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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 classic formal approaches to linguistic modality, an utterance expressing modality is one that can always roughly be paraphrased to fit the following template: (3) According to [a set of rules, wishes, beliefs,...] it is [necessary, possible] that [the main proposition] is the case.
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 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.
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.).
Modal adjectives can express modality regarding a situation or a participant in that situation. With situations, some usual syntactic patterns include an extraposed subject, [3] such as the underlined elements in the following examples with the modal adjective in bold. Here the modal adjective is analyzed semantically as a sentential modal ...
The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language provides the following non-exhaustive list of modal adverbs at different levels of strength. [3]Strong: assuredly ...
Tense–aspect–mood (commonly abbreviated tam in linguistics) or tense–modality–aspect (abbreviated as tma) is an important group of grammatical categories, which are marked in different ways by different languages.