Talk:Modal verb

old talk

The redirection of "Modal Verb" to the Grammatical Mood page is erroneous. It was correct prior to this edit when it was being redirected to the Modal Auxiliary Verb page.

The Modal Auxiliary Verb page needs to be greatly expanded. The comment on this erroneous edit is "to eliminate a double redirection". The Modal Auxiliary Verb page is so small that it was thought to be nothing more than a redirection to the Grammatical Mood page.

Modal verb should not redirect to English modal auxiliary verb because other languages have modal verbs. peace – ishwar  (speak) 08:25, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

The page is now about Germanic modal verbs in general, with an emphasis on syntax. I find conflicting information about whether the terminology "modal verb" is applicable to non-Germanic languages. That question should be settled by someone who can read grammar books in those languages, rather than English text about them. --Syboor 17:12, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Bibliography

I would recommend not using the first source in the bibliography section. It is a doctoral thesis and although very well researched and organized, much of the findings are incorrect. Drew.ward (talk) 16:12, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

It's not about "Mood"

Modal auxiliaries don't indicate "mood", but rather function. Examples of "mood" are interrogatory, imperative, subjunctive, emphatic, etc. Mood has a distinctive meaning in grammar. 72.146.54.30 (talk) 04:42, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Modals "modify". That is were the word comes from.

It is about mood. It's about the permissive and subjunctive moods. It's just that these moods aren't technically considered to exist in English, since they are usually indicated by modal auxiliary verbs rather than by separate verb forms. Benjamindees (talk) 16:20, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. modals do express mood. Really there's no discussion there, they simply do. Drew.ward (talk) 16:12, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

this page is very wrong

I'm going to delete the examples the translations and stuff. Or put a factual accuracy thing on —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 194.80.32.12 (talk) 21:04, 22 March 2007 (UTC).

I don't understand your point. What was wrong about the list? Did you read all the stuff about the list not providing translations? Or the section "Please, check this" on this discussion page?

I have reinstated the word list. IMHO, without it, the entire section on Properties of Modal Verbs is pretty unintelligible. I also added the singular forms of German and Dutch verbs to the list. This is because the vowel alternation between singular and plural in these languages is a distinct feature of modal verb (which is stated in the "Properties"-section, put pretty hard to understand without examples). And because often the English form is more related to the German/Dutch singular form than to the plural form. Syboor 15:02, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

The German word "wollen/will" is in English "want", the English word "will" is in German "werden/werde/wirst". In the table it is given in just the wrong combination. This was already discussed by flivelwitz on novembre 7th. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.175.243.242 (talk) 10:47, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Also, "sollen" means "should" not "shall" and "durfen" means "may" not "tharf". "Mogen" means "like" or "enjoy" not "may". It also doesn't matter what they were in the past. This is an article on Modal verbs. The main part of it should about modern modals. You can add the history of them and what they used to be if you want, but don't just have what it used to be.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.229.220.35 (talk) 04:32, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

I appreciate the fact that you are one of the only people to notice that these are not translations of one another anymore. It's quite a feat, especially given the note above the chart saying: "Note that the words in this list are not translations of each other". I am sure all the people who have worked on this article did so while wearing their underpants on their heads, two pencils up their nostrils and going "wibble" every so often. The present semantics of these verbs is not the issue. "Modal verb" is a formal morphological category which, among other things, is defined by their being preterite-present verbs. I am sure you will be happy to find that "like" or "enjoy" have a final -s in the 3rd person singular, which makes them non-modals, whatever their meaning. You may also find that neither "may" nor "mögen", by virtue of their being modals to a verb, have such an ending in the same position -- unless of course you personally prefer forms such as "he mays go" or "er magt das nicht", which you are perfectly well entitled to find a matter of personal taste and prefer as an expression of your very own individuality, and good on you too. Trigaranus (talk) 06:25, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Please, check this.

In the German page, it states "Das Deutsche kennt sechs Modalverben: wollen, müssen, können, mögen, sollen und dürfen." So, why are here listed others, like brauchen or wagen?

The German page is right and this page is wrong. It used to be right. It seems that somebody decided to turn the German list into a translation of the English list, rather than a list of German words with the same etymological roots. "Werden", "brauchen", and "wagen" are not modal verbs, so don't belong here. I'll change it back, and see if I can clarify things (even) better, but I think the person who made this change was clearly in error (because the article already stated that the list does not provide translations). Syboor 23:29, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Not only are those not modal verbs but the English translations of many of the correct modal verbs are horribly wrong. Sollen is more correctly translated as should, wollen is to want (werden is will), mögen is to like, and dürfen is may or to be allowed to. Need is most definitely not a modal verb in German, and I don't believe is considered a modal in English by many people any more.

