2. Modal Verbs and Auxiliary Verbs. English Grammar Lesson

[ddsharper]

The child is upstairs. Regarding this sentence, one source calls "upstairs" and adjective, another calls it an adjective. Please tell. What say you? Thanks.

[mrthoth]

@ddsharper In "The child is upstairs", "upstairs" is an adverb. It answers the question, "Where"? Where is the child? Upstairs, that's where. In "The house has two upstairs bedrooms," "upstairs" is an adjective. It answers the question "What kind of?" What kind of bedrooms does the house have two of? Upstairs bedrooms, that's what kind.

[ddsharper]

@mrthoth Thank you mrhtoth.

[MrDevin666]

Aren't modal and auxiliary verbs an integration of a helping verb, because I read that they're a division of the helping verb with only different meanings but both still considered a helping verb?

[mrthoth]

@MrDevin666 "Auxiliary verb" means the same thing as "helping verb"; they are two terms for the same thing. It is true that modals can be considered a subset of the auxiliary verbs.

[Kounelli33]

'A goiter!'.... how bizarre....

[saschabudko]

"Will have been being"

nice :)

the more I learn about English, the more I love Russian.. LOL

Just kidding))) -- Thanks a lot for the lesson.

[DeMarkieSade]

"I would walk ten-miles through the desert heat to kiss that girl."<---Because i am that smitten with her.

"I would like to talk to all of you today about STD's."<----- because they are a very dangerous detriment to people of your age especially.

In these sentences many would probably say, "where is the conditional," because they wouldn't see it? The reason is that the rest of the conditional, the adverbial clause, is not stated but only Implied, or taken for granted.

[DeMarkieSade]

They do, contrary to what many believe, however, have a present and past tense. may-might, shall-should- will-would, can- could etc. Their third popular use is in conditional sentences that involve either a stated or implied adverbial clause.

You should go watch that movie, man. or you must go watch that movie. or an auxillary "You have to go see that movie, man.

These would be conditionals with the none stated, but only implied adverbial clause.

You should go see that movie man, because etc...

[DeMarkieSade]

They do not have a singular and plural form like other verbs have either. "They 'walk' slowly to the store." "He 'walks' slowly to the store." etc.

They do not take the 'S' ending like most regular verbs, nor do they take the "ED" ending for past tenses, both simple and perfect, like most regular verbs, nor do they have an inner vowel shift like many irregular verbs for different tenses either, ie. "run ran, see saw, get got, took take, etc.

[alexandrititita1988]

this the video is interesting because teach these verbs are used with main verbs are statements or questions. Modal verbs have no conjugations or time and can not be used without the main verb, modals are ten:

can  could

may might

shall should

will would

must ought to

[nyteskyy]

I am a bit lost on the modal verbs. You stated they cannot be verbs themselves. My question is an example sentences.

1.) I can.

2). I might.

3.) I will!

There are more examples, but my question is, are my above examples not complete sentences?

[mrthoth]

@nyteskyy These sentences all need to have assumed (or "invisible") main verbs attached to them. If you start a conversation by saying, "I might," the person you are talking to will not know what you could be talking about. That's because normally "I might" would appear in response to a query like, "Will you drive?" Then you might say, "I might," but there is an assumed main verb following; "I might" in this case means "I might [drive]." Modal verbs cannot be main verbs.

[mrthoth]

@nyteskyy By the way, we speak in sentence fragments all the time, and properly so. (If we always spoke in complete sentences, we'd bore each other to death.) So when someone asks you, "What did you have for lunch?", often you will quite correctly respond with the sentence fragment, like "A sandwich and a Coke," rather than with the grammatically complete "For lunch I had a sandwich and a Coke."

[bagelsandstuff]

The house never should have been able to be broken into!

[ASUcheerguy]

What about action and linking verbs?

[giaohyeahitsme]

Now I Learned Auxiliay verbs! Because i dont have it on my book! It`s already my Exam on Wednsday.....

[Mercianboy]

Goitre if you're from the UK.

[jonnybik12]

Do you have a video about verb tenses that particularly concerns past perfect and present perfect?

[freunet]

In my point of view WILL, WOULD ans SHALL are auxiliary verbs cause they help to construct new tenses and mood.

WILL= Auxiliary verb for constructing Future tense.

SHALL= Permition, and Future tense.

WOULD= Auxiliary verb for constructing Conditional mood.

