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Are they the same as the "verbs-of-being" I was forced to painstakingly memorizetaught in Middle School? I.e.

  • Be
  • Am
  • Is
  • Are
  • Was
  • Were
  • Being
  • Been
  • Have
  • Has
  • Had
  • Shall
  • Will
  • May
  • Can
  • Might
  • Could
  • Should
  • Would
Billy ONeal
  • 1,940

1 Answers1

10

The modal verbs are a subset of the "verbs of being", which are properly called auxiliary verbs. The classical modal verbs are:

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

Modal verbs are peculiar in that they have no infinitive form (you can't say to shall) and cannot be combined with other modal verbs in Standard English (you can't say I will might go).

By way of contrast, the other auxiliary verbs are formed from be, have, and do, and they don't have these properties. You can say to be, and you can combine a non-modal auxiliary with a modal: I should have bought those shoes.

For more detailed discussion, see Wikipedia.

JSBձոգչ
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  • I will might have learned something from your answer! ;-) – Andrew Flanagan Jan 25 '11 at 21:53
  • +1 -- can you stick this info in the Modal-Verbs tag-wiki so that future seers of that tag don't get confused? Oh, and have a checkmark thingy :P – Billy ONeal Jan 25 '11 at 23:13
  • "will" has an infinitive form (i.e. to will something to occur/"There will be water if God wills it") but obviously that's different than the typical usage to say "that will occur in the future" (EDIT: For that matter so does "can", i.e. "one cans fish to keep it from spoiling", or "to can fish is to prevent it from spoiling") – Billy ONeal Jan 25 '11 at 23:17
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    @Billy, I would argue that to will and to can are different words from the modals will and can, though they are homophones. In the case of will there is an etymological connection between the full verb and the modal verb, but I'm pretty sure that there is no connection at all between the different senses of can. – JSBձոգչ Jan 26 '11 at 03:10
  • I agree. Was just being nit-picky :) – Billy ONeal Jan 26 '11 at 04:05
  • Well actually the infinitive form of can is normally given as to be able and this is not that different to the infinitive form of is being to be. Other verbs that could be added to the list include ought to (also doesn't have a cognate infinitive), has to, is supposed to. What distinguishes your list is that the following infinitive has the to omitted. But this is about form not function. They deal with things that are irreal possibilities in some sense. – David M W Powers Apr 16 '14 at 09:18
  • Shouldn't it be "classic" and not "classical?" – michael_timofeev Sep 14 '15 at 00:37