Modal Auxiliaries

A modal verb (also modal, modal auxiliary verb, modal auxiliary) is a type of auxiliary verb that is used to indicate modality – that is, likelihood, ability, permission, and obligation. Examples include the English verbs can/could, may/might, must, will/would, and shall/should.

In English and other Germanic languages, modal verbs are often distinguished as a class based on certain grammatical properties.

Function

A modal auxiliary verb gives more information about the function of the main verb that it governs. Modals have a wide variety of communicative functions, but these functions can generally be related to a scale ranging from possibility ("may") to necessity ("must"), in terms of one of the following types of modality:

·         epistemic modality, concerned with the theoretical possibility of propositions being true or not true (including likelihood and certainty)

·         deontic modality, concerned with possibility and necessity in terms of freedom to act (including permission and duty)

·         dynamic modality, which may be distinguished from deontic modality, in that with dynamic modality, the conditioning factors are internal – the subject's own ability or willingness to act

The following sentences illustrate epistemic and deontic uses of the English modal verb must:

·         epistemic: You must be starving. ("It is necessarily the case that you are starving.")

·         deontic: You must leave now. ("You are required to leave now.")

An ambiguous case is You must speak Spanish. This may be intended epistemically ("It is surely the case that you speak Spanish", e.g. after having lived in Spain for a long time), or deontically ("It is a requirement that you speak Spanish", e.g. if you want to get a job in Spain).

Epistemic modals can be analyzed as raising verbs, while deontic modals can be analyzed as control verbs.

Epistemic usages of modals tend to develop from deontic usages.  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. Two typical sequences of evolution of modal meanings are:

·         internal mental ability → internal ability → root possibility (internal or external ability) → permission and epistemic possibility

·         obligation → probability

Example

The following table lists the modal auxiliary verbs of standard English. Most of them appear more than once based upon the distinction between deontic and epistemic modality:

Modal auxiliary	meaning contribution	Example
can1	deontic/dynamic modality	She can really sing.
can2	epistemic modality	That can indeed help.
could1	deontic modality	He could swim when he was young.
could2	epistemic modality	That could happen soon.
may1	deontic modality	May I stay?
may2	epistemic modality	That may be a problem.
might	epistemic modality	The weather might improve.
must1	deontic modality	Sam must go to school.
must2	epistemic modality	It must be hot outside.
shall	deontic modality	You shall not pass.
should1	deontic modality	You should stop that.
should2	epistemic modality	That should be surprising.
will	epistemic modality	She will try to lie.
will2	deontic modality	I will meet you later.
would	epistemic modality	Nothing would accomplish that.

The verbs in this list all have the following characteristics:

1.     They are auxiliary verbs, which means they allow subject-auxiliary inversion and can take the negation not,

2.     They convey functional meaning,

3.     They are defective insofar as they cannot be inflected, nor do they appear in non-finite form (i.e. not as infinitives, gerunds, or participles),

4.     They are nevertheless always finite and thus appear as the root verb in their clause, and

5.     They subcategorize for an infinitive, i.e. they take an infinitive as their complement

The verbs/expressions dare, ought to, had better, and need not behave like modal auxiliaries to a large extent, although they are not productive in the role to the same extent as those listed here. Furthermore, there are numerous other verbs that can be viewed as modal verbs insofar as they clearly express modality in the same way that the verbs in this list do, e.g. appear, have to, seem, etc. In the strict sense, though, these other verbs do not qualify as modal verbs in English because they do not allow subject-auxiliary inversion, nor do they allow negation with not. If, however, one defines modal verb entirely in terms of meaning contribution, then these other verbs would also be modals and so the list here would have to be greatly expanded.

Defectiveness

Modals in English form a very distinctive class of verbs. They are auxiliary verbs like be, do, and have, but they are defective insofar as they cannot be inflected like these other auxiliary verbs, e.g.have → has vs. should → *shoulds, do → did vs. may → *mayed, etc. In clauses that contain two or more verbs, any modal that is present appears as the left-most verb in the verb catena (= chain of verbs). What this means is that the modal verb is always finite (although it is, as stated, never inflected). In the syntactic structure of the clause, the modal verb is the clause root. The following dependency grammar trees illustrate the point:

The verb catenae are in blue. The modal auxiliary in both trees is the root of the entire sentence. The verb that is immediately subordinate to the modal is always an infinitive. The fact that modal auxiliaries in English are necessarily finite means that within the minimal finite clause that contains them, they can never be subordinate to another verb, e.g.

a. Sam may have done his homework. - The modal auxiliary may is the root of the clause.

b. *Sam has may done his homework. - The sentence fails because the modal auxiliary may is not the root of the clause.

a. Jim will be helped. - The modal auxiliary will is the root of the clause.

b. *Jim is will be helped. - The sentence fails because the modal auxiliary will is not the root of the clause.

This trait of modal auxiliaries has motivated the designation defective, that is, modal auxiliaries are defective in English because they are so limited in their form and distribution. One can note further in this area that English modal auxiliaries are quite unlike modal verbs in closely related languages. In German, for instance, modals can occur as non-finite verbs, which means they can be subordinate to other verbs in verb catenae; they need not appear as the clause root.

Exercises :

1. They        study hard,because next April they will take the examination      

            A. Will                        B. Should                                C. Can 
2. You ____ permit to your mother.if you go to school

            A. Must                       B. May                        C. Mustn’t     
3. She ____ come here tommorow.
            A. Will                        B. Can                         C. Must

4. He ____ speak English well if  he took English course  .
             A. Will                       B. Can                         C. Could
5. You seem to be having trouble there. ____I help you?
         A. Would                       B. Will                                      C. Shall

6. Teddy got a bed score for his examination, ____study hard for next

        A. Should have studied  B. Could have studied                        C. Might have studied

7. My father ____ play guitar when he was child

        A. Shall                           B. Can                         C. Could

8. I have been invited my friends to come, They                 be there tomorrow

        A. Would                                    B. Could                                 C. Should

9. The sky so dark, it        be rain

        A. May                            B. Might                                  C. Should

10. There`s a baby area, you                    smoke here.

        A. Ought to                     B. Must not                             C. Should not

11. Your glass is empty. …. I get you some more fresh water?
A. shall
B. will
C. can

12. We …. like to visit that new store some day.
A. shall
B. would
C. can

13. You are sick, but you don’t come  hospital to see a doctor.
You …. visit him soon.
A. would
B. could
C. should

14. “I really don’t know why Tony didn’t come to the meeting”.

“There ….. something wrong with him.
A. must have been
B. could be
C. will be

15. “Rini is old enough. She …. know better than the others about it.

A. will

B. could

C. must

16. My motorcycle runs out of oil. I ….buy it because I will ride it to the meeting.
A. should
B. may
C. must

17. Yanti looks so pale and weak. He must be sick. The underlined sentence means:

A. I conclude that he is sick
B. Maybe he is sick
C. It’s possible that he is sick.

18. “I could have somebody else to carry the heavy bags” It means :

A. I carried the heavy bags
B  Somebody else carried the heavy bags for me
C. I asked someone carry the heavy bags.

19. She … do more than two task at one time yesterday.

A. will

B. could

C. must

20. If I ask a question about your past, … you answer it?

A. will

B. would

C. must