The following verbs have all of the above properties, and can be classed as the principal modal verbs of English. Thus, they often have deviating second-person singular forms, which still may be heard in quotes from the Bible (as in thou shalt not steal) or in poetry. ^ However, they used to be conjugated by person and number, but with the preterite endings.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.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 function as auxiliary verbs: they modify the modality of another verb, which they govern.They are defective: they are not used as infinitives or participles (except occasionally in non-standard English see § Double modals below), nor as imperatives, nor (in the standard way) as subjunctives.They do not add the ending -(e)s in the third-person singular (the present-tense modals therefore follow the preterite-present paradigm). They do not inflect (in the modern language) except insofar as some of them come in present–past (present– preterite) pairs.The verbs customarily classed as modals in English have the following properties: 10 Comparison with other Germanic languages.6 Contractions and reduced pronunciation.
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