English Verbs Questions

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Taurenzine
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English Verbs Questions

Post by Taurenzine »

I personally believe that the way english verbs are "conjugated" if you can even call it that are quite broken, but because its the way I think and speak Its what I'd like to understand the way it works. So I have a question about a certain part of english verbs... The terms "Should", "Could" and "Would" fall under what grammatical category? is it part of a verb that depicts a certain aspect? or is it a mood? or is it some weird tense-like thing? can it even be considered any of those? All I know is that Its quite helpful to display meaning, and I'd like it for my language. I am an amateur conlanger and the biggest thing that I need to improve on is my understanding of linguistics, because I have no formal education for it.
All answers are much appreciated.
Sumelic
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Re: English Verbs Questions

Post by Sumelic »

"should", "could" and "would" are part of the category that is usually called "modal auxiliaries" or "modal verbs". The class of "auxiliaries" in English refers to words with the "NICE" properties; some other English auxiliaries are "be", and in some cases "have" and "do".

The modal auxilaries have various meanings. "Tense", "aspect" and "mood" are all relevant. From a morphological perspective, most modal verbs come in present/past-tense pairs (will/would, can/could, shall/should, may/might etc.) but the semantic difference between the verbs in these pairs is rarely only, or even primarily one of tense in modern English. (This is related to the modal uses of the morphological "past tense" and so-called "past subjunctive" or "irrealis" in English: the "was" or "were" in a clause like "If I was/were..." is morphologically a "past-tense form", but semantically it doesn't have the meaning of a past tense.)
Iyionaku
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Re: English Verbs Questions

Post by Iyionaku »

It is furthermore nice to know that English modals are actually preterito-presentia, e.g. verbs that used to be in past tense, but the past tense has become the new primary form. An exception is will, which is an old optative form. This is why you can't form the to-infinitive with them and why they don't take an -s in the 3SG form. It's even more obvious in the closely related German language, where those verbs don't follow the present conjugation scheme -e/-st/-t, but the strong verbs past conjugation scheme -Ø/-st/-Ø.
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Taurenzine
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Re: English Verbs Questions

Post by Taurenzine »

I am still quite confused... I would appreciate it if rather than looking at this from an English perspective you looked at this from a universally linguistic perspective.
I'll rephrase my question I suppose:
Can the words "would" "could" and "should" fit into any mood or aspect, or are they neither?

The best idea I can come up with is that they are moods of a specific tense only, that being the "future relative to past" tense, if it can even be considered a tense. But then again I am still very confused. I have always disliked how the study of English has specific terms for it's language that differ from the study of language as a whole, and, once again, I would appreciate it if you could explain from a universally linguistic perspective.
Sumelic
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Re: English Verbs Questions

Post by Sumelic »

For a universal perspective, I think you'd have to study the semantics carefully. Classifications like "mood" and "tense" are just general labels; they are not very strictly defined. Focusing only on specific English words will not help you much with learning about how languages in general work, because words in natural languages often have a mixture of usages that don't correspond perfectly to more abstract theoretical concepts.

In the way "would", "could" and "should" are usually used, they don't have any strong inherent semantic connection to the past tense. For example, the word "should", although morphologically past-tense, is roughly synonymous with the expression "have to", which isn't (or looking at another language, French "devoir" or "falloir", which inflect in the present tense: "Il me faut/Il faut que je..." or "Je dois..." both have present-tense verbs and both can be translated to English "I should...").

One minor similarity is that, like the past tense, these words are used to talk about events that aren't happening right now (or states that don't exist right now). But that is a very general semantic similarity, that would be better categorized as some type of "non-present" rather than "past" tense. So I don't see how it works to think of them as "future relative to the past". I don't see how a sentence like "It would be nice if I could fly" expresses anything about the past.

In their most common meanings, English "would", "could" and "should" are all irrealis: they refer to events/states that not only don't exist in the present, but also aren't being reported as facts about the past either. They deal with hypothetical situations. This is generally subsumed by the category of "mood/modality" when doing cross-linguistic comparisons.

There are many sub-divisions of modality such as epistemic vs. deontic, necessity vs. possibility.
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Taurenzine
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Re: English Verbs Questions

Post by Taurenzine »

Sumelic wrote:For a universal perspective, I think you'd have to study the semantics carefully. Classifications like "mood" and "tense" are just general labels; they are not very strictly defined. Focusing only on specific English words will not help you much with learning about how languages in general work, because words in natural languages often have a mixture of usages that don't correspond perfectly to more abstract theoretical concepts.

In the way "would", "could" and "should" are usually used, they don't have any strong inherent semantic connection to the past tense. For example, the word "should", although morphologically past-tense, is roughly synonymous with the expression "have to", which isn't (or looking at another language, French "devoir" or "falloir", which inflect in the present tense: "Il me faut/Il faut que je..." or "Je dois..." both have present-tense verbs and both can be translated to English "I should...").

One minor similarity is that, like the past tense, these words are used to talk about events that aren't happening right now (or states that don't exist right now). But that is a very general semantic similarity, that would be better categorized as some type of "non-present" rather than "past" tense. So I don't see how it works to think of them as "future relative to the past". I don't see how a sentence like "It would be nice if I could fly" expresses anything about the past.

In their most common meanings, English "would", "could" and "should" are all irrealis: they refer to events/states that not only don't exist in the present, but also aren't being reported as facts about the past either. They deal with hypothetical situations. This is generally subsumed by the category of "mood/modality" when doing cross-linguistic comparisons.

There are many sub-divisions of modality such as epistemic vs. deontic, necessity vs. possibility.
Thank you. I think that In my language things like being able to and having incentive to do something (could and should) can be covered easily with verbs and adjectives (to be/able), but 'would'... I'll look into giving it it's own special conjugation for verbs.... I need to study hypothetical situations.


I am probably one of the most ameture "Linguists" ever, so I really do appreciate your help.
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