Modal verb

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Modal verb ( Latin verbum modale ) is a term used in linguistics for certain verbs that express a modality - i.e. H. essentially: concepts of necessity or possibility - to serve.

In German , the six verbs may, can, like, must, should and want are usually listed as modal verbs. ( Must, should, want denote necessities of various kinds and may, may, like possibilities of various kinds). In German grammars, modal verbs often appear as a separate subtype of the verb alongside auxiliary verbs , functional verbs , copula verbs and full verbs . But they are often referred to as modal auxiliary verbs . In the grammar of English it is also common to refer to modal verbs as auxiliary verbs ( modal auxiliaries ). However, there are also languages ​​in which modal verbs cannot easily be distinguished from full verbs.

Modal verbs are a typical, but not the only, way of expressing modality ; There are also many languages ​​that denote modality by an affix (e.g. an ending) to a main verb. Other types of words (e.g. adverbs ) or syntactic constructions are also used to express modality.

History of the term modal verb

The “modal verb” category was absent from the original Greco-Latin grammar tradition. A number of early grammarians, such as Johannes Clajus , Johannes Kromayer , Christian Gueintz , Johann Balthasar Antesperg , dealt with the subject of modal verbs , especially with regard to the question of assignment to the term tense or mode. At the beginning of the 19th century, the term modal verb finally made its way into German grammarography or was described there more often. It was August Ferdinand Bernhardi (1801) who assigned the German modal verbs must, can, like and should as well as the indicative , subjunctive , optative and imperative modes to the modality moments reality, randomness, possibility and necessity.

Modal verbs in German

Modal verbs as a grammatical class in German

The modal verbs of German occur in connection with an infinitive without zu and as a group also show a number of peculiarities in their formation ( inflection ). Modal verbs in the present tense are characterized by identical forms of the 1st and 3rd person singular, as is the case with other verbs only in the past tense: I should - he should as I came - he came . The verb know also has this peculiarity (I know - he knows) , but does not count as a modal verb. Knowing and the modal verbs (except to want ) are grouped together under the name of preteritopresentia according to their type of education .

In addition to the “classic” modal verbs may, can, like, must, should and want, there are other verbs or usage variants of verbs that can function as modal verbs. So the verb need is used in conjunction with a negative as a modal verb; the construction then means "do not have to": 

Er braucht nicht zu bezahlen.
Er braucht keine Hausaufgaben zu machen.

Need then is an exception because it is a to -Infinitiv appear (colloquially but also with infinitive without to ). In addition to its function as an auxiliary verb of the future tense, the auxiliary verb werden also has modal uses: 

Wenn er es sagt, wird es schon stimmen.

In addition, in the present tense the conjugation series of the subjunctive II of like (would like, would like, etc .: I would like to drink a cup of coffee) is often perceived as an independent modal verb, meaning a weakening of want (I want to drink a cup of coffee) , analogous to the couple should (you should call the boss) and must (you have to call the boss immediately) . Many German speakers are not aware that would and may correspond morphologically as well as could and can . The ascertainable distance between the standard meanings of would like (wish to do, wish to have) and like (guess, find likeable, like to eat) as well as the relative frequency of would with relatively rare occurrences of like in the spoken language obscure the relationship between these forms, different from could (can maybe) and can (actually can).

Modal verbs are often used with the effect of a request or a prohibition (you should do this! You must not do this!) ; they themselves lack explicit imperative forms .

Modal verbs are used in German grammar as a separate group due to their various peculiarities, but are often also referred to as modal auxiliary verbs or auxiliary verbs of the modus , whereby the auxiliary verbs in the narrower sense are called temporal auxiliary verbs or auxiliary verbs of time .

In older descriptions sometimes even the verb was let counted in the group of modal verbs; however, this does not denote a modality, only its syntactic behavior is similar to that of modal verbs.

Special features in the syntax of the German modal verbs

The main verb, which is actually expected together with a modal verb, can be omitted in German in some cases (especially a verb of movement with a destination, such as to go, drive, travel, ... ), so that the modal verb alone forms the predicate of the sentence and a response to what is not mentioned Main verb related adverbial or object appears as belonging to the modal verb: 

Ich will nach Hause [gehen]. Du musst in die Schule [gehen]. Er kann kein Latein [sprechen oder verstehen].

The infinite verb can also be replaced by a pronoun (es, das) . The modal verb then appears formally like a transitive main verb, the direct object of which is the pronoun: 

Ich will es. Das darfst du nicht. Er hat es nicht gekonnt.

The verbs want and like (especially in the subjunctive II) can also be used with an object sentence : 

Sie wollte, dass die Diskussion beendet wird. Ich möchte, dass du kommst.

Here, too, want and like behave like pure full verbs. The subject of the subordinate clause is usually different from that of the main clause.

In connection with an infinitive, the modal verb forms a compound predicate together with it (modal verbs therefore do not allow incoherent construction ).

