AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE USE OF SEMIMODAL VERBS IN POLITICAL NEWS

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
QUY NHON UNIVERSITY

NGUYỄN THỊ THẢO NGA

AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE USE OF SEMIMODAL VERBS IN POLITICAL NEWS

FIELD: English Linguistics
CODE: 8.22.02.01

Supervisor: BÙI THỊ ĐÀO, Ph.D.


GI O
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Đ

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Ọ QU

NGUYỄN THỊ THẢO NGA

Đ ỀU TRA VỀ VIỆC SỬ DỤ
BÁ P

ĐỘNG TỪ

T ỨC TRONG TIN TỨC CHÍNH TRỊ

:
: 8.22.02.01

: TS. Bù T ị Đ o


I

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP
I hereby declare that this master thesis has been written by myself, and
describes my own work that I have not used any sources other than those
listed in the list of references.
All references or sources of information have been specifically
acknowledged, and are presented in the references. Moreover, verbatim
extracts also have been quoted in detail.
This thesis has not been submitted for the award of any previous
application for other degree or diploma in any other tertiary institution.


II

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Foremost, I would like to express my special thanks and gratitude to
my supervisor, Dr. Bui Thi Dao for the continuous support of my MA thesis,
for her patience, motivation, enthusiasm, and immense knowledge. Her
guidance helped me in all the time of research and writing of this thesis.
Beside my supervisor, I am extremely grateful to the lectures who gave
me valuable knowledge and experiences which have contributed to the

foundation of my thesis.
I express my thanks to my friends for encouraging me and providing
me with needed materials.
I am very much thankful to my beloved family for their love, caring,
understanding and nonstop support to complete this research work.


III

ABSTRACT
The study is to investigate the types of semi-modal verbs and their
semantic aspects used in political news. The data is collected from 30 pieces
of political news from CNN website. The study is conducted mainly with
quantitative methods combining with some qualitative methods for
explanation and discussion. The findings reveal that out of the four categories
of semi-modal verbs under investigation, semi-auxiliaries are the most
commonly used category with a high rate, while modal idioms stand in the
lowest position. In terms of semantic features, extrinsic modality and intrinsic
modality are examined to recognize the speakers‘ attitude. Extrinsic modality
is expressed by semi-modal verbs with 87 cases in total in order to reveal the
speakers‘ judgement of the events. With less frequency, intrinsic modality is
presented in 67 times by semi-modal verbs so as to show the human control
over the actions.


IV

TABLE OF CONTENTS

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP .............................................................. I

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ........................................................................... II
ABSTRACT ................................................................................................III
TABLE OF CONTENTS ........................................................................... IV
LIST OF TABLE........................................................................................ VI
LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................................. VII
CHAPTER 1 ................................................................................................. 1
INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................ 1
1.1. Rationale ................................................................................................ 1
1.2. Aim and Objectives .............................................................................. 3
1.2.1. Aim .............................................................................................. 3
1.2.2. Objectives .................................................................................... 3
1.3. Research Questions .............................................................................. 3
1.4. Scope of the Study ................................................................................ 4
1.5. Significant of the Study ........................................................................ 4
1.6. Organization of the Study ................................................................... 5

CHAPTER 2 ................................................................................................. 6
LITERATURE REVIEW ............................................................................ 6
2.1. Literature Review ................................................................................ 6
2.2. Theoretical Background .................................................................... 10
2.2.1. An overview of modality ........................................................... 10
2.2.2. Definition and types of semi-modal verbs ................................. 12
2.2.3. The semantic characteristics of semi-modal verbs .................... 22
2.2.4. Political news ............................................................................. 25
2.3. Theoretical framework ...................................................................... 26
2.4. Summary ............................................................................................. 26


V

CHAPTER 3 ............................................................................................... 28
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY .............................................................. 28
3.1. Research Design ................................................................................. 28
3.2. Data Collection ................................................................................... 29
3.2.1. Description of corpus ................................................................. 29
3.2.2. Corpus compilation procedure ................................................... 32
3.2.3. Procedure of Data Collection ..................................................... 33
3.2.4. Data analysis .............................................................................. 34
3.3. Reliability and Validity ..................................................................... 34
3.4. Summary ............................................................................................. 35

