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This is a list of English auxiliary verbs, i.e. helping verbs, which include Modal verbs and Semi-modal verbs. See also auxiliary verbs, light verbs, ...
With vowel shortening; replaced OE strong class 7 verb swápan, with the same meaning, but the form is not a regular development from it swell – swelled/swole – swollen/swelled: Strong, class 3: With regularized forms swim – swam/*swum – swum outswim – outswam/*outswum – outswum: Strong, class 3: swing – swang/swung – swung
The English modal auxiliary verbs are a subset of the English auxiliary verbs used mostly to express modality, properties such as possibility and obligation. [a] They can most easily be distinguished from other verbs by their defectiveness (they do not have participles or plain forms [b]) and by their lack of the ending ‑(e)s for the third-person singular.
One kind of modal word is the modal verb (should, can, might, and ought, as well as oblige, need, and require). Other types of modal words in English include modal adjectives (likely, probable, necessary), modal adverbs (probably, perhaps, certainly), modal prepositions (despite, unless, if), and modal nouns (possibility, probability, certainty).
Some other irregular verbs derive from Germanic weak verbs, forming past tenses and participles with a -d or -t ending (or from originally strong verbs that have switched to the weak pattern). The weak conjugation is also the origin of the regular verbs ending in -ed ; however various historical sound changes (and sometimes spelling changes ...
Intensives generally function as adverbs before the word or phrase that they modify. For example, bloody well, as in "I will bloody well do it," is a commonly used intensive adverb in Great Britain. [1] Intensives also can function as postpositive adjectives. An example in American English today is "the heck", e.g. "What the heck is going on here?"
When the prefix "re-" is added to a monosyllabic word, the word gains currency both as a noun and as a verb. Most of the pairs listed below are closely related: for example, "absent" as a noun meaning "missing", and as a verb meaning "to make oneself missing". There are also many cases in which homographs are of an entirely separate origin, or ...
English word order has moved from the Germanic verb-second (V2) word order to being almost exclusively subject–verb–object (SVO). The combination of SVO order and use of auxiliary verbs often creates clusters of two or more verbs at the center of the sentence, such as he had hoped to try to open it. In most sentences, English marks ...