[JamesfromOhio]

In your previous class on verbs you stated that the verb and subject could be their own "mini sentence" It doesn't seem like that rule applies to the sentence; "I have a goiter." "Have goiter"?

I am preparing to embark on a TEFL adventure in a few weeks overseas so I'm trying to brush up on my terrible grammar skills and your classes are a big help. Was that a run on sentence? Anyways thanks for help!

[mrthoth]

@JamesfromOhio The verb in the sentence "I have a goiter" is "have". The subject is "I". ("Goiter" is the direct object. I have a video on that.) Who or what is doing the having? I, that's who. That means that "I" is the subject. So the mini-sentence would be "I have."

[cdoftx]

I have much to comment on in this video. The sad fact is though that I'm a dog, and people just don't listen to animals as seriously as they do other people. So I'll just tuck my tail between my legs and leave my comments at that.

[lilkosty]

Hi professor! I'll send you my essay Monday, and ill seen you Tuesday for class!

[onyemaechi]

actually its okay i understand now. Thanx

[onyemaechi]

Hi there, in the second sentence you describe "have" as being the main verb but it is also labeled as a auxiliary verb. Why is that?

[nowaytono]

"been being played", though correct, is clumsy. "will have been playing for 15 minutes" flows more naturally.

Let me replace "been being" with "been getting" in a different example.

eg: Steve WILL HAVE BEEN GETTING PAID three thousnad dollars a week for two years when his contract expires.

Another modal verb is: ought to

[edelinet]

Should modals be called verbs? Because they do not really behave as verbs - as you say, they do not even have the to-infinitive form - should we not simply call them modal auxiliaries?

[HigherPlanes]

Awesome lesson. Look forward to more.

[bentmotivation]

Will have been being played?

Why not: Will have been playing?

[mrthoth]

There's nothing wrong with the verb phrase "will have been playing," but it doesn't mean the same thing as "will have been being played." The MUSICIANS will have been playing. The MUSIC will have been being played. Thanks for your comment.

[TheLarssan]

Thanks. :)

[kecakurdan101]

Hello mrthoth. Your videos are awesome. You make it so easy to understand. I have a question. If I follow your videos, ALL of your videos, will I then at the end learn the entire english grammer? I have no problem speaking english but in the future I want to be an english teacher in my country and need to learn the english grammer from the beginning. Please help : )) Thank you!!

[hayow]

Awesome video!

[daganadan]

iam a somalian and i thought no one could teach me about verbs and then you came a long if keep listing to you i might go to college sooner than later

[taitorell]

omg, ´will have been being played´ -.- ... in fact a huge combination. Thanks for the lessons.

[MissNattty]

oh my gosh... your my heroo!! i love how you explain everything!!

[ricosuave90210]

Hi, mrthoth.

I wanted to ask you if your future perfect continuous, i.e. your example of a five-verb sentence, is a legitimate sentence in American English.  In British English, continuous is an impossible form with future perfect (at least according to the textbooks :-)). Not that you can't make it, you just don't say it.

[mrthoth]

I certainly hope there are no textbooks that say, "The future perfect progressive (or continuous) is impermissible." It is perfectly fine on either side of the Atlantic. ("By next week, I will have been working on this job for a year.") I just Googled the verb "will have been working," in fact, and got more than 45,000,000 hits. Certainly it's rarer in the passive than in the active, however. But if you Google "will have been being," you will get lots of examples of these five-word verbs.

[ricosuave90210]

Cheers for the reply.

I had an argument with a colleague where I proposed a similar scenerio to the one you describe for a five verb sentence. I said, "We can make a future continuous passive, but we just don't use it commonly"; he said, "Rubbish!"

The text we use, Cutting Edge, says the same as the Google sites from the search you suggest: 'It's uncommon'. But there's no point where the form is practiced in our text, so the implication is that it's 'wrong'.

Keep well.

[myndecho]

Can auxiliary verbs only help modal verbs?

[mrthoth]

Yes, auxiliary verbs can appear without modals.  For example, in "I am running the show," "am" is an auxiliary. It is very, very common for auxiliaries to appear without modals ("I do care," "I have forgotten," etc. etc.).

[myndecho]

Thanks.

I have a few more question I don't see how Auxiliary verbs are hepling more than if you put run in place of them "I may be" "I may run" help!

[mrthoth]

Auxiliary verbs don't help "more" than modal verbs; you use them or don't use them according to what you want to say. "I would be running the show" and "I would run the show" can often be used interchangeably, but you would need the auxiliary if you wanted to stress the process of running the show.

