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Modal auxiliary verbs, such as the English words may, can, must, ought, will, shall, need, dare, might, could, would, and should, are often used to express modality, especially in the Germanic languages. Ability, desirability, permission, obligation, and probability can all be exemplified by the usage of auxiliary modal verbs in English:
As is generally the case with creole languages, it is an isolating language and modality is typically indicated by the use of invariant pre-verbal auxiliaries. [5] The invariance of the modal auxiliaries to person, number, and tense makes them analogous to modal auxiliaries in English.
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.).
Epistemic modality is a sub-type of linguistic modality that encompasses knowledge, belief, or credence in a proposition. Epistemic modality is exemplified by the English modals may , might , must .
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).
The English language allows a wide variety of expressions of combinations of tense, aspect, and mood, with a variety of grammatical constructions. These constructions involve pure morphological changes (suffixes and internal sound changes of the verb), conjugated compound verbs, and invariant auxiliaries.
Palmer treated modality in language or languages generally. [10] In his book Mood and Modality, first published in 1986, Palmer developed a typological study of modality or mood. Another publication Modality and the English Modals had already appeared in 1979. Palmer pointed out the current interest in mood and modality, as well as in ...