A
modal verb (also
modal,
modal auxiliary verb,
modal auxiliary) is a type of
auxiliary verb that is used to indicate
modality -- that is, likelihood, ability, permission, and obligation. The use of auxiliary verbs to express modality is particularly characteristic of
Germanic languages.
Function
Modal auxiliary verbs give more information about the function of the main
verb that follows it. Although having a great variety of communicative functions, these functions can all be related to a scale ranging from possibility ("may") to necessity ("must"). Within this scale there are two functional divisions:
epistemic, concerned with the theoretical possibility of propositions being true or not true (including likelihood, and certainty); and
deontic, concerned with possibility and necessity in terms of freedom to act (including ability, permission, and duty)
The following sentences illustrate the two uses of must:
epistemic: You must be starving. (= "It is necessarily the case that you are starving.")
deontic: You must leave now. (= "You are required to leave now.")
ambiguous: You must speak Spanish.
*epistemic = "It is surely the case that you speak Spanish (e.g., after having lived in Spain for ten years)."
*deontic = "It is a requirement that you speak Spanish (e.g., if you want to get a job in Spain)."
Epistemic modals can be analyzed as
raising verbs, while deontic modals can be analyzed as
control verbs.
Another use of modal auxiliaries is to indicate "dynamic modality", which refer to properties such as ability or disposition. Some examples of this are "can" in English, "können" in German, and "possum" in Latin. For example, "I can say that in English," "Ich kann das auf Deutsch sagen," and "Illud Latine dicere possum."
List of Germanic etymological relatives
The table below lists some modal verbs with common roots in
English,
German and
Dutch.
English modal auxiliary verb provides an exhaustive list of modal verbs in English, and
German verb#Modal verbs provides a list for German, with translations.
Dutch verbs#Irregular verbs gives conjugations for some Dutch modals.
Words in the same row of the table below share the same etymological root. Because of semantic drift, however, words in the same row may no longer be proper translations of each other. In addition, the English and German verbs will are completely different in meaning, and the German one has nothing to do with constructing the future tense. These words are false friends.
In English, the plural and singular forms are identical. For German and Dutch, both the plural and singular form of the verb are shown.
{|class="wikitable"
Etymological relatives (not translations)
! English || German || Dutch
|-
| can || können, kann || kunnen, kan
|-
| shall || sollen, soll || zullen, zal
|-
| will || wollen, will || willen, wil
|-
| must || müssen, muss || moeten, moet
|-
| may || mögen, mag || mogen, mag
|-
| tharf || dürfen, darf || durven, durf
|}
The English could is the preterite form of can; should is the preterite of shall; and might is the preterite of may. (This is ignoring the use of "may" as a vestige of the subjunctive mood in English.) These verbs have acquired an independent, present tense meaning. The German verb möchten is sometimes taught as a vocabulary word and included in the list of modal verbs, but it is actually the past subjunctive form of mögen.
The English verbs
dare and
need have both a modal use (
he dare not do it), and a non-modal use (
he doesn't dare to do it). The Dutch verb
durven is not considered a modal (but it is there, nevertheless) because its modal use has disappeared, but it has a non-modal use analogous with the English
dare. Some English modals consist of more than one word, such as "had better" and "would rather".
Some other English verbs express modality although they are not modal verbs because they are not auxiliaries, including want, wish, hope, and like. All of these differ from the modals in English (with the disputed exception of ought (to)) in that the associated main verb takes its long infinitive form with the particle to rather than its short form without to, and in that they are fully conjugated.
Morphology and syntax
Germanic modal verbs are
preterite-present verbs, which means that their present tense has the form of a vocalic preterite. This is the source of the vowel alternation between singular and plural in German and Dutch. Because of their preterite origins, modal verbs also lack the suffix (-s in modern English, -t in German and Dutch) that would normally mark the third person singular form:
{|class="wikitable"
! || normal verb || modal verb
|-
| English || he works || he can
|-
| German || er arbeitet || er kann
|-
| Dutch || hij werkt || hij kan
|}
The main verb that is modified by the modal verb is in the infinitive form and is not preceded by the word to (German: zu, Dutch: te). There are verbs that may seem somewhat similar in meaning to modal verbs (e.g. like, want), but the construction with such verbs would be different:
{|class="wikitable"
! || normal verb || modal verb
|-
| English || he tries to work || he can work
|-
| German || er versucht zu arbeiten || er kann arbeiten
|-
| Dutch || hij probeert te werken || hij kan werken
|}
In English, main verbs but not modal verbs always require the auxiliary verb do to form negations and questions, and do can be used with main verbs to form emphatic affirmative statements. Neither negations nor questions in early modern English used to require do.
