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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.
Tropes (from Greek trepein, 'to turn') change the general meaning of words. An example of a trope is irony, which is the use of words to convey the opposite of their usual meaning ("For Brutus is an honorable man; / So are they all, all honorable men"). During the Renaissance, scholars meticulously enumerated and classified figures of speech.
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.
This category is not for articles about concepts and things but only for articles about the words themselves. Please keep this category purged of everything that is not actually an article about a word or phrase. See as example Category:English words.
Outside DoD, other parts of the U.S. government advise against using the word shall for three reasons: it lacks a single clear meaning, it causes litigation, and it is nearly absent from ordinary speech. The legal reference Words and Phrases dedicates 76 pages to summarizing hundreds of lawsuits that centered around the meaning of the word shall.
Some languages, such as Latin, do not have yes-no word systems. Answering a "yes or no" question with single words meaning yes or no is by no means universal. About half the world's languages typically employ an echo response: repeating the verb in the question in an affirmative or a negative form.
Hindustani is extremely rich in complex verbs formed by the combinations of noun/adjective and a verb. Complex verbs are of two types: transitive and intransitive. [3]The transitive verbs are obtained by combining nouns/adjectives with verbs such as karnā 'to do', lenā 'to take', denā 'to give', jītnā 'to win' etc.
Shall is regarded as being a modal verb which can only be used with I and We. However, by analysing the Corpus of the English language we can conclude it is used with other persons as well. For instance, in the lyrics to the song Moonchild, by Iron Maiden, shall is used with you (you shall be damned), conveying the meaning of a threat.