Yes, translations are tricky. Is there some page about it that we could link to? I'm not sure from your comment whether you agree with the current list on this page. BTW, the page English modal auxiliary verb has a longer discussion about whether or not "need" is a modal. You're right that it never is in German. Syboor 09:35, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

I think the "translations" are not wrong, because they are not translations :P . Etymologically, words in the same row share common roots. So, because of that is that we have things like sollen = shall. --Pfc432 11:28, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, the "will" in English is not the "wollen" in German, for example.

"Ich will etwas tun" - I want to do something (or "I intend on doing something")(as compared to "Ich moechte etwas tun" - "I would like to do something")

"Ich werde etwas tun" - I will do something (or "I am going to do something").

The German newspapers often use "wollen" to mean intention - somebody intends to do something,etc.

This really should be changed.Flivelwitz 22:39, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Lack of mention of some alternative verb forms - but it has been done some now

A. This article mentioned the use of the verb "do" in English quite a bit, but did not mention the use of this verb to make emphatic statements. (Something that is missing entirely in some languages such as German,wher they use adverbs instead.) I have now at least mentioned this usage of the verb.

B. This article did not mention the use of the verb "may" as a subjective verb. At least I have mentioned that now. In German, subjunctive verbs are used all the time, and there are two forms Subjunctive I and Subjunctive II - which labels I can't keep straight. One of these has decreased very much in use in English, but it appears in such sentences as, "If I were the King of North America." The other one has vanished to a mere vestage in English, practically down to the verbs "may", "might", and "let". An example of the first verb is "That may be an actual spaceship from another planet..." Here "may" is clearly not an "asking permission" verb, but rather, it is a subjunctive. As for the subjunctive form of the last verb, examples would be "If he be lying, let his tongue be pulled out," and "If I am lying, let my tongue burst into flames."

Anyway, the point is that "may" has the use as a subjunctive verb, as well as a modal auxiliary, and "do" has the use to make statements emphatic. It also makes questions emphatic: "Did you really go to college at the University of Southern California?"72.146.54.30 (talk) 04:33, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

The problem is that 'do' is not a modal, it's an aspectual auxiliary. Also, 'really' is a modal adverb, but is not a modal (modal verb). I believe really is discussed in the article on the hortative moods.

A full inventory of English modals can be found here: [1]

This article only discusses one class of modal and should be expanded. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Drew.ward (talk • contribs) 19:16, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Modal verbs in other languages

This is a call for help to anybody who speaks a non-Germanic language or even non-Indo-European language: Of course, many languages out there are stronger on grammatical mood than on actual modal verbs, but I am sure there is more than one way of translating sentences like the following into your respective mother tongues:

He can't write / She can swim.

We don't have to go. / You have to leave.

You shouldn't smoke. / You should listen to me.

You musn't say anything. / May I ask you a question?

Even if there is not a strict class of modal verbs in your mother tongue, the corresponding control verbs or auxiliary verbs (i.e. direct translations for "can / must / shall / will / may") are more likely to exist than not, aren't they? I think this page would greatly profit from a section that exemplifies the way other, unrelated, languages handle the same concept. Trigaranus (talk) 16:48, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

I think it's already mentioned in the article that similar sounding modals in Germanic languages often appear to be false friends. This point can hardly be overstated. Etymologically related verbs like "can" perform very disparate functions inside the Germanic languages. I don't know of any extra-IE languages that have similar things to the modal verb. Bantaar (talk) 16:12, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Dialects

I've taken the liberty of moving the following addition to the discussion page:

Dialects

There are some other modal verbs that exist only in some dialects of english.

• wanna = want to

I wanna go to the cinema. (= I want to go to the cinema.)

• gonna = going to

We're gonna win this game. (= We are going to win this game.)

• gotta = got to

You gotta go. (= You got to go.)