{|class="wikitable"
! || normal verb || modal verb
|-
| affirmative || he works || he can work
|-
| negation || he does not work || he cannot work
|-
| emphatic || he does work hard|| he can work hard
|-
| question || does he work here? || can he work at all?
|-
| negation + question || does he not work here? || can he not work at all?
|}
(German never uses "do" as an auxiliary verb for any function; Dutch uses "do" as an auxiliary, but only in colloquial speech)
In English, modal verbs are called defective verbs because of their incomplete conjugation: they have a narrower range of functions than ordinary verbs. For example, most have no infinitive or gerund.
Evolution of modals
Deontic (agent-oriented) usages of modals tend to develop earlier than epistemic uses, and the former give rise to the latter. For example, the inferred certainty sense of English "must" developed after the strong obligation sense; the probabilistic sense of "should" developed after the weak obligation sense; and the possibility sense of "may" and "can" developed later than the permission or ability sense. Two typical sequences of evolution of modal meanings are:
internal mental ability → internal ability → root possibility (internal or external ability) → permission and epistemic possibility
obligation → probability
Modals in non-Germanic languages
Hawaiian Creole English
Hawaiian Creole English is a
creole language most of whose vocabulary, but not grammar, is drawn from 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. The invariance of the modal auxiliaries to person, number, and tense makes them analogous to modal auxiliaries in English. However, as in most creoles the main verbs are also invariant; the auxiliaries are distinguished by their use in combination with (followed by) a main verb.
There are various preverbal modal auxiliaries: kaen "can", laik "want to", gata "have got to", haeftu "have to", baeta "had better", sapostu "am/is/are supposed to". Unlike in Germanic languages, tense markers are used, albeit infrequently, before modals: gon kaen kam "is going to be able to come". Waz "was" can indicate past tense before the future/volitional marker gon and the modal sapostu: Ai waz gon lift weits "I was gonna lift weights"; Ai waz sapostu go "I was supposed to go".
Hawaiian
Hawaiian, like the
Polynesian languages generally, is an isolating language, so its verbal grammar exclusively relies on unconjugated verbs. Thus, as with creoles, there is no real distinction between modal auxiliaries and lexically modal main verbs that are followed by another main verb. Hawaiian has an imperative indicated by
e + verb (or in the negative by
mai + verb). Some examples of the treatment of modality are as follows:
Pono conveys obligation/necessity as in
He pono i na kamali'i a pau e maka'ala, "It's right for children all to beware", "All children should/must beware"; ability is conveyed by
hiki as in
Ua hiki i keia kamali'i ke heluhelu "Has enabled to this child to read", "This child can read".
French
French, like other
Romance languages, has no modal auxiliary verbs; instead, it expresses modality using conjugated verbs followed by infinitives: for example,
pouvoir "to be able" (
Je peux aller, "I can go"),
devoir "to have an obligation" (
Je dois aller, "I should go"), and
vouloir "to want" (
Je veux aller "I want to go").
Mandarin Chinese
Mandarin Chinese is an isolating language without inflections. As in English, modality can be indicated either lexically, with main verbs such as
yào "want" followed by another main verb, or with auxiliary verbs. In Mandarin the auxiliary verbs have six properties that distinguish them from main verbs:
They must co-occur with a verb (or an understood verb).
They cannot be accompanied by aspect markers.
They cannot be modified by intensifiers such as "very".
They cannot be nominalized (used in phrases meaning, for example, "one who can")
They cannot occur before the subject.
They cannot take a direct object.
The complete list of modal auxiliary verbs[ consists of
three meaning "should",
four meaning "be able to",
two meaning "have permission to",
one meaning "dare",
one meaning "be willing to",
four meaning "must" or "ought to", and
one meaning "will" or "know how to".
]
See also
English modal auxiliary verb
Grammatical mood
Linguistic modality
Modal logic
Semi-modal
List of English auxiliary verbs
Bibliography
The Syntactic Evolution of Modal Verbs in the History of English
Walter W. Skeat, The Concise Dictionary of English Etymology (1993), Wordsworth Editions Ltd.
References
External links
German Modal Verbs A grammar lesson covering the German modal verbs
Modal Verbs
Modal Verb Tutorial
Category:Verbs by type
