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The modal verbs of English are a small class of auxiliary verbs used mostly to express modality (properties such as possibility, obligation, etc.). They can be distinguished from other verbs by their defectiveness (they do not have participle or infinitive forms) and by the fact that they do not take the ending ''-(e)s'' in the third-person singular. The principal English modal verbs are ''can'', ''could'', ''may'', ''might'', ''must'', ''shall'', ''should'', ''will'' and ''would''. Certain other verbs are sometimes, but not always, classed as modals; these include ''ought'', ''had better'', and (in certain uses) ''dare'' and ''need''. Verbs which share some but not all of the characteristics of the principal modals are sometimes called "semimodals". ==Modal verbs and their features== The verbs customarily classed as modals in English have the following properties: *They do not inflect, except insofar as some of them come in present–past (present–preterite) pairs. They do not add the ending ''-(e)s'' in the third-person singular (the present-tense modals therefore follow the preterite-present paradigm). *They are defective: they are not used as infinitives or participles (except occasionally in non-standard English; see below), nor as imperatives, nor (in the standard way) as subjunctives. *They function as auxiliary verbs: they modify the meaning of another verb, which they govern. This verb generally appears as a bare infinitive, although in some definitions a modal verb can also govern the ''to''-infinitive (as in the case of ''ought''). *They have the syntactic properties associated with auxiliary verbs in English, principally that they can undergo subject–auxiliary inversion (in questions, for example) and can be negated by the appending of ''not'' after the verb. The following verbs have all of the above properties, and can be classed as the principal modal verbs of English. They are listed here in present–preterite pairs where applicable: *''can'' and ''could'' *''may'' and ''might'' *''shall'' and ''should'' *''will'' and ''would'' *''must'' (no preterite; see etymology below) Note that the preterite forms are not necessarily used to refer to past time, and in some cases they are near synonyms to the present forms. Note that most of these so-called preterite forms are most often used in the subjunctive mood in the present tense. The auxiliary verbs ''may'' and ''let'' are also used often in the subjunctive mood. Famous examples of these are "May The Force be with you," and "Let God bless you with good." These are both sentences that express some uncertainty, hence they are subjunctive sentences. The verbs listed below mostly share the above features, but with certain differences. They are sometimes, but not always, categorized as modal verbs.〔See Palmer, F. R., ''Mood and Modality'', Cambridge Univ. Press, second edition, 2001, p. 33, and ''A Linguistic Study of the English Verb'', Longmans, 1965. For an author who rejects ''ought'' as a modal because of the following particle ''to'' (and does not mention ''had better''), see Warner, Anthony R., ''English Auxiliaries'', Cambridge Univ. Press, 1993. For more examples of discrepancies between different authors' listings of modal or auxiliary verbs in English, see English auxiliaries.〕 They may also be called "semimodals". *The verb ''ought'' differs from the principal modals only in that it governs a ''to''-infinitive rather than a bare infinitive (compare ''he should go'' with ''he ought to go''). *The verbs ''dare'' and ''need'' can be used as modals, often in the negative (''Dare he fight?''; ''You dare not do that.''; ''You need not go.''), although they are more commonly found in constructions where they appear as ordinary inflected verbs (''He dares to fight''; ''You don't need to go''). There is also a dialect verb, nearly obsolete but sometimes heard in Appalachia and the Deep South of the United States: ''darest'', which means "dare not", as in "You darest do that." *The verb ''had'' in the expression ''had better'' behaves like a modal verb, hence ''had better'' (considered as a compound verb) is sometimes classed as a modal or semimodal. *The verb ''used'' in the expression ''used to (do something)'' can behave as a modal, but is more often used with ''do''-support than with auxiliary-verb syntax: ''Did she used to do it?'' (or ''Did she use to do it?'') and ''She didn't used to do it'' (or ''She didn't use to do it'') are more common than ''Used she to do it?'' and ''She used not (usedn't) to do it''. Other English auxiliaries appear in a variety of inflected forms and are not regarded as modal verbs. These are: *''be'', used as an auxiliary in passive voice and continuous aspect constructions; it follows auxiliary-verb syntax even when used as a copula, and in auxiliary-like formations such as ''be going to'', ''is to'' and ''be about to''; *''have'', used as an auxiliary in perfect aspect constructions, including the idiom ''have got (to)''; it is also used in ''have to'', which has modal meaning, but here (as when denoting possession) ''have'' only rarely follows auxiliary-verb syntax (see also ''must'' below); *''do''; see ''do''-support. For more general information about English verb inflection and auxiliary usage, see English verbs and English clause syntax. For details of the uses of the particular modals, see below. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「English modal verbs」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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