Features of Modal Auxiliaries

Features of Modal Auxiliaries

Modal auxiliaries are as follows:

can, could, may, might, will, would, shall, should, must

Characteristic features:

(1)They are always (finite[1]) verbs.

Table 1The classification of ‘verbs’ according their morphology (Budai 1986:21)

VERBS

FULL VERBSAUXILIARY VERBS

Finites Non-FinitesAnomalous[2] Finites

Present Tense Infinitivesam, is, are, was,were

V-ø and V-shave, has, had

Past Tense Gerundsdo, does, did,

V-edused (to),

Imperative Mood form Participlesshall, will, should,

V-ø Present Participlewould, can, could,

Past Participlemay, might, must,

ought (to), need, dare

The parts of speech in the sentence:

He might have been being questioned by the police.

Table 2The analysis of a sentence

Personal Pronoun / Verb proper
(modal auxiliary / Bare Infitive(of auxitliary of perfectivity) / Past Participle (of auxiliary expressing continuous aspect / Present Participle (of auxiliary of passive voice) / Past Participle / Preposition / Definite Article / Noun
He / might / have / been / being / questioned / by / the / police.

(2)They can only be operators from a syntactic point of view. (The first auxiliary of the verb phrase.)

Table 3Sentence structure analysed in the traditional way (Biber [et al.] 1999 and Quirk [et al.] 1985)

sentence

subjectpredicate

auxiliary/auxiliariespredication

aux 1aux 2aux 3aux 4

operator

He mighthave been being questioned by the police.

(3)They have neither to-infinitive nor bare infinitive nor –ing forms.

(4)They have no –s forms.

(5)They are always followed by a bare infinitive.

(6)They help to construct inversion (questions/interrogation and special syntactic constructions) and negation.

(7)They turn up in short questions, question tags and answers.

(8)They have contracted forms (-n’t), except for may.

(9)Meaning: Modal verbs pertain to our experience of actuality, possibility, and necessity. (Gibbs 1994:159)It can have a deontic function.

(10)The indication of mood is limited, it is only the indicative and subjunctive mood forms which can be used.

(11)They can only denote present tense except for reported speech.

Sources:

Biber [et al.] 1999

Biber, Douglas [et al.]. Longman grammar of spoken and written English. Harlow : Longman, 1999. xxviii, 1204 p. ; 24 cm

ISBN 0-582-23725-4

Budai 1986

Budai László. English syntax : theory and practice. 2. kiad. Budapest : Tankönyvkiadó, 1986. 640 p. : ill. ; 20 cm (Tanuljunk nyelveket!, ISSN 0133-1094) ISBN 963-17-9558-6

Chalker and Weiner 1998

Chalker, Sylvia and Weiner, Edmund. The Oxford dictionary of English grammar. Reissued with corrections. Oxford : OxfordUniversity Press, 1998, © 1994. x, 448 p. ; … cm (Oxford paperback reference, ISSN ---)

ISBN 0-19-280087-6

Gibbs 1994

Gibbs, Raymond W. The poetics of mind : figurative thought, language, and understanding. Cambridge : CambridgeUniversity Press, 1994. ix, 527 p. ; 22.6 cm

ISBN 0-521-42992-7 ppb

OALD8

Hornby, A[lbert] S[idney]. Oxford advanced learner’s dictionary of current English. 8th edition. Managing editor Joanna Turnbull. Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 2010. xii, 1796, 32, 64, 46 p. : ill. ; … cm

ISBN 978-0-19-479902-7

Quirk [et al.] 1985

Quirk, Randolph [et al.]. A grammar of contemporary English. 11th impression. Harlow : Longman, 1985. xii, 1120 p. ; 23.5 cm

ISBN 0-582-52444-x

[1](1) Verbs proper, whichhave tenses and refer to numbers and persons.

(2) A finite verb form is capable of forming the negative by adding –n’t and of expressing questions by inversion. (Chalker and Weiner 1998:26)

[2]‘different from what is normal, regular or expected’ (OALD8)