CHAPTER 4 ............................................................................................... 36
FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION ................................................................ 36
4.1. Marginal verbs ................................................................................... 38
4.2. Modal idioms ...................................................................................... 40
4.3. Semi-auxiliaries .................................................................................. 41
4.4. Catenative verbs ................................................................................. 50
4.5. Summary ............................................................................................. 52

CHAPTER 5 ............................................................................................... 54
CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS ................................................. 54
5.1. Concluding remarks .......................................................................... 54
5.2. Pedagogical implications ................................................................... 56
5.3. Limitations of the study ..................................................................... 58
5.4. Suggestions for further research ...................................................... 58

REFERENCES .............................................................................................. i
APPENDICES .............................................................................................. v

VI

LIST OF TABLE
Table

Name

Page

2.1

The auxiliary verb-main verb scale

13

2.2

Meanings relating to intrinsic modality and extrinsic

23

modality
2.3

Meanings of marginal auxiliaries

24

2.4

Types of semi-modal verbs in English

26

3.1

The corpus of 30 pieces of political news

30

4.1

Frequencies of occurrence of semi-modal verbs in 30

36

pieces of political news


VII

LIST OF FIGURES
Figure

Name

Page

3.1

String matching of HAVE TO in the corpus

33

4.1

Frequencies of occurrence of semi-modal verbs in 30

37

political news


1

CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
1.1.

Rationale
Generally, political journalism is always the branch that gets people‘s

attention over the world in general and in each country in particular because it
provides the readers the political situation in every place around the world and
the hottest political events. Political reporters use their own languages to
report the political news according to their knowledge and experience through
observing and interviewing or they quote the politicians‘ speeches. As Baym
(Baym, 2005) stated, the lines between entertainment and factual news may
seem faint while providing political updates. According to Morrissey
(Morrissey, 2016), political journalism frequently consists of opinion

journalism, as current political events can be reported with their biased point
of view in their reporting.
The reporters employed the language mechanisms to fulfil their
attempts to initiate, construct and maximize newsworthiness of the news with
the purpose of attracting the audience‘s attention. According to Spolsky
(Spolsky, 1998), ―language is regularly used in the exercise of political
power‖. With the numerousness of political events and the development as
well as the diversity of media channels, attracting the audience‘s attention and
change their mind is becoming a highly hard mission of the news reporters.
With this regard, language seems to be a sufficiently effective method for the
reporter in constructing the newsworthiness in their news. Therefore, reading
the political news requires the readers to have the knowledge not only about


2

political situation but also about the way how to organize the language in the
news to have an overview and objective related to political news.
The linguistic devices stand as the most appropriate means to make the
news be newsworthy with the aim at attracting the audience and influence
their minds. One of the most popular ways the reporters use to fulfill their
purpose is modality which, according to Palmer (Palmer, 1986), is the
semantic information associated with the speaker‘s attitude or opinion toward
what is said. Modality is expressed by a lot of types of linguistic expressions
such as verbs, adjectives, adverbs or lexical expressions. Recently, modality
markers, mainly modal verbs, have been investigated in a lot of research
works of the linguists. Historically, there have been a lot of studies on
characteristics of English modal verbs or the use of modal verbs in articles.
However, a group of verbs which are placed between auxiliaries and
main verbs can also function as modal verb in their semantic features. Quirk

et al.(Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech, & Svartvik, 1985) define them as marginal
auxiliaries consisting of four categories i.e. marginal modals, modal idioms,
semi-auxiliaries, and catenatives. In this study, they are termed as semi-modal
verbs. Alternative names for semi-modal verbs are quasi-modals, periphrastic
modals (Biber et al., 1999) as a combination of the marginal auxiliaries and
the multi-word verbs close to modal verbs in their meaning.
Unfortunately, until now there has been little attention on semi-modal
verbs or only few semi-modal verbs have been under investigation such as
have to, to be to. Political discourse has been investigated by quite a number
of studies; for example, Mihas (Mihas, 2005), Bista (Bista, 2009), Fraser
(Fraser, 2010), Nartey and Yankson (Nartey & Yankson, 2014). Nevertheless,
they mainly concentrated on the elements such as metaphor, hedging in
political communication or the modality in political discourse. Accordingly,


