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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.
It must be hot outside. Sam must go to school. – shall: This shall not be viewed kindly. You shall not pass. – should: That should be surprising. You should stop that. – will: She will try to lie. – – would: Nothing would accomplish that. – – ought That ought to be correct. You ought to be kind.
The first English grammar, Bref Grammar for English by William Bullokar, published in 1586, does not use the term "auxiliary" but says: All other verbs are called verbs-neuters-un-perfect because they require the infinitive mood of another verb to express their signification of meaning perfectly: and be these, may, can, might or mought, could, would, should, must, ought, and sometimes, will ...
By yesterday morning they had already been working for twelve hours. Among the witnesses was John Smith, who had been staying at the hotel since July 10. This form is sometimes used for actions in the past that were interrupted by some event [12] (compare the use of the past progressive as given above). For example:
When would and should function as past tenses of will and shall, their usage tends to correspond to that of the latter verbs (would is used analogously to will, and should to shall). Thus would and should can be used with "future-in-the-past" meaning, to express what was expected to happen, or what in fact did happen, after some past time of ...
Hyperlexia is a syndrome characterized by a child's precocious ability to read.It was initially identified by Norman E. Silberberg and Margaret C. Silberberg (1967), who defined it as the precocious ability to read words without prior training in learning to read, typically before the age of five.
Former President Barack Obama recently suggested “it’s not racist” to say immigrants in the U.S. should learn English. Of course. Does that mean that they can never use their own language?
The proverb literally means "you cannot simultaneously retain possession of a cake and eat it, too". Once the cake is eaten, it is gone. It can be used to say that one cannot have two incompatible things, or that one should not try to have more than is reasonable.