Реферат The translation of the modal verbs: "may, might, can, could, would, should"

exhaustive list of modal verbs in English.in the same row share the same etymological root. Because of semantic drift, however, words in the same row may no longer be proper translations of each other. In addition, the English and German verbs will are completely different in meaning, and the German one has nothing to do with constructing the future tense. These words are false friends.English, the plural and singular forms are identical. For German and Dutch, both the plural and singular form of the verb are shown.note that the words in this list are not translations of each other. (See above.) German Dutch kцnnen, kann kunnen, kan sollen, soll zullen, zal wollen, will willen, wil mцgen, mag mogen, mag

The English could is the past tense of can; should is the past tense of shall; and might is the past tense of may. (This is ignoring the use of "may" as a vestige of the subjunctive mood in English.) These verbs have acquired an independent, present tense meaning. The German verb mцchten is sometimes taught as a vocabulary word and included in the list of modal verbs, but it is actually the past subjunctive form of mцgen. An example of the subjective use of "may" in English is in the sentence "That may be, or may not be," meaning "That could be true, but maybe it is not." English verbs dare and need have both a modal use (he dare not do it), and a non-modal use (he doesn't dare to do it). The Dutch verb durven is not considered a modal (but it is there, nevertheless) because its modal use has disappeared, but it has a non-modal use analogous with the English dare. Other English modal verbs include want, wish, hope, and like. All of these differ from the main modals in English (ie most of those in the table above) in that they take the particle to in the infinitive, like all other English verbs (may; to want), and are followed by to when they are used as a modal (may go; want to go). Some may be more than one word, such as "had better" and "would rather." Modal verbs are preterite-present verbs, which means that their present tense has the form of a vocalic preterite. This is the source of the vowel alternation between singular and plural in German and Dutch. Because of their preterite origins, modal verbs also lack the suffix (-s in modern English,-t in German and Dutch) that would normally mark the third person singular form: verb modal verb he works he can

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