3

gaps addressed in this research are about how semi-modal verbs are used in
political news reports and what meanings constitute through using semimodal verbs that the political news reporters and the politicians hope to
transmit to the audiences.
From the mentioned reasons, a study on semi-modal verbs and their
semantic aspects in the political news is conducted on the theme: An
Investigation into the Uses of Semi-Modal Verbs in Political News
1.2.

Aim and Objectives

1.2.1. Aim
This study aims to investigate the uses of semi - modal auxiliary verbs
in terms of semantic meanings in the political news from CNN channel in

order to recognize the speaker‘s attitude or view to the world.
1.2.2. Objectives
To fulfil the aim of the study, the following objectives are to be
addressed:
 To describe the different types of semi-modal verbs and the frequencies
of usage of the types of semi - modal verbs in the political news
collected from CNN website.
 To investigate the semantic values expressed by semi - modal verbs
used in the political news from CNN website.
1.3.

Research Questions
In order to achieve the aim, and the objectives mentioned above, the

research questions are set as follows:
1. What types and the frequencies of the semi - modal verbs are used in
the political news collected from CNN website?
2. What are the semantic features interpreted of semi - modal verbs
used in the political news collected from CNN website?


4

1.4.

Scope of the Study
This study aims to focus on types and semantic features of semi -

modal verbs including marginal modals, modal idioms, semi-auxiliaries, and
catenatives used in the political news reports collected from CNN website in

2018. For the purpose of describing, semi-modal devices are collected from a
corpus-based method with the help of the software: TexSTAT-2 that has been
widely used by famous researchers in this field (Facchinetti & Palmer
(Facchinetti, Krug, & Palmer, 2003), McCarthy (McCarthy, 2007)). The main
criteria to recognize semantic features of these semi modals are based on the
theory of Quirk et al., (1985). The research is then limited to the investigation
of types and semantic features of semi - modal verbs in English political news
reports only.
CNN stands for Cable News Network is an American news-based paid
television channel and was the first all-news television channel in the United
States. The numbers of political news thereby are extremely diverse and
multi-style. However, within the limit of time and the rapid update of the
website, the researcher cannot cover all the political news from the website.
Consequently, only 30 newsletters of political news by the time from
November 2018 to January 2019 have been collected and investigated in the
thesis.
1.5.

Significant of the Study
Regarding theoretical values, this thesis is the first study into the semi-

modals expressions as well as their semantic properties used in the political
news collected from CNN. This study will make a substantial contribution to
recognize and understand semantic meanings of the semi-modals in the
political news in particular and in English language in general.


5

With respect to practical targets, a detailed description on the types of

the semi-modals and their semantic meanings is conducted in order to achieve
the main purpose that the semi-modals are used effectively. Also, it provides
the methods that help people to explore the various semantic meanings of the
semi-modals to express their speech expected to transmit. Furthermore, the
findings of the research would enable the learners use proficiently the semi modal verbs to express different meanings and the trend how to use semi modal verbs in the political news. In addition, this study will help teachers,
learners of English and those who are really interested in the linguistic field
understand more thoroughly the language they deal with.
1.6.

Organization of the Study
The thesis is organized into five chapters as follows:
Chapter 1. Introduction: introduces the rationale, aims and

objectives, the scope of the study, the research questions, and the design of
the study.
Chapter 2. Literature Review and Theoretical Background: deals
with the literature review, presents the previous studies related to the work,
and the theoretical background related to this study.
Chapter 3. Research Method: mentions on the research methodology,
research procedures, data collection, data analysis, reliability and validity.
Chapter 4. Finding and Discussion: gives the findings of the study
and discussion is made based on the research results.
Chapter

5.

