By Auxiliaries, Modal verbs

Can any teacher here explain the difference between the modal verb (can, could, may, might, must....) and the auxiliary (can, could, may, might, must....)? If they are the same thing, why do we have to call them by different names? Many thanks. Lcchang

"a" is more common but "b" is not so bad."Both" in attributive uses commonly behaves like a middle-positional adverb in its position.The middle-positional adverbs are positioned like:(1) When the main verb is not "be" and the main stands as a finite (=tense/person bearing) verb, the adverbs are...

If the main verb you are tagging is a form of "to be", use that in the tag. He is ..., isn't he? I wasn't ..., was I? If the main verb is a form of "to have" used as an auxiliary, use that in the tag. They have gone already, haven't they? If it is a modal verb, (can, could, will,...

The auxiliary "do" is used in questions, negatives, emphatic expressions, and tags. You liked her. Did you like her? You didn't like her. Didn't you like her? You did like her. You liked her, didn't you? You did like her, didn't you? As for emphatics, they frequently occur in the "but"...

Precise times, like 'at five', cannot be used with the present perfect, but they can be used with all the modalities combined with "have". When a modal verb (can, could, may, might, must, etc.) is followed by "have", the proposition which follows is regarded as past. He must like classical...

Many sources call them 'semi-modals', Seyfihoca, though they may be grouped in various ways. “Have to ... though semantically very close to must, has none of the modal properties and is clearly a catenative , not a modal.” (Huddleston, 1984: 165) But for others, such as Palmer, the meanings of...

Paco: I'm sorry if I mistook your message. Many of people here (including me) are still beginners of English learning. So it is nice if you write in a way everybody can't misunderstand you. One reason why we ESL feel auxiliary/modals difficult to learn is their usage has been rapidly...

Hello This is a garbage-like posting written by a poor English learner who has been and still now is agonized by subjunctive things which supposedly underlie English collocations. My way of understanding English grammar The English language uses two moods (indicative/subjunctive) and two...

1. 'Last week, I may go sailing.' I find this sentence baffling: it seems to contradict itself. The contradiction seems to reside in the opposition of 'may' and 'last week'. I myself would describe this as a conflict of context (past) and tense (non-past). How would you describe it? The...

CJ: I answered this once before. >>>>>>>>>> JTT: No, Jim, you failed to answer it the first time. As I stated, I was not looking for any kind of reported speech. Jim wrote: However, to be more exact, the prototypical modal for the meaning "it is possible that" is "may". Frequent substitutes...