Modal Auxiliary

Summary #

There are nine modal auxiliary verbs: shall, should, can, could, will, would, may, must, might. There are also quasi-modal auxiliary verbs: ought to, need to, has to. ref The modal auxiliaries’ job is to express possibility (hypothesis, futurity, doubt) and necessity (by inference, such-and-such must necessarily be the case); that is, matters beyond the factual here and now. This is known as the . As we spend much time thinking and talking about the irrealis, modal auxiliaries are very common.