Nama : Yunita Ningsih

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MODAL AUXILIARY

auxiliary verbs such as will, shall, may, might, can, could, must, ought to, should, would, used to, need are used in conjunction with main verbs to express shades of time and mood. The combination of helping verbs with main verbs creates what are called verb phrases or verb strings . In the following sentence, “will have been” are helping or auxiliary verbs and “studying” is the main verb; the whole verb string is underlined:

• As of next August, I will have been studying chemistry for ten years.

the adverb already modifies the verb, but it is not really part of the verb. The same is true of the ‘nt in “He hasn’t started yet” (the adverb not , represented by the contracted n’t , is not part of the verb, has started ).

Shall, will and forms of have, do and be combine with main verbs to indicate time and voice. As auxiliaries, the verbs be, have and do can change form to indicate changes in subject and time.

• I shall go now.
• He had won the election.
• They did write that novel together.
• I am going now.
• He was winning the election.
• They have been writing that novel for a long time.

In the English language , a modal verb is an auxiliary verb that can be used to change the modality of a sentence. The key way to identify a modal verb is by its defectiveness (they have neither participles nor infinitives ). In addition, modal verbs do not take the inflection -s or -es in the third person singular, unlike other verbs.

The modal verbs in English are as follows, paired as present and preterite forms.

• shall and should
• will and would
• may and might
• can and could
• mote (Archaic) and must

The following have also been categorized by some as modal verbs:

• ought (to)
• had better
• dare
• need

Note that dare and need are much more commonly used as non-modal verbs, taking -s or -es in the third person singular and having an infinitive and past and present participles. Further, some authors do not mention had better and explicitly reject ought (to) on the grounds that the main verb infinitive is required to include the particle to .

Shall and will

Shall is used in many of the same senses as will , though not all dialects use shall productively, and those that use both shall and will generally draw a distinction (though different dialects tend to draw different distinctions). In prescriptive English usage, shall in the first person, singular or plural, indicates mere futurity, but in other persons shows an order, command or prophecy: “Cinderella, you shall go to the ball!” It is, therefore, impossible to make shall questions in these persons. Shall we? makes sense, shall you? does not. Conversely, in prescriptive usage will generally indicates futurity in the second and third persons but modality of willingness/determination in the first person.

“ Shall is also used in legal and engineering language to write firm laws and specifications as in these examples: “Those convicted of violating this law shall be imprisoned for a term of not less than three years nor more than seven years,” and “The electronics assembly shall be able to operate within its specifications over a temperature range of 0 degrees Celsius to 70 degrees Celsius.” In both cases, in accordance with prescriptive usage, shall is used in the third person to express determination on the part of the speaker.

Should

Should is commonly used, even in dialects where shall is not. The negation is “should not” (or the contraction “shouldn’t”).

Should can describe an ideal behaviour or occurrence and imparts a normative meaning to the sentence; for example, “You should never lie” means roughly, “If you always behaved perfectly, you would never lie”, so obligatory modality is being expressed. The sentence “If this works, you should not feel a thing” means roughly, “I hope this will work. If it does, you will not feel a thing”, so probabilistic modality is being expressed. In dialects that use shall commonly, however, this restriction does not apply; for example, a speaker of such a dialect might say, “If I failed that test, I think I should cry,” meaning the same thing as, “If I failed that test, I think I would cry”; here the use of should is for conditional modality.

Would

The contracted form of would is ‘d as in “I’d go if I could”. The negation is either would not or wouldn’t . As indicated above, would can be used for the conditional mood in main clauses: “I would go if I could”.

Would can be used in some forms that are viewed as more formal or polite: for example, “I would like a glass of water” compared with “I want a glass of water”; and “Would you get me a glass of water?” “ compared with the bare “Get me a glass of water.”

Would can also be used for the imperfective aspect in past time. In the sentence “Back then, I would eat early and would walk to school….” “would” signifies not the conditional mood , but rather, repeated past actions in the imperfective aspect (specifically, habitual aspect) and one must use care when translating to other languages.

Furthermore, would can be used to shift the time of perspective of a future event from the present to the past: “In 1982 I knew that in 1986 I would graduate from college .

May and might

May and might do not have common negative contractions (equivalents to shan’t , won’t , can’t , couldn’t etc.), although mightn’t can occur in asking questions. (”Mightn’t I come in if I took my muddy boots off?” as a reply to “Don’t come in here! You’ll get the floor dirty!”)