Modal verbs as a category are not formed with a "to" infinitive. Expressions such as "I want to" or "I am going to" are not modal verbs, nor are they dialectal, even in a contracted form, which simply makes them more informal. The "gotta" construction is just a shortening of "have got to" and not a modal verb, either. Sorry for that. Trigaranus (talk) 13:45, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Other Germanic languages

It would be good if someone who knew something about the North Germanic (Scandinavian, Faroese and Icelandic) languages could put some information in about modal verbs in those languages, and what cognates exist. Old Norse had "skulu" and "munu" (see [2] Old Norse for beginners), and maybe Modern Icelandic has them too. I think the first is cognate to "shall", and the latter to "maun" in literary Scots (or in rural areas if it survives there). Count Truthstein (talk) 23:08, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Um... Scandinavian modals work somewhat differently than either English or German ones (already very different between them). Not in the most basic, structural, sense, but their meanings are... how can I put it? Askew... to the other languages. Modal verbs, even inside Germanic, are a nest of fleas, to put it bluntly. English "must" has some resemblance (and common etymology for the matter) to German "muss", and even to Danish "må". The way these cognates work in the different languages is, however, quite disparate.

This was a rather weird answer to the very reasonable question. At least in Swedish, the modal verbs work in similar ways as in the West Germanic languages. The semantics has drifted a bit apart for English and Swedish; but, as the article notes, this is also true for e.g. English and German. Moreover, modern Swedish, Norwedian and Danish do not have different form for different persons and numbers; but, since the uniform forms are the old third person singular ones, the differences between "ordinary present forms" and "preterito-present forms" are highly visible. I'll add Swedish to the lists - tomorrow. JoergenB (talk) 22:35, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

I did this, and also found some books I could use for Danish, Faroese, and Gothic forms. The books are a bit old, and improvements from someone with more recent literature should be appreciated.

Moreover, I added the verb corresponding to the nowadays rare "to wit". For the English, I employed the OED; and the German forms I checked with wikt:wissen. However, I do not know what Dutch, North Frisian, and Afrikaans forms to look for, and therefore just left question marks in these items. (I put a hyphen for one Gothic form; but as usual that means "not known in the entire corpus", which is quite another thing.) Please, help filling these slots! JoergenB (talk) 17:11, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

Shall vs. Will

I'm really not fond of the way this article treats the two modals. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage says that effectively there is no difference in modern English between the two, aside from a few set phrases. Citations would be very nice.

I have just removed this entire section on shall/will:

"As regards the modal auxiliary verbs shall/will, it is misleading to suggest either that these verbs are "future tense auxiliary verbs" that are used to form a future tense in English where shall is used for the first person and will for second and third persons (a "rule" of "traditional" grammar), thereby forming a compound "simple future" or "pure future" tense, or that shall and will are interchangeable in modern English. This latter belief no doubt arises from the fact that the contracted forms of shall and will are identical ( 'll), as are the contracted forms of the past/subjunctive of shall and will, namely should and would ( 'd), which contractions having led to the usage of will/would for all persons in demotic English and most particularly in American English.

Shall and will have distinct meanings, but some of them sometimes overlap, as with I/we statements combining promise (a statement of obligation) and intention (a statement of willingness). With I/we questions used as suggestions or as requests for advice, only shall/should is possible: "Shall/Should I do something?" fundamentally asks if I am obliged to another party to do something. (cf. sollen in German: Was soll ich tun? [What shall I do?]) In most other cases, "will" is usable. Will in 2nd and 3rd persons can indicate a sure prediction if the statement/question is marked for future time (When will he arrive? - He will arrive tomorrow) or future time is understood in context (Do you think he will come? – Sure he will come), the certainty of prediction being marked by the speaker's belief that he knows the volition of the subject of the modal verb; if no futurity is marked or understood in context, then will, but not shall, carries meanings of (a) general deduction, (b) highest probability, (c) habit, or (d) habit-power, e.g.: (a) If George is British, he will be quite conservative in his opinions; (b) Did the caller have a British accent? – Then that will have been George (would have been George is still highly probable but there is a slight doubt implied by the past form of will that, in this context, is subjunctive in function; must have been George is also a high probability statement but it is a logical conclusion: the speaker is logically obliged to believe that the caller was George); (c) He will always call me when I'm having lunch; (d) This bottle will hold at least two pints."

Not only is it very incorrect, but it's English-specific and there is already a page on English modals.

