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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.
A modal verb is a type of verb that contextually indicates a modality such as a likelihood, ability, permission, request, capacity, suggestion, order, obligation, necessity, possibility or advice. Modal verbs generally accompany the base (infinitive) form of another verb having semantic content. [1]
English auxiliary verbs are a small set of English verbs, which include the English modal auxiliary verbs and a few others. [1]: 19 [2]: 11–12 Although the auxiliary verbs of English are widely believed to lack inherent semantic meaning and instead to modify the meaning of the verbs they accompany, they are nowadays classed by linguists as auxiliary on the basis not of semantic but of ...
Modals can indicate the condition, probability, possibility, necessity, obligation and ability exposed by the speaker's or writer's attitude or expression. [21] The copula be, along with the modal verbs and the other auxiliaries, form a distinct class, sometimes called "special verbs" or simply "auxiliaries". [22]
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 , and catenative verbs . Primary Auxiliary Verbs
The result of the evaluation is called the modal force. [2]: 649 For example, the utterance in (4) expresses that, according to what the speaker has observed, it is necessary to conclude that John has a rather high income: (4) John must be earning a lot of money. The modal base here is the knowledge of the speaker, the modal force is necessity.
There are certain sentence patterns in English in which subject–verb inversion takes place where the verb is not restricted to an auxiliary verb. Here the subject may invert with certain main verbs, e.g. After the pleasure comes the pain, or with a chain of verbs, e.g. In the box will be a bottle.
A modal verb can serve as the finite verb introducing a verb catena, as in he might have been injured then. These generally express some form of modality (possibility, obligation, etc.), although will and would (and sometimes shall and should ) can serve—among their other uses—to express future time reference and conditional mood, as ...