Gewissheitsmodalität in der Plautus-Komödie Aulularia im Vergleich mit der tschechischen und deutschen Übersetzung

From the first 459 verses (the half of the work) of the Plautus comedy Aulularia there were excerpted 59 cases of the epistemic (sureness) modality: 16 of the Infinitive construction (mostly with the accusative), 14 of the potential conjunctive, 10 of the complex sentence with the conjunctive or indicative subordinate clause, 8 of the sentence or verbal parenthesis, 6 of the deliberative question, 5 of the modal particle. As for complex sentence constructions (clause-, infinitive-, action Substantive constructions), the infinitive constructions prevailed over the clause constructions (16:10). As for Single sentence constructions, the most frequent was the potential conjunctive (14), further the sentence and verbal parentheses (8), modal particles (5). The rate of 26:27 found for the relation between the complex sentence- and Single sentence constructions indicated that even in the archaic colloquial Latin the complex sentence way of expressing the epistemic modality was quite common and was evidence of the complex sentence character of Latin. A significant difference was found between the Latin and Czech translations as to the relation of the signalling the epistemic modality by the complex sentences to the one signalling it by the Single sentences ways (1:1 against 1:2). The Single sentence way clearly prevailed in the Czech translation, in the German translation as well, but not so much (18:27 to 11:22). The German seemed to be more "complex sentencewise". The German translation "kept more to the original", which followed from the relation of the data on the missing signalling the epistemic modality between German and Czech of 6:14.