[3]

The document in that link explains many of the problems this section had with which form is used in regard to the future. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Drew.ward (talk • contribs) 19:12, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

dare/darf/durf

English	German	Dutch
dare	dürfen, darf	durven, durf

The article states that these modal verbs share common roots. It is not the case for the last example. English dare comes from a Germanic root *dars, *dursan- "to dare" (PIE *dhers-), whilst German darf and Dutch durf come from *þurfan- "to need" (PIE *terp-). No relation between the two groups. Please correct. Leasnam (talk) 22:27, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Done, but "no relation between the two groups" is kind of an exaggeration. CapnPrep (talk) 23:56, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Weak opening sentence

I am by no means a hard core grammarian, but the opening sentence defines a modal verb as one that indicates modality. well, duh.... Silicon retina (talk) 14:32, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

It is in immediately directing us to Linguistic modality that this supposedly 'weak' opening sentence fully demonstrates its heart-wrenching awesomeness. Or do you know a way of defining "modality" in less than one line? ;-) Trigaranus (talk) 18:04, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Silicon. I have always been taught that the definition of a word, should not contain the word being defined, or a form thereof. To somebody looking for the most simple definition possible, this sentence means nothing. Language is a means to communicate, I feel that the opening sentence and Trigaranus both fail in this realm. Were both written by the same author? I wonder... Hr.Vanker^Talk_Contrib 02:21, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Removed text

Removed from the "Function" section:

must = absolute (often moral) obligation, order, requirement, necessity; can/could = physical or mental ability; may/might = permission, option, choice; will = intention in 1st person, volition in 2nd and 3rd persons; and shall/should = in 1st person objective though not moral obligation, no choice, as in: One day I shall die: we all shall die one day; in 2nd and third persons shall implies an incumbent obligation, destiny (It shall come to pass) or a command, decree, necessity imposed by the speaker, as in: A meeting shall take place on the last Friday of every month or a promise, namely that the speaker is stating his obligation to another party that an action or event take place, as in: You shall go to the ball, Cinderella. However, if a speaker states: I will let you go to the ball, Cinderella, in stating his intention, he is, in this instance, also making a promise.

This seems more to be an attempt at an English usage guide than discussion about the general concept of modal verbs (as other languages that have them divide the various meanings quite differently). –Henning Makholm (talk) 15:39, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Function

This sentence does not mean "You may not do that". It means "You do not have to do that". Pamour (talk) 09:24, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Modal Verb or Auxiliary?

This article has a bit of an identity crisis.

We need to decide whether it's an article about modal verbs or about modal auxiliaries.

Modal verbs are any verb used to express mood. Take the verb "make" in English -- it can be used to express causative moods "I made Tom eat pickles." In this sentence, the auxiliary (hidden) is 'do' as is verified by the interrogative form "Did you make Tom eat pickles".

Modal auxiliaries are any verb or verbal unit (could be a phrase), which acts as a single functional unit, occupies a non-vector (not the idea verb) verbal position, and subordinates the verb to its right (usually the vector -- 'ideal verb' 'main verb' 'content verb'). The most easily recognized of these are will/shall/should/can/may, etc. These also include such things as BE+ABLE, BE+GOING, and HAD+BETTER.

It's important to make this differentiation as without it, some things that are different can appear to be the same. As mentioned above, "make" can be used as a modal verb expressing a causative mood (I caused or forced X) as seen in the example "I made Tom eat pickles." Consider though the following example "Tom was made to eat pickles." In this second example, it is at first glance a passive voice construction using that same 'make' modal verb. However, there is one component present in this one that is mission in the first -- "to".

"To" in English, can be either a preposition, part of an infinitive, or most regularly, a verb form known as the 'infinitive form' (meaning that it looks like a 'to-infinitive' yet is not actually an infinitive). The most common occurrence of the infinitive form in English is as the subordinate for several modal auxiliaries. That is the root of 'to' within the second example ("Tom is made to eat pickles."). In this example, BE+MADE is (as a unit) a modal auxiliary consisting of the verb BE+ADJ with the adjective in this case being "made" (meaning "caused") and is no different that BE+ABLE, BE+WILLING, or BE+ABOUT. This also makes the second example active voice and not passive. And finally, means that although visually very similar, that the "made" of "I made Tom eat pickles" (DID+MAKE) and the "made" of "Tom was made to eat pickles" (BE+MADE) are very different things altogether (although in this case expressing very similar causative moods, even though the former expresses active causation (the subject causes) while the latter expresses passive causation (an action of or effect on the subject is caused by someone/something else).