Conclusions

and

Implications:

summarizes

the

conclusions and some implications of the research, gives the limitations and
suggestions for the further study.


6

CHAPTER 2
LITERATURE REVIEW
This chapter is regarding to the definition of the terms which are
directly related to the study and the detailed classification of semi-modal
verbs. Furthermore, some previous studies which provide the scholarly setting
in the thesis are also reviewed.
2.1. Literature Review
Like most of theoretically-based historical studies, semi-modal verbs
have been investigated from the perspectives of both semantic and
grammatical theories of linguistics. In the latest years, modality in political
discourse has not been strange subject because there has been the
development of the study on political discourse in pragmatic perspectives in
which many researches concerned with the different perspectives of the
modals especially the semantic aspect.
Boicu (Boicu, 2007) analyzes one of Mote‘s political speeches in 2006
by examining the speaker‘s use of the modal verbs in their semantic and
pragmatic meanings. In the Mote‘s speech, the modal verbs belonging to the
two main semantic groups, deontic and epistemic are used to perform the

mitigation - that soften both the illocutionary force and the propositional
content of an act sequence and intensifying - that increase the act illocutionary
force and propositional content - politeness strategies. The use of possibility
‗might’ in the speeches indicates mitigation politeness strategy is indicated by
the very use, instead of certainty ‗must’ or stronger possibility ‗may’. ‗Must‘
considered as the strongest on the deontic scale is used to express the
obligation or prohibition in Mote‘s speech can indicate his unambiguous


7

mitigating or aggravating force. The mitigating softer ‗should’ and ‗need to’
prevail over the occurrences of other modal verbs. Furthermore, on the
epistemic meaning scale, only ‗can’t’ is used obviously. The mitigation
politeness strategy helps to protect Mote‘s political allies faces, while the
aggravating politeness strategy is used to damage his political opponents‘
faces.
Shayegh (Shayegh, 2012) states that there are two dimensions to
modality - relational modality and expressive modality-depending on what
direction authority is oriented. The relational modality is used when the
authority of one participant relates to other; meanwhile, the term of the
expressive modality is concerned with the authority of the speaker/writer to
the truth or probability of reality. Basing on the statistics, in King‘s speech
(1967), through the relational modality dimension expressed prominently by a
range of modal auxiliary verbs with the prevalence of MUST, King tries to
seek the approval, support and cooperation of hearers to act together with him
in his succeeding actions while regarding the expressive modality through
mostly WILL, he evaluates the events as truth. Relating to Obama‘s speech
which selected from his interviews (2010), WILL is used with the most
common frequency in order to manifest the expressive modality which

considers different events as the fact matters.
Khalid and Zhang (Khalid & Zhang, 2013) illustrate the frequency of
modal verbs as they occurred in the political speech delivered by the President
Obama and then attempt to explore the speech acts of request of political
speech. The modal verbs ―Can‖, ―Will‖, and ―Must‖ are selected to analyze as
a tool used by the speaker in to realize the speech act of request when he
focuses on them to interact with his interlocutors. The modal verbs are used
mainly in two kinds of sentences, the declarative and interrogative; and the


8

aim of two different sentences is contrary to the internal meaning; therefore,
the illocutionary forces appeared as a request said in an indirect speech. This
indirect speech act is essential in the political speech due to the characteristics
of the political situations and the sake of international significance and has
been said by the speaker in a politeness with illocutionary speech acts.
Milkovich and Sitarica (Milkovich & Sitarica, 2017) conclude that
epistemic modality is used as the means for explaining the politics concerning
the situation by the politicians, without taking full responsibility for the
situation and their own claims. Epistemic modality is used to persuade the
hearers or the voters that what the speakers/politicians is right and reasonable,
even though there are not often firm evidences which would support their
claims. The term epistemic modality is related to the use of modal verbs and
modal auxiliaries, when a speaker expresses an opinion about a statement.
Epistemic modality is used as a hedging device when the speakers often do
not make a firm assertion about the views expressed and avoid having to give
an outright answer to a question put forward by the interviewer, especially in
political discourses.
Regarding Vietnamese researchers, there have been a number of

