SEMINAR MODALS 1

1. Are the sentences below ambiguous? Explain. Specify the scope of the negation.
1. They may not come tomorrow.2.He need not get his reward.3.He can go anywhere he likes.
2. Compare and explain.
a. You must /should