Both forms can be used to express a present time possibility or uncertainty (”That may be.”). Might and could can also be used in this sense with no past time meaning. Might and may would carry almost the same meaning in “John is not in the office today, and he could be sick”, although may conveys less hesitance (a somewhat higher probability) than do might and could .

“ May is also used to express irrelevance in spite of certain or likely truth: “He may be taller than I am, but he is certainly not stronger” may mean roughly, “While it is true that he is taller than I am, that does not make a difference, as he is certainly not stronger.” (However, it may also mean, “I am not sure whether he is taller than I am, but I am sure that he is not stronger.”) This is the meaning in the phrase “Be that as it may.” Might can be used in this sense as well.

May or might can be used in the first person to express that future actions are being considered. “I may/might go to the mall later” means that the speaker is thinking about going to the mall; as such it means the same thing as maybe will .

May and might can indicate permission and mild permission respectively: “You may go now”, “You might go now if you feel like it.” May or might can be used in a question to ask for permission. One who is saying “May I use your phone?” is asking for permission to use the phone of the person being spoken to. “Can” or “could” can be used instead, although formal American English prefers “may”. In both cases the preterite form is viewed as more hesitant or polite.

Can and could

The negation of can is the single word “cannot”, occasionally written as two words “can not” or the contraction “can’t”. The negation of could is “could not”, or “couldn’t”.

Can is used to express ability. “I can speak English” means “I am able to speak English”, or “I know how to speak English”.

It is also used to express that some state of affairs is possible, without referring to the ability of a person to do something: “There can be a very strong rivalry between siblings” can have the same meaning as “There is sometimes a very strong rivalry between siblings”.

Cannot and can’t can be used to express beliefs about situations: “He cannot have left already; why would he want to get there so early?” expresses with less certainty the same proposition as “He has not left already” does.

Both can and could can be used to make requests: “Can you pass me the cheese?” Means “Please pass me the cheese”. Could can be used in the same way, and might be considered more polite.

Must

Must has no corresponding preterite form. The negation is “must not” or “mustn’t”. Must and have to are used to express that something is obligatory (”He must leave”; “He has to leave”). Must can be used to express a prohibition such as “You must not smoke in here”, or a resolution such as “I mustn’t make that mistake again”.

There is a distinction between “must” and “have to” in the negative forms: “must not” negates the main verb, while “do not have to” negates “have to”. In the sentence “You must not go” = “You must not-go”, it is being expressed that it is obligatory for the person being spoken to not go; whereas in the sentence “You do not have to go” it is being expressed that it is not obligatory for the person to go.

“ Must and have to can also be used to express strongly held beliefs (the epistemic rather than deontic use), such as “It must be here somewhere” or “It has to be here somewhere”, with the same meaning as “I believe that it’s very likely that it is here somewhere.”

Ought to and had better

Ought to and had better are used to express an ideal behavior or occurrence or suggested obligation, in a similar way to should . The negations are, respectively, ought not to (or rarely, oughtn’t to ) and had better not . “ The “had” in “had better” can be contracted, such as “You’d better shut up.” In informal American usage, the had in had better is sometimes omitted. “ The negative forms negate the main verb: “You ought not to do that” = “You ought to refrain from doing that”; “You’d better not do that” = “You’d better refrain from doing that.”

“ In addition, ought to , like should , can be used to express relatively high probability, as in “It ought to rain today.”

Dare and need

Dare and need are not commonly used as auxiliaries nowadays, but formerly they both were. Neither is used in affirmative declarative sentences. An example in an exclamation is “How dare he!”, expressing willingness in the face of fear or contrary obligation. The interrogative form “Dare he do it?” or “Need he do it?” is equivalent to the non-auxiliary form “Does he dare to do it?” or “Does he need to do it?”; need , of course, expresses the modality of necessity. In a negative context “He dare not do it” is equivalent to “He does not dare to do it”, while “He need not do it” is equivalent to “He does not need to do it”. In both cases it is the modal or entire verb phrase, rather than the main verb, that is being negated.

However, in the sentence “He does not dare to lose weight” or “He needs to lose weight,” dare or need is not being used as an auxiliary, as (1) it takes the full infinitive “to lose” as the head of the verb phrase rather than the bare infinitive “lose” that occurs in a phrase like “I can lose weight”, and (2) the verb following it is conjugated in the third person singular.

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