So you see, a modal verb and a modal auxiliary are two very different things, so we need to figure out which of these the article is going to be about, and once done, we need to reword this introductory section:

"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." Drew.ward (talk) 03:38, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

According to Palmer, Mood and Modality, p. 33, (1) the modal verbs in English are may, can, must, ought, will, shall, need, dare, might, could, would, should; (2) they have no -s form in the third person singular; and (3) they have no infinitive form. That is, "modal verb" means the same thing as "modal auxiliary". And you can't get any more authoritative than that source. Also, some of the other references in this article use "modal verb" in the same way, but none of them use it in the sense of any verb that expresses modality (make etc.). Duoduoduo (talk) 15:44, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

I would like to see sources for some of this before it goes in the article. The example about "made" is interesting; it seems to me that in "I made Tom eat pickles", "eat pickles" is a kind of predicative complement, which would explain a lack of a passive variation. "I made Tom angry" and "I made Tom a knight of the realm" show other examples of the same use. (?"Tom was made angry" is grammatical for me though.) It seems to be like "see", as in "I saw Tom eat pickles", but not *"Tom was seen by me eat pickles". (Although replacing "eat" by "eating", both are acceptable. I don't have an explanation for this.)Count Truthstein (talk) 17:39, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Hi Count. You're close but the divisions you're using are messing up your analysis. in "I made Tom eat pickles" it's not "eat pickles" that you need to separate out, but rather "Tom eat pickles" because Tom's eating of pickles is caused (which is what made means in this usage) by "I" Your second two examples with made are somewhat different constructions. They still have the cause meaning of make, but I'm not sure it's being used as a modal because there is no assertion for it to qualify. If it said "I made Tom get angry" or "I made Tom become a knight of the Realm (say if he were considering not accepting the title)" then 'made' would be acting as a modal. But because there is no assertion in the object for 'made' in this two, I think it's only being used as a regular non-modal verb meaning cause. This is also why "Tom was made a knight of the realm" and "Tom was made angry" work just fine in the passive voice without any changing things around.Drew.ward (talk) 17:52, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Anyway, does not including BE+ABLE and similar verbs as modal auxiliaries lead to quite a lot of them? "She is likely to win" and so on. Count Truthstein (talk) 17:39, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Absolutely! There are tons of them! I've already isolated 16 separate morphosyntactic primary classes of them in English alone (with several sub-classes within those).Drew.ward (talk) 17:52, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

I've had another thought. You can say "She is willing and able to help" - this looks like some kind of conjunction of modal auxiliary verbs (according to your definition). But you cannot say *"She is willing and going to help" for "She is willing to help, and she is going to help." "Is going" seems to be different to structures BE+Adjective. Count Truthstein (talk) 17:52, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Good observation. This is likely because BE+WILLING and BE+ABLE are of the same class (BE+ADJ) of modal auxiliary, whereas BE+GOING is of a different class (Durational aspect -- BE+VERBing) altogether.Drew.ward (talk) 17:52, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Like I just said, these are not modal verbs, which is the subject of this article. So they are irrelevant to this article. Maybe they could go in the English grammar article, or someplace like that. But putting these in this Modal verb article would fly in the face of the rule that we have to go by the sources -- and the sources, including the most authoritative of them, say that these are not modal verbs. Duoduoduo (talk) 18:35, 2 June 2011 (UTC). Or better yet, with sufficient sourcing it could be put in as an extension to English verbs#Modal constructions and/or Linguistic modality#Lexical expression. Duoduoduo (talk) 18:51, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

OK first of all these are modal verbs because by definition, a verb that expresses mood IS a modal verb. If you are to say that you have to follow a "rule" that forces you to abide by certain sources (even though someone has added these sources and could easily add any other sources as well), then how do you choose which sources to use and which to not? "the sources, including the most authoritative of them, say that these are not modal verbs." You're basing the idea of excluding all but the few single form modal auxiliaries in English from the category of modal verb based on what you've pulled from Palmer. Palmer is certainly one of the top people in the world on mood/modality. I've read several of his books myself. However in the work that is cited here, he focusses on mood and modality (and in particular the various methods of attempting to classify the various moods which even he points out is far far from being even close to complete). He puts very little emphasis on the various ways in which languages express mood as that's simply not the focus of his book. His listing that you have cited on p. 33 is by no means meant to be interpreted as exhaustive or as limiting. If you were to follow this logic, then you would leave English with the inability to express all but a few moods and even those only in certain specific instances.

