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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.
Epistemic usages of modals tend to develop from deontic usages. [4] For example, the inferred certainty sense of English must developed after the strong obligation sense; the probabilistic sense of should developed after the weak obligation sense; and the possibility senses of may and can developed later than the permission or ability sense ...
[Used to + infinitive] expresses the lexical verb’s habitual aspect in the past tense, and is in the indicative mood and active voice. In informal spoken English questions or negative statements, it is treated like neither a modal nor an auxiliary verb, but as a past tense of an ordinary verb. (Though informal, especially when the "d" is ...
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 ...
The most common past tense construction in German is the haben ("to have") plus past participle (or for intransitive verbs of motion, the sein ("to be") plus past participle) form, which is a pure past construction rather than conveying perfect aspect. The past progressive is conveyed by the simple past form.
The modal verbs shall and will have been used in the past, and continue to be used, in a variety of meanings. [8] Although when used purely as future markers they are largely interchangeable (as will be discussed in the following sections), each of the two verbs also has certain specific uses in which it cannot be replaced by the other without ...
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.
If the verb in question does not use the progressive aspect, then the plain past perfect is used instead (see examples in the previous section). The past perfect progressive may also have additional specific uses similar to those of the plain past perfect; see § Conditional sentences, § Dependent clauses, § Expressions of wish, and ...