasker-the grand vizier' || узяти цю твердиню габсбургів, найближчу до земель османів, -і забудеться ганьба невдач, нездарність сераскера -великого візира […]. (p. zahrebelnyi, roksolana) the verb мога 'can, may', which is the most frequent one in the conditional, with 756 occurrences ( yulia is younger than pesho, and less smart (@xmath5; in the original the speaker considers an imaginary situation in which she is as old as pesho is (figure 3 ), and in the translation the -: figure 3 : yulia and pesho in the bulgarian original prospective one in which she will be so old (figure 4 ); in other words, the real present pesho is outsmarted (@xmath6, and by the future yulia in the translation. thus the meaning for which bulgarian uses the future in the past is rendered into ukrainian without any reference to the past. the third most frequent choice for rendering the bulgarian future in the past into ukrainian is a past tense form of a modal verb plus the infinitive of the main verb @xcite . the modal verb in the ukrainian sector is overwhelmingly (47 of 53 times) мати 'have to, need to', a verb that in the bulgarian sector is also the most common one, but accounts for under half of the examples (57 of 138), with хотіти 'want' a significant second, followed by збиратися 'intend', могти 'can, may' and several others: ## conclusions there are some interesting asymmetries in the translation of tenses and moods. the ukrainian present tense serves for rendering the bulgarian conditional mood with greater frequency than the bulgarian conditional mood is used for rendering ukrainian present tense forms. mostly this concerns би могло 'it could be', to a lesser extent би трябвало 'it should be' and some others, which abound in original bulgarian texts but lose their stylistic palliation in the hands of ukrainian translators. in the opposite direction the palliation neither exists in the original nor appears in the translation. the ukrainian conditional mood is used for rendering the bulgarian future in the past with lesser proceedings of clib 2024 frequency than the bulgarian future in the past is used for rendering the ukrainian conditional mood. here it is harder to name the reasons; the stylistics of the texts in the corpus may be among them, but the issue deserves further study. and certainly so do the ukrainian conditional mood and its correspondences in bulgarian in their own right.