A modal is anything that expresses mood. This can be a word, an inflection, vocal stress or tone, an adverb, etc. A modal verb is any verb that expresses mood. Languages like German and English often express mood via auxiliaries (just as they express tense, aspect, perfection, and agreement through auxiliaries). This particular type of auxiliary is a modal auxiliary. Anything with at least one verbal component, that can occupy a verbal position other than that of the 'main verb', do not express the primary idea of the utterance, and can agree with the subject for person and number, and further qualify the assertion of the verb with one or more moods, is an auxiliary modal, regardless of whether it be a single verb with one form, a group of them, a declined verb, whatever. If it can, as a unit, act as an auxiliary while expressing mood, then it is a modal auxiliary.Drew.ward (talk) 17:52, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

You would like the standard terminology to be "a verb that expresses mood IS a modal verb", and I too think that that would be a good way to use terminology. But that's not the way the terminology is. Wikipedia does indeed have a rule that you have to go by the sources. You say "There are tons of them [English modal verbs]! I've already isolated 16 separate morphosyntactic primary classes of them in English alone (with several sub-classes within those)": that's original research, and as you know that's not allowed on Wikipedia.

I have several references for my assertion:

• Palmer, whose Mood and Modality I mentioned above, treats "modal", "modal verb", and "modal auxiliary" as synonymous. When he says "the modal verbs are..." and lists them, he does not say "The modal verbs include...."

Here are some more references:

Several appear in Aarts, Bas; and Meyer, Charles (eds.) The Verb in Contemporary English, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1995:

• Aarts, Bas, and Meyer, Charles. "Introduction: Theoretical and descriptive approaches to the study of the verb in English". On p. 9, line 4ff. "modal verb" is used synonymously with "modal" and "modal auxiliary"
• Coates, Jennifer. (Chapter 8) "Root and Epistemic Possibility in English". It uses "modal" and "modal auxiliary" interchangeably throughout.
• Aarts, Jan; and Aarts, Flor. (Chapter 9) "'Find' and 'Want': A corpus-based study in verb complementation." On p. 163 it uses "modal" and "modal auxiliary" interchangeably.
• Svartvik, Jan, and Ekehahl, Olof. (Chapter 15) "Verbs in public and private speaking." On pp. 278 and 280 it uses "modal" and "modal verb" interchangeably.

Also:

• Warner, Anthony R. English Auxiliaries. Cambridge Univ. Press, 1993. It uses "modal" and "modal auxiliary" interchangeably.
• Ogawa, Hiroshi. Old English Modal Verbs: A Syntactical Study. Rosenkilde and Bagger (publ.), 1989. It uses "Modal Verbs" right there in the title, and starting on p. 1 and for the rest of the book it uses "modal auxiliaries" interchangeably with "modal verbs".

Those are some references that support my position that, like it or not, "modal verb" and "modal" are used only in the narrow sense of "modal auxiliaries". What references can you offer to support your position? Duoduoduo (talk) 19:56, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

The classification system I'd mentioned is original research (published and well cited but original) and while I think it would be quite useful on wikipedia, I would leave it to someone else to reference it rather than doing so myself (this has happened with other things I've published).

I am familiar with your sources, and they are fine sources. But, they are not necessarily any more or less correct than anything else found on the net or in any other book. A lot of these are 20+ years old which in linguistics is pretty ancient because we are always learning something new and changing our understanding of how languages work (and often disproving what we once thought to be set in stone.

It doesn't matter how these sources use the terms modal, modal verb, modal auxiliary, or auxiliary. The purpose of wikipedia is not to create a word for word article from these sources. If that were the case we would just call these guys up and ask them to write the article. Again though, if Palmer or any of these others were to write such an article on here it would be original research same as anything else. The problem with a young science (and modern linguistics is really only about a hundred years old) is that there is not any universal agreement on terminology, and often not on definitions, and even when agreement exists on such things, that agreement may be based on huge misunderstandings of the concepts at hand.

Wikipedia provides the opportunity to rectify such ambiguous misleading situations by developing simple articles that while backed up by sources, do not adhere solely to what those sources say. This is editing by consensus and sometimes that makes for incorrect articles and sometimes not. Wikipedia has the potential to be better than any single source and that's why this sort of discussion component works well.

