A modal auxiliary is a kind of helping
verb, and it's a very specific kind of
helping verb: it's a helping verb that's
often said to express the mood of the
verb phrase,
although mood is in some ways not the
best word to describe this because a lot
of these modal auxiliaries -- they really
express a kind of condition or
possibility. And sometimes it's better to
say that a modal auxiliary expresses the
mode or the manner of a particular verb
phrase. But we'll use this word "mood"
because it does seem to work for a lot
of people, and it seems to be kind of
similar to "modal" so maybe that's
a little bit easier. Let's see how these
modal auxiliaries that we have here
function in different sentences. Well,
actually we'll just look at one sentence
here! Let's say you want to say "I
something -- we'll stick our modal
auxiliary in here ... I something kiss her,"
and you can change the gender as you
like. So if you were to say "can" for
instance ("I can kiss her") then presumably
you would be expressing some kind of
ability. Maybe you're boasting about your
ability to kiss somebody! Not sure why
you would, but you could say "I can kiss
her." But "can" can also mean permission
here, so this can also mean permission. If
you say "I can kiss her" -- right ... she gave me
permission ... then
"can" can express permission. "Could" on
the other hand tends to express more the
possibility of something: "I could kiss
her" -- okay, so the possibility of something.
But it might even express something
like surprise or excitement: "I could kiss
her!" -- you know this is so
exciting ... maybe it expresses something
more like that, and what you can see then
already is that modal auxiliaries are
very much dependent on the kind of
inflection, the tone of your voice, the
context, and that's what makes them hard
for speakers of English who are not
native to the
language. So, you know, these are difficult
sometimes -- especially to figure out what
the mood exactly is, but in this video we
really just want you to be able to
recognize them in a sentence, so that you
can say "Oh yeah, that's a modal auxiliary."
"May" and "might" tend to express
possibility ...
"I may kiss her," but again also
permission here. So if you say "I may"
then she may have given you permission
to do that, or maybe somebody else did
(maybe her father did), although it really
should be left up to her, shouldn't it?
Okay, so we have possibility and
permission. "Might" tends to possibility
much more. Then we have "must" and "ought,"
and these have to do with obligation ...
"I must kiss her" -- I'm not
sure in what context you would use that,
but that is a possibility I suppose.
"Should" has to do with a kind of
condition, or again a kind of obligation.
So "should" is a condition or an
obligation. I should kiss her. It could be
that you you feel obliged to do so, but
it's also a condition, a kind of
hypothetical situation. And "would" fits
into this category too. It's also more
conditional. I would kiss her, but ...
her breath stinks, or, you know, I'm too
shy, or who knows what. Then we have
"shall" and "will," and these indicate
intention and probability most
often. So if you say "I will kiss her" -- you
know, maybe you're intending to do this
in the future, then you can you can use
these modal auxiliaries in this spot
here. As you can see, then, our regular
verb doesn't actually change but we have
used all kinds of different modal
auxiliaries to change the mood, the mode,
the manner
of this sentence, of this expression.
And that's why these modal auxiliaries
are so handy. So just to summarize then,
modal auxiliaries -- they change the mood,
they affect the manner of the verb, and
as you can see here, they don't actually
change their form. They will stay the
same no matter what the tense. So you
know the difficulty is not in spotting
them so much, but it is really in
trying to figure out what kind of mood
they express.