[gray274]

They're called 'modal AUXILIARY verbs'. Modals are not verbs... Sorry, I can't use your video.

[chaospoet]

What's the difference between modal verbs and copulative verbs? I mean IS does not have an infinitive form "to is" for example so how is that different to warrent a seperate catagory?

[mrthoth]

Thanks for your question. "Is" does have an infinitive form: "to be." The most irregular verb in English, "to be" is conjugated this way: I am, you are, he/she/it is, we are, they are. The "be" is more obvious in tenses that include the past participle, "been" (I have been, I had been) or the present participle, "being" (he is being, they were being, etc.).

[roygbiv330]

past senses of can, may, will are could, might, would. when each is used as simply past sense, it is quite the same as it is used as a modal verb. reading an essay, someone's reminiscences etc, s/he sometimes writes sentences with present forms and past forms thereof being mixed. that case, i feel tough to read.

[stevenlee1020]

WE LOVE YOU MR THOTH

[dospook]

Is "to fool" modal or model verb? Huchew... excuse me

Very nicely patronizing,; not to mention educational

[sideslide23]

This class hauls Ass compare to Supper Mario Bros for my old nintendo.

the instructor and the board in this lecture room would make it a great practice target for my BB gun.

Not a challenging moving targets

three letter words this clas is a P.O.S, and you'll have to pay me to take this class again

[sksgl]

that will help me a lot. Thanks

[nzseries1]

I *will have been being looking up* goiter in the dictionary.

Could one argue that here we have six verbs in a row? Sure, "up" isn't a verb by itself, but "to look up" is a phrasal verb.

[emerset]

smart. I was about to tell you "no" as "look across", "look into", "look over the hill" are not verbs. yes, they describe the verb "look" but are not the actual verb itself. But then "look up" means 'search'. as in 'what did you look up?'

in this case 'look up' is the main verb. one modal; three other auxiliaries; one main. six!

[1000AKing]

Great job and explanation. Do you know any American (not British) website where I can find English grammar? I really need it, thanks :)

[ngjhwpc]

Grammatically correct it might be, but the last five verb sentence seems to be rather clumsy in construction. Would it not be better to change the final verb into the active voice present participle, thus: "the concerto will have been playing..." ?

[homontohomonto]

No, It would not be a good idea because concerto is being played. If you were to turn it into active voice than it would sound clumsy. Concerto is playing? football maybe xD, but with whom? xD

[fouadi1984]

I am very impressed by the way you delivery you lesson to watchers. I hope you continue posting valuable video . Thanks

[trungngongoc]

I am very impressed by the way you delivery you lesson to watchers. I hope you continue posting valuable video . Thanks

[Triple3Deuce2]

i am hoping to wood tomorrow: to wood your wife. haahahahhahahahahahahah

[yeansi]

very goood

[RCONTE420]

good teacher

[tecmotimes]

Deconstruct this sentence for the win:

I Can Has Cheezburger?

[Zarpyzuluwarrior]

I love your example: "I have a goiter."

[Fractional]

I saw somewhere that passive form of future perfect continuous tense is not used. That is, "will have been being played" is not used. May be, it is used witout continous form: " will have been played".

Actually, as I read, passive is not used for any present/past/future perfect continuous tense or continuous future, right???????

[chkn333]

excellent video! Now i am understanding perfectly modal verbs :D thx

[sdhch477]

lol youtube got everything. education, entertainment, politic and culture...wow

[Hill4prez]

Thanks this was helpful!

[linkin0007]

I THINK WE SHOULD NOTICE THAT 'TO GET' IS ALSO AN auxiliary verbs. A VERY USEFUL ONE A GUESS.

[blueneckneck]

Yossarian is right not to include "get". Auxiliary verbs must be followed by a main verb, but "get" never is. In "I get corrected" and "I get going," for example, "get" is a copulative verb, and the participles that follow it are adjectival subjective complements. Past participles can act as verbs only in tandem with a form of "have" or "be", and present participles can act as verbs only in tandem with a form of "be".

[blueneckneck]

Also, in "I get to go," get is a transitive verb, and "to go" is a nominative infinitive phrase; "I get to go" is grammatically similar to "I get a sandwich." "Get" is not an auxiliary.

[hasmos]

Thanks for this vdo but are you sure about the 5 word-verb?