researches studying modality and modal markers as well as the semantic,
syntactic, and pragmatic aspects of modal expressions in different genres such
as political speeches, short stories, conversations, etc.
Pham Khac Thu (Thu, 2010) examines the semantic and pragmatic
characteristics of modal expressions in political speech by US presidents. The
analysis of modality markers is performed in syntactic, semantic and
pragmatic perspectives. The semantic characteristics of modality markers
used in US presidents‘ political speech is indicated in which different degree
of certainty or engagement is expressed by the use of wide range of modality


9

markers. About the pragmatic characteristics, the use of modality markers in
US presidents‘ speeches indicates their interpersonal roles in the multidimensional message realized with the actualization of person subject in the
syntactic patterns to target at one of these orientations: Speaker-oriented
Messages, Content-oriented Messages and Hearer-oriented Messages.
Ho Van Han (Hận, 2015) has an analysis of semantics and pragmatics
of modality. In his paper, he notices two notions of modality-epistemic and
deontic. Epistemic modality is the speaker‘s judgement of his statement or the
speaker‘s evaluation of his commitment in an utterance. While deontic
modality is due to the obligation or the permission that the speaker hopes
himself or the hearer to do.
In the work of Bui Thi Dao ( ào, 2015), deontic modality expressing
directive of research articles has been analyzed. She has conducted an
investigation into 100 e-book stories in English and Vietnamese and a
contrastive analysis has been carried out in order to find out the similarities
and differences of deontic modality expressing directive in English and
Vietnamese. Her finding shows that linguistic means used to express deontic
modality expressing directive may differ in different languages, for instance,

there have been no equivalences in the system of sentence or utterance
particles which used in Vietnamese and English languages.
So far, the modal verbs and the modality have been investigated in the
variety of researches; however, there has been no research exclusively
focusing on semi-modal verbs in terms of semantic features in political news.
Thus, this thesis is an attempt to meet such research need.


10

2.2. Theoretical Background
2.2.1. An overview of modality
There have been some views on modality which are defined based on
points of view of the linguists. Bybee (Bybee, 1985) presents that modality is
what the speaker is doing with the whole proposition and according to
Halliday (Halliday, 1985), modality refers to the speaker‘s judgment of the
probabilities, the obligations or so on, involving in what he/she is saying.
Quirk et al., (1985, p. 219) affirm that modality can be defined as ―the
manner in which the meaning of a clause is qualified so as to reflect the
speaker‘s judgment of the likelihood of the proposition it expresses being
true‖.
According to Palmer (Palmer, 1986), modality is pointed out as
―semantic information associated with the speaker‘s attitude or opinion about
what is said‖. Meanwhile, Frawley and Charles (Frawley & Charles, 1992)
state that modality is a semantic phenomenon, expressing the attitude and
state of knowledge about a proposition.
In general, from the linguists‘ viewpoints, the notions of modality are
not different. Modality is understood as a semantic category associated with
the speaker‘s attitude or opinion towards the worlds.
Regarding the classification of modality, the categorization criteria also

differ according to the linguists.
According to Perkins (Perkin, 1983), modality is defined as the
representation of either rational, social or natural laws referring to
respectively (1) epistemic, (2) deontic, and (3) dynamic modality.
Huddleston (Huddleston, 1984) classifies modality into three different
types: epistemic modality, deontic modality and dynamic modality.


