Existential modals and negation in Russian: Evidence for universal functional hierarchy

In this paper I discuss the interaction of sentential negation with the Russian modal verb 'moč' ‘can, may’ on root vs epistemic reading. More specifically, I observe that negative concord items and the genitive of negation are not licensed when negated 'moč' has an epistemic interpretation. I also discuss other (mostly morphological) differences dependent on the interpretation of 'moč' and argue that they all are in line with the assumption that 'moč' may occupy different positions in the clausal spine. While root 'moč' is either a lexical verb or low Modabil/perm head, epistemic 'moč' resides in the high Modepist head.