Plus, think about it logically, if you were to use your thinking here you'd be limited to CAN/COULD for ability and MUST obligation/necessity. "I can read" (present good) "I could read when I was young" (past good) "I will can read when I'm old and grey" (future bad). "I must leave" (present good) "I musted* leave" (past bad) "I shall must leave" (future bad). If you use these lists that you keep citing, and go with the definition of modal=modal verb=modal auxiliary, then something's really wrong here. How would you fix these examples?Drew.ward (talk) 00:51, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

The article already mentions the fact that the modal auxiliaries have a defective conjugation. If you want to add more details about how to be able to, be capable of, know how to, etc. can be used to replace the missing forms of can, I'm sure everyone would be fine with that, as long as (1) it's sourced, and (2) it's kept clear that there is a special subclass of modal verbs (defined by morphosyntactic criteria) that includes can but not be able to, know how to, etc.

I have to disagree with your more general ideas about Wikipedia. The articles do not strive to be simple, but complete (much to the annoyance of people who come here looking for quick answers to grammar questions). But they do have to adhere solely to the cited sources. You have misunderstood the policy against WP:OR: If your ideas about modal auxiliaries have been published, then they do not constitute original research on Wikipedia. (If you are the author of these publications, then you need to keep in mind WP:COS.) Go ahead and make the changes you're obviously itching to make. But the scope of the article and the amount of space to be devoted to competing/non-traditional viewpoints will ultimately be determined by consensus among editors. CapnPrep (talk) 13:21, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

Drew.Ward, if you have published the alternative definitions, have your publications been refereed? If not, then as you said and contrary to what CapnPrep said, they are original research, and your own unrefereed articles or web postings cannot be used as appropriate sources. I would guess that when you say you've published them, you mean you've posted them on your website. Duoduoduo (talk) 17:52, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

Actually duo yes they have been published, cited, referenced (including on wp), and have been used by authors, editors, and publishers to improve the accuracy of grammar, teaching, and ESL books. Perhaps rather than attacking me, since you feel confident that you are correct and I'm not, you could redirect these efforts toward answering the question I proposed for you above. If your version is correct, what are the answers?Drew.ward (talk) 21:10, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

I must have missed the part where I attacked you! I asked if your pubs that you refer to were refereed, and implicitly asked if my assumption is correct that when you say you've published them, you mean you've posted them on your website. No attack there, just a question that you still haven't answered, and a question that is relevant to the issue of suitability as Wikipedia cites.

You say I should answer the question you proposed above. Here is your question, verbatim:

if you were to use your thinking here you'd be limited to CAN/COULD for ability and MUST obligation/necessity. "I can read" (present good) "I could read when I was young" (past good) "I will can read when I'm old and grey" (future bad). "I must leave" (present good) "I musted* leave" (past bad) "I shall must leave" (future bad). If you use these lists that you keep citing, and go with the definition of modal=modal verb=modal auxiliary, then something's really wrong here. How would you fix these examples?

The reason I didn't answer this is that I have no idea what you are trying to ask. What's to fix? The verbs that are universally and exclusively (except by you) called the modal verbs are defective, as the article says and as CapnPrep reiterated above. Often they can't cover the past or future, as in your example "I musted* leave" or "I will can read". So English conveys these ideas using verbs that the literature does not call modal verbs ("I had to leave", "I will be able to read").

It looks to me like this thread has reached the end of its usefulness. The issue at the beginning of the thread was whether the article is about modal verbs or about modal auxiliaries. It's about both, since the literature defines them synonymously. I've demonstrated this with my citations, all of which are valid as Wikipedia sources, and I've not been contradicted by any other sources that are valid as Wikipedia sources. Like I said, I think it would be nice if your desired distinction between "modal verb" and "modal auxiliary" were the accepted distinction -- but it's not. Duoduoduo (talk) 00:09, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

You've answered the question as to whether modal auxiliaries only include that one list of verbs. You've instinctually chosen HAD and BE+ABLE and used them as auxiliaries in order to express those moods in those situations. Thus showing that even in your own lexicon HAVE and BE+ABLE are in fact modal auxiliaries even though they're not in any of the prescribed lists you're saying should be the standard for this article. Drew.ward (talk) 01:06, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

We need a reliable source to say that a "modal verb" is defined as a verb or multiple word construction which expresses modality, with no further restrictions. If your writings meet this criteria, please provide details. Count Truthstein (talk) 20:17, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

There is a discussion at Talk:English_grammar#.22Used_to.22_as_an_auxiliary_verb which is related. Count Truthstein (talk) 20:17, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

