The modal verbs

O. Blinova (2021) MODAL VERBS AS A CHALLENGE IN AN ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASS: THE MODAL SHOULD, EDULEARN21 Proceedings, pp. 204-210., 2021

The paper explores the English modal verb Should and addresses the challenges of introducing it to adult EFL / ESL learners. I focus on the modal meanings of Should: obligation, duty, probability, predictions, as well as unfulfilled actions and obligations (the other uses of Should, such as in conditional clauses, reported speech or in the subjunctive mood, are not the subject of this study). The choice of this particular focus is informed by the needs of the learners: due to its relatively simple form and straightforward range of meaning, Should appears to be a good starting point to introduce lower-level learners to the modal verbs system of English. Then I proceed to analyse common learner issues regarding the modal should (use and meaning, such as using Must for advice instead of Should; confusion resulting from the negative forms of Shouldn't, Mustn't and Don't have to, as well as form and phonology mistakes). I conclude with a series of suggestions that EFL / ESL teachers can use in their classroom practices to help their learners avoid these mistakes (these include awareness raising activities, focus on meaning rather than form, and written production).

2016

Modal auxiliary verbs, such as could, might, must, would, and others, have di↵erent readings depending on the context in which they occur (Kratzer 1981[45]). The sentence 'Jess could fry the fish' can mean that, in a time previous to the utterance of the sentence, Jess had the ability to fry the fish, or it can mean that, at the time of the utterance, Jess frying the fish is a possible event. Modal auxiliary verbs often create intensional environments, leading the events described by the second verb to be understood to be non-actual events. When the readings are described as being determined by a context, it is often a broad notion of nonlinguistic and extra-sentential linguistic context that is the focus of the interpretation. For example, descriptive pragmatic constraints are used in Lewis 1973[54] and Kratzer 1981[45] to characterize types of accessibility relations and types of orderings of worlds. A large part of the meaning of modal auxiliary verbs, however, centers around how the events described by the second verb are situated relative to the time at which the sentence containing the modal auxiliary is used. Information about the temporal situation of an event is conveyed through the linguistic context in which a modal auxiliary verb occurs, including, but not limited to, lexical properties of the linguistic expressions describing the event in the scope of the modal auxiliary, lexical properties of the modal auxiliary itself, and temporal and aspectual marking on linguistic expressions in the verbal projections. In order to provide a framework for representing the interactions of tense, aspect, and modality, a fragment of English is given in a Multi-Modal Combinatorial Categorial Grammar (Baldridge & Kruij↵[6], Steedman 2012[93]). Modal auxiliaries are given verb-like lexical entries in the grammar using lexical entries that combine features from Villavicenio 2002[101] and standard attribute value matrices of Head Driven Phrase

Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers. , 2006

Several researchers have pointed out that the verbal group, being an obligatory element of the clause structure, carries high syntactic and semantic loads. As such, it is an area of maximum divergence and one of the most difficult aspects to master particularly by learners of English as a second language. On this note, this paper discusses the English auxiliary verbs, being integral components of the verbal group. The discussion is done through reviewing the works of different authors on the auxiliaries distinguishing the two sets-the primary auxiliaries (have, be & do) and the modal auxiliaries (can, could, dare, may, might, must, need, ought, shall, should, will & would). Each set of the auxiliaries are discussed with much emphasis on different usages to illustrate how crucial the auxiliaries are, as far as the conjugation of the verbal group is concerned.

2020

The aim of the study described in this paper is to verify whether the structure of a modal predicate influences the type of modality expressed by the English modal verb should. The study uses language samples excerpted from The corpus of contemporary American English. It has adopted the model of the semantic field of modal expressions proposed by Angelika Kratzer. Additionally, this framework has been used to determine types of modality in this study. The analysis focuses on the interaction within the semantic field of the modal should with various forms of the main verb within the modal predicate structure.

2007

This paper shows how the indiscriminate combination of the form-function criterion in the traditional presentation of modal verbs brings more confusion than light to the subject due mostly to the fact that the grammatical simplicity of modal verbs clashes with their semantic complexity. In order to verify the treatment of modals in the EFL classroom, both a reduced but representative sample of textbooks and English grammar books will be analysed. Based on the findings of research conducted in this field, this article concludes that when studying modals in the EFL classroom the pragmatic uses of modal verbs should be primed over potential polysemic often indeterminate semantic values and/or grammatical criteria based on a higher or lower rank of graded modality.

A great number of scholars have long dealt with the question “what is modality” and it is still a much-examined topic, especially from a cross-linguistic point of view. The aim of this paper is to examine the use of English modal verbs by native speakers and German students of English in an academic setting. More precisely, it aims to compare and contrast the employment of the modal verbs may, might, must, ought to, shall and should in the BAWE (British Academic Written English) and the ICLE (International Corpus of Learner English) corpora. The data recovered from the quantitative and qualitative analyses will not only be deployed to show the similar and different linguistic strategies native and non-native speakers enact, but will also be used to understand the motives underlying the differences and similarities. While the modal verbs can, could, will and would are used very similarly by both native and German mother-tongue speakers and thus not particularly interesting material to analyse, the remaining modal verbs produce results that are more engaging when trying to understand the different approaches native and non-native speakers have towards the English language. In fact, native speakers’ use of may, might, must, ought to, shall and should discloses a wider but at the same time more specific range of usage, unlike German mother-tongue speakers who, being bound by grammar rules, find it hard to use these modals in such a flexible and versatile manner. It would seem that the errors that occur in the German mother-tongue speakers’ use of these modals could indeed be explained by the lack of a true equivalence between these English modals and their German counterparts and by the interference played upon the foreign language by the mother-tongue.

Atlantis, 2006

This paper shows how the indiscriminate combination of the form-function criterion in the traditional presentation of modal verbs brings more confusion than light to the subject due mostly to the fact that the grammatical simplicity of modal verbs clashes with their semantic complexity. In order to verify the treatment of modals in the EFL classroom, both a reduced but representative sample of textbooks and English grammar books will be analysed. Based on the findings of research conducted in this field, this article concludes that when studying modals in the EFL classroom the pragmatic uses of modal verbs should be primed over potential polysemic often indeterminate semantic values and/or grammatical criteria based on a higher or lower rank of graded modality.