modal auxiliary

modal auxiliary verb

A modal auxiliary verb, often simply called a modal verb or even just a modal, is used to change the meaning of other verbs (commonly known as main verbs) by expressing modality—that is, asserting (or denying) possibility, likelihood, ability, permission, obligation, or future intention.

Modal verbs are defined by their inability to conjugate for tense and the third person singular (i.e., they do not take an “-s” at the end when he, she, or it is the subject), and they cannot form infinitives, past participles, or present participles. All modal auxiliary verbs are followed by a main verb in its base form (the infinitive without to); they can never be followed by other modal verbs, lone auxiliary verbs, or nouns.

As with the primary auxiliary verbs, modal verbs can be used with not to create negative sentences, and they can all invert with the subject to create interrogative sentences.

modal auxiliary

An auxiliary verb characteristically used with other verbs to express mood, aspect, or tense. In English, the most common modal auxiliaries are can, could, may, might, must, ought, shall, should, will, and would. Also called modal.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

mod′al auxil′iary

any of a group of auxiliary verbs, in English including can, could, may, might, shall, should, will, would, and must, typically used with the base form of another verb to express distinctions of mood.

[1930–35]

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Noun

modal auxiliary - an auxiliary verb (such as `can' or `will') that is used to express modality

modal, modal auxiliary verb, modal verb

auxiliary verb - a verb that combines with another verb in a verb phrase to help form tense, mood, voice, or condition of the verb it combines with

Translations

módbeli segédige

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References in periodicals archive ?

For instance, Duffley (1994) distinguishes between auxiliary and non-auxiliary uses of PDE dare, and Taeymans (2004) operates with three different types: the modal auxiliary dare, the 'semi-modal' full verb dare to, and 'blend constructions' where an 'auxiliary' feature (e.g., bare infinitive) co-occurs with a 'full-verb' feature (e.g., 3SG -s); cf.

THE STATUS OF OLD ENGLISH DARE REVISITED

Contrary to single modals in which only one modal auxiliary can be added in a Standard English sentence, multiple modality is a series of two or three adjacent modal expressions in a vernacular English syntax.

a true modal auxiliary? Are we still in a MODAL-MODAL scheme or are we heading towards a more American-type scheme such as ADVERBMODAL?

Negated and Inverted Syntax of Modal Combinations in the Scottish Borders: Traditional Double Modals, Hybrid Double Modals and Exotic Triple Modals

A study was carried out by Nartey and Yankson (2014) to explore the semantic underpinnings of modal auxiliary verbs in the 2012 Manifesto of a popular Ghanaian political party, the New Patriotic Party (NPP).

Modality in Kenya's 2008 post-consultation discourse

Among the topics are the asymmetric style of communication in Mandarin Chinese talk-in-interaction, a proposal for learning tones cooperatively in the classroom, the analysis of pragmatic functions of Chinese cultural markers, an English second-language learner of Chinese as a case study of the acquisition of the Chinese modal auxiliary Neng Verb Group (NVG), the acquisition of Chinese relative clauses at the initial stage, and English "be going to" and its Chinese counterpart as evidence for conceptual similarities in languages.

Research in Chinese as a second language

The author establishes that tharf, but not betharf, was clearly on the path towards becoming a modal auxiliary, since it complied with some of the criteria for grammaticalization seen above, and could express a variety of modal necessity meanings, including impossibility.3 This tendency is also found in syntax.

Lucia Loureiro Porto 2009: The Semantic Predecessors of Need in the History of English

In more theoretical terms, a modal auxiliary is just a raising verb that expresses a modal notion such as necessity, possibility or evidentiality.

Voice and modal verbs in Estonian/[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]

Syntactically speaking, the can + passive predicator paraphrase adds the modal auxiliary can as finite and replaces the rest of the VP, i.e., the active predicator of the middle, with a passive one.

On the middle voice: an interpersonal analysis of the English middle *

This book contrasts the system of modal auxiliary verbs in English and German and investigates the factors determining their translation equivalents.

Translating by Factors

Since this use of the subjunctive became obsolete in Modern English, in Present-Day English the apodosis of a remote conditional must have a modal auxiliary followed by an infinitive (Huddleston and Pullum 2002: 739).

Gif your e grace will command me with ony service ye sail fynd me obedient: on the use of will and shall in Older Scots if-clauses

It thus logically carries the identity of a full modal auxiliary in the structure.