±== Mandarin Chinese ==

What is meant by Mandarin Chinese? Do you mean "classical written Chinese" or the now modern and official "Putonghua" that is now the official language of The PRC? For example, the statement in the article "They cannot be modified by intensifiers such as "very"" is not true when applied to Putonghua. 86.162.139.31 (talk) 14:34, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

An example is “我(I)太(very)愿意(be willing to)去(go)了”. What is more, since word formation in Chinese is different from that in English, one can never make a "complete list of modal verbs in Chinese".三猎 (talk) 03:58, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Odd disagreement

Hello,

The opening paragraph is a bit contrary to the definition of modality. The page is this:

"..is a type of auxiliary verb that is used to indicate modality – that is, likelihood, ability, permission, and obligation."

To me, this suggests that modality is simply "likelihood, ability, permission, and obligation". However, the Linguistic modality page states that "modality is what allows speakers to attach expressions of belief, attitude and obligation to statements"

I find the current diction on this page to be a bit confusing and misleading. Perhaps it should be changed?

192.5.110.4 (talk) 05:46, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

For me the two definitions are saying almost the same thing, in different words. How would you change it (them)? Victor Yus (talk) 08:55, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

I agree with OP. The current definition seems limiting to me. Modality can express a lot more than the four things listed. It can express other ideas like: desire, advice, suggestion, warning, belief, etc.

For me the biggest issue is that "likelihood, ability, permission, and obligation." reads as if these were the only four things that modality expresses, as if it was an exhaustive list. — Preceding unsigned comment added by B23Rich (talk • contribs) 18:14, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

German "do"?

"German, Afrikaans, and West Frisian never use "do" as an auxiliary verb for any function"
E.g. [www.zeno.org/Literatur/M/Gottsched,+Johann+Christoph/Theoretische+Schriften/Grundlegung+der+deutschen+Sprachkunst/II.+Theil%3A+Die+Wortforschung/Das+VI+Hauptst%C3%BCck/V+Abschnitt] has "ich thue essen" (= "ich esse"; Engl.: "I do eat" = "I eat").
So, doesn't or at least didn't the German "do" - i.e. "t[h]un" - function like an auxiliary or modal verb? -84.161.15.243 (talk) 10:45, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

It sometimes does in Swiss German dialects at least, especially in "simple" language (e.g. when talking to a child): "Tue das nöd mache." (do that not make/do). But that would just make it an auxiliary verb a bit like the English do, NOT a modal verb. The question whether a language uses "do" (or its respecitve counterpart) in connection with a modal verb is not really a relevant one for German and its variants, since every verb, including modal verbs, has an infinitive form and (usually) a past participle -- so of course you can use it with an auxiliary verb. Trigaranus (talk) 21:15, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

"Had better" is productive

"The verbs/expressions dare, ought to, had better, and need not behave like modal auxiliaries to a large extent, although they are not productive "

I can't speak for non-North American dialects, but the modal verb "had better" (also stated as "better", "had best" and "best") is definitely more productive than "shall" in North American English.

"You had better leave" = "You better leave" = "You best leave" = "You had best leave". — Preceding unsigned comment added by B23Rich (talk • contribs) 17:52, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

English modals and past tense

English modals don't really have a past tense conjugation in the usual sense, but it's noticeable that many of them come in pairs, where one member of the pair ends in a [d] or [t] sound and has a more hypothetical or "subjunctive" meaning than the other member of the pair which doesn't end in [d] or [t]: will/would, shall/should, may/might, can/could (also dare/durst back when "dare" was a full modal, and "I durstn't" meant "I wouldn't dare").
So the bit in the article about "may" not having a past tense "mayed" is rather unfortunate, since at least some people would say that "might" fills that inflectional slot... AnonMoos (talk) 15:55, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

"Lucas Shaw"

At the end of the lead it says: "In English and other Germanic languages, modal verbs are often distinguished as a class based on Lucas Shaw." Am I the only one who has no idea what this is supposed to mean?

Emptybathtub (talk) 15:56, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

English

modals 175.176.71.29 (talk) 02:10, 27 August 2022 (UTC)

English

Modal and modal verbs difference 2405:201:5C0B:6027:E9AA:665A:DA4D:7667 (talk) 11:58, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

Russian

New section needed under "in other languages". RadioactiveBoulevardier (talk) 23:37, 27 December 2022 (UTC)