11

(1) Epistemic modality expresses the knowledge of the speaker about
the world.
(2) Deontic modality calls for an action to be taken.
(3) Dynamic modality indicates that the capable of an individual is to
do a certain action when the particular circumstances arise.
Palmer (Palmer, 1990) distinguishes three types of modality in modal
systems:
(1) Epistemic modality concerns essentially the speaker‘s judgment
involving the truth of a proposition based on evidence and
knowledge. Thus epistemic modality can be seen as expressing the
speaker‘s attitude toward propositions.
(2) Deontic modality involves expressing the speaker‘s attitude toward
the actions, namely what is obligatory, permitted or forbidden
(3) Dynamic modality refers to the ability and the volition of the
subject of the sentence.
Radden et al., (Radden, Kopcke, Berg, & Siemund, 2007) distinguish
two major categories of modality:
(1)

Root modality which comprises three types: disposition, intrinsic

and deontic modality. Intrinsic modality is concerned with intrinsic
necessity and intrinsic possibility involving intrinsic qualities of a
thing and circumstances, disposition modality, in contrast, includes
‗ability‘, ‗propensity‘, and ‗willingness‘. Deontic modality refers to
obligation and permission.
(2)

Epistemic modality is defined as in tradition including necessity

and possibility.


12

In this study, the semantic characteristics are focused on the
categorization criterion of modality according to the work of Quirk et al.,
(1985); therefore, the other categories are not investigated further. The
authors distinguish two categories of modality
Quirk et al., (1985) state that all modal verbs have intrinsic modality
and extrinsic modality.
(1) Intrinsic modality involves human control over events which
concern with ‗permission‘, ‗obligation‘, and ‗volition‘. In other
word, intrinsic modality maybe contributes to create the semantic
content of the proposition. ―Intrinsic modality refers to actions and
events that humans (or other agents) directly control: meanings
relating to permission, obligation, or volition (or intention)‖ (Biber
et al., 1999)
(2) Extrinsic modality does not primarily concern with human control,
but rather human judgment of what is or is not likely to occur. It

refers to ‗possibility‘, ‗necessity‘, and ‗prediction‘. Extrinsic
modality expresses the speaker's attitude towards the content of a
proposition; therefore it is considered as extra-propositional
modality. Biber et al., (1999, p. 485) says that extrinsic modality
―refers to the logical status of events or states, usually relating to
assessments of likelihood: possibility, necessity, or prediction‖.
2.2.2. Definition and types of semi-modal verbs
According to Huddleston and Pullum (Huddleston & Pullum, 2002),
verbs in English are divided into two main classes-lexical verbs and auxiliary
verbs based on the main criterion of the inflectional morphology and their
syntax. They divide auxiliary verbs into two classes. The first verb class is
modal auxiliary verbs such as “can, may, will, shall, could, must, ought to,


13

need”. The second verb class is a non-modal auxiliary verb which includes
“be, have, and do”.
Alexander (Alexander, 1988) defines that semi - modal auxiliary verbs,
also known as marginal modal verbs, are those verbs that can function as
modal auxiliary verbs. Semi - modal verbs consisting of dare, need, used to,
and ought to are always followed by the bare form of the main verb. They are
used with main verbs, but they cannot be used as main verbs by themselves.
The term 'marginal verbs' is used to refer those verbs that have the
same functions by Palmer (Palmer, 1987). These verbs are divided into two
classes, the first one is the primary verbs (have, do, be) and the second one is
semi-modal such as (dare, need, ought to, used to). Both of them have a
function as auxiliaries and also as main verbs. Primary verbs occur as full
verbs in sentences once they are not followed by any other verbs.
According to Quirk et al., (1985, p.96), verbs can be divided into three

major categories-full verbs, primary verbs and modal auxiliary verbs based on
their function within the verb phrases. On a gradient between modal
auxiliaries at one end and full verbs which take a non-finite clause as object at
the other, a set of categories of verbs whose status is in some degree
intermediate between auxiliaries and main verbs are placed.
The following table illustrates this gradient scale. The focus of this
study will be on the verbs including which are semantically closest to the
central modals.
Table 2.1. The auxiliary verb-main verb scale (Quirk et al., 1985)

(one

can, could, may, might, shall
(a) CENTRAL MODALS

verb
phrase)

should, will/’ll, would/’d, must


14

(b) MARGINAL MODALS

dare, need, ought to, used to
had better, would rather/

(c) MODAL IDIOMS

sooner
be to, have got to, etc.
have to, be about to, be able
to,

(d) SEMI-AUXILIARIES

be bound to, be going to, be
obliged to, be supposed to, be
willing to, etc.
appear to, happen to, seem to,

(two
verb

(e) CATENATIVES

phrases)

get+ -ed participle, keep + ing
participle, etc.