The German modal verbs show two different forms in perfect constructions: As the main verb of the sentence, modal verbs form the “normal” past participle with ge + verb stem + -t (“He didn't want it otherwise ”). In connection with an infinitive, however, the so-called substitute infinitive occurs in the perfect and past perfect : "I could not see it ". (In some dialects of German, however, the participle form also appears here.)

In German, modal verbs can also be combined with each other, which is less easy in other languages: "I want to be allowed to see you."

To redesign the inflection of the modal verbs

Historically, modal verbs also differ from other verbs in terms of their inflection. The form of the 2nd person singular present indicative is striking: in the modal verbs, it was allowed , should and want in the early New High German period as -t ; So: you may , you should and you will . With the beginning of the 15th century is in these three verbs change one by -t gradually by following the example of other verbs -st was replaced, so we now only you must , you must , and you want to know. Such processes are commonly known as analogy . It is noticeable, however, that this process takes place at very different speeds with verbs of the same class (here: the modal verbs): it is already completed around 1530 for the verb may ; With want and should, however , the old forms can still be observed up to the first third of the 19th century. The timing of this language change is based on the Piotrowski law .

Meaning of the modal verbs

Modal verbs in other Germanic languages

The following list shows the historical equivalents of the modal verbs in various Germanic languages . Despite the same construction and similar function, their meanings in the various languages ​​are no longer completely identical.

Etymologically related (no translations)
New English New High German New Dutch New Icelandic Norwegian & Danish
can can can, can kunna, can kunne, kan
shall should, should zullen, zal skulu, scal skulle, scal
want want, want sake, wil vilja, vill ville, vil
must must moen, moen - måtte, må
may like like mega, má -
- († tharf) to be allowed to durven, durf þurfa, þarf -

Modal verbs in the Romance languages

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In the Romance languages , such as Spanish, in addition to the modal verbs and their lexical equivalents, corresponding modes , such as those of the subjunctive , are used more frequently .

literature

Web links

Wiktionary: Modal verb  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ modal = denoting the way, naming the circumstance; from mode "way". See also Duden online: modal
  2. ↑ z. B. Duden - The grammar. 8th edition. Dudenverlag, Mannheim 2009, p. 415ff.
  3. ↑ Ilse Depraetere, Susan Reed: Mood and Modality in English = chap. 12 in: Bas Aarts, April McMahon (Ed.): Handbook of English Linguistics . Blackwell Publishing, Oxford 2006.
  4. ^ Louse Hasemi, Barbara Thomas: Cambridge Grammar for PET. Grammar reference and practice. Cambridge University Press, 2006, p. 74.
  5. ↑ Examples in van der Auwera & Ammann, http://wals.info/chapter/74 (see literature list)
  6. ↑ van der Auwera & Ammann, http://wals.info/chapter/74 (see literature list)
  7. ^ August Ferdinand Bernhardi: Sprachlehre. First part. Pure language teaching. Heinrich Frölich, Berlin 1801.
  8. ↑ Thomas Johnen: To the development of the modal verb category in the grammarography of German (and Portuguese). Pandaemonium germanicum 10 (2006), pp. 283-338.
  9. ↑ Duden - The grammar. 8th edition. Dudenverlag, Mannheim, p. 558.
  10. ↑ Herber Kolb: About "need" as a modal verb (contributions to a word history). In: Zeitschrift für deutsche Sprache 20, 1964, pp. 64–78.
  11. ↑ Dudengrammatik 2009, p. 557, No. 817.
  12. ^ Karl-Ernst Sommerfeldt , Günter Starke, Werner Hackel: Introduction to the grammar of contemporary German. Walter de Gruyter, 1998, p. 56.
  13. ^ Fritz Strohmeyer, Hans-Wilhelm Klein: French language teaching . Ernst Klett Verlag, ISBN 3-12-521100-X , p. 44.
  14. ↑ W. Delfschläger: T. Robertson's Textbook of English. Edited from French. Second part. Fifth edition, provided with Walker's pronunciation, largely revised. Stuttgart 1863, p. 265.
  15. ^ Karl Ferdinand Becker: Detailed German grammar as a commentary on school grammar. First volume. Second revised edition. Frankfurt am Main 1842, pp. 53, 218-221.
  16. ^ Karl Ferdinand Becker: Organism of the language. 2nd Edition. Kettembeil, Frankfurt am Main 1841, p. 219.
  17. ^ First evaluation: Karl-Heinz Best : On the morphological change of some German verbs. In: Karl-Heinz Best, Jörg Kohlhase (Ed.): Exact language change research. Theoretical contributions, statistical analysis and work areas . edition herodot, Göttingen 1983, ISBN 3-88694-024-1 , pp. 107-118. Repeated presentation of the processes on an improved data basis: Karl-Heinz Best: Quantitative Linguistics. An approximation . 3rd, heavily revised and expanded edition. Peust & Gutschmidt, Göttingen 2006, ISBN 3-933043-17-4 , pp. 106-109.
  18. ↑ The modal meaning is predominantly obsolete, but can still be seen in the construction if you will ...
  19. ↑ Modal verbs German-Spanish overview, hispanoteca.eu ( Memento of the original from July 8, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / hispanoteca.eu