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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]
The modal base here is the knowledge of the speaker, the modal force is necessity. By contrast, (5) could be paraphrased as 'Given his abilities, the strength of his teeth, etc., it is possible for John to open a beer bottle with his teeth'. Here, the modal base is defined by a subset of John's abilities, the modal force is possibility.
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 ]
Modal words are words in a language that express modality, i.e., possibility, necessity, or contingency. [1] One kind of modal word is the modal verb ( should , can , might , and ought , as well as oblige , need , and require ).
In linguistics, grammatical mood is a grammatical feature of verbs, used for signaling modality. [1] [2]: 181 [3] That is, it is the use of verbal inflections that allow speakers to express their attitude toward what they are saying (for example, a statement of fact, of desire, of command, etc.).
Germanic languages tend to have two morphologically distinct simple forms, for past and non-past, as well as a compound construction for the past or for the perfect, and they use modal auxiliary verbs. The simple forms, the first part of the non-modal compound form, and possibly the modal auxiliaries, are usually conjugated for person and/or ...
Within English, the modal verb will is also related to the noun will and the regular lexical verb will (as in "She willed him on"). Early Germanic did not inherit any Proto-Indo-European forms to express the future tense , and so the Germanic languages have innovated by using auxiliary verbs to express the future (this is evidenced in Gothic ...