(f) MAIN VERB + nonfinite hope + to - infinitive
clause

begin + -ing participle, etc.

According to the above table, the groups of verbs behave similarly to
modal verbs but also share some characteristics with main verbs includes four
categories -, marginal modals, modal idioms semi-auxiliaries, and

catenatives. Quirk et al., (1985, p. 236) use the expression ‗marginal
auxiliaries’ to apply all four categories. In this work, these categories of verbs
are examined and grouped into the term ‗semi-modal verbs‘.
2.2.2.1. Marginal modals
Marginal modal (verb) is defined as ―a verb that is, formally, partly like
a modal verb and partly like a lexical verb, also called semi-modal auxiliary‖
(Aarts, Chalker, & Weiner, 2014).


15

Quirk et al. (1985, p.138) state that marginal modals are verbs which
closely resemble the central modal auxiliaries. Marginal modal verbs that can
be regarded as the central modals in each verb have also a homophonic verb
constructed as a main verb.
Dare has a jumble of forms. It can be used as a main verb occasionally
and in other conditions, it can be constructed as an auxiliary verb. It has one
infinitive with or without 'to', for example:
1. He dared to escape. (Quirk et al., 1985, p.138)
2. No one dare predict the result. (ibid )
Dare can be used mostly more in negatives and interrogatives than in
positives. As a main verb, the negative cases of dare are do not, does not, did
not dare but dare not or dared not as auxiliary verbs. In interrogatives, do or
did can be used with dare, as the following examples:
3. He daren’t escape. (ibid)
4. They do not dare ask for more. (ibid)
5. Do they dare ask for more? (ibid)
When dare is used as a main verb, it has all the characteristics of a
main verb. Dare therefore requires an object. It can be followed by toinfinitive or an infinitive without to. As a main verb, it has to be replaced by
do in reduced clause constructions, for instance:

6. They didn’t dare to attack us, did they? (Quirk et al, 1985, p.139)
Also, it can occur in idiomatic construction in order to express a
threatening rebuke, such as:
7. How dare you do such a thing? (ibid)
Need is a semi-modal verb because in some ways it likes a modal verb
and in other ways a main verb.


16

When need comes as a main verb, it has -s third person singular; and
questions and negatives are made with do. It is usually followed by to, as the
examples:
8. He needed to escape. (ibid, p.138)
9. Do we need to write that? (Swan, 2005, p. 342)
But when need is used as a modal auxiliary, it does not have –s; and
questions and negatives are made without do. Also, it is not followed by an
infinitive with to. As an auxiliary verb, it can be used without the inflected -ed
form, illustrated by the examples:
10. He needn’t escape. (ibid)
11. Need we escape? (ibid)
As a modal auxiliary, need has no tense contrast. To express past time,
however, need can be placed before the perfective aspects. This is then
approximately equivalent to the past tense of need as a main verb, for
instance:
12. You need not have done it. (ibid, p.139)
13. You did not need to do it. (ibid)
When need comes as a main verb, it has to be replaced by do in
reduced clause constructions such as:
12. She needs to practice and so do I. (ibid)

Ought to is a verb from of a marginal modal that can be used as an
auxiliary verb or a full verb, for examples:
13. You ought to stop smoking. (Quirk et al., 1985, p.139)
14. Ought you to smoke so much? (ibid)
When ought to is used as an auxiliary, it can be negated with the
uncontracted negative ought not to and the contracted negative oughtn’t to as
the example: