Necessity constructions in Hill Mari

The paper explores grammatical constructions expressing necessity in Hill Mari in oral texts from two time periods: the 1890s–1910s and the 2010s. The study shows that Hill Mari necessity constructions come in two types: (largely) impersonal and personal. The constructions in the 1890s–1910s corpus are (largely) impersonal, i.e., they typically have a generic animate subject, which is unexpressed and is never indexed on the predicate. In the rare cases when the subject is overt, it bears non-canonical marking (usually dative). The present-day language features, in addition to (largely) impersonal constructions, one personal necessity construction based on the šašlə̑k participle. It has an overt nominative subject, which is typically specific and has no animacy restrictions. Even if omitted, the subject is indexed on the predicate and thus can be recovered. The paper discusses the emergence and diachronic evolution of the latter personal necessity construction and identifies several other grammaticalization paths in the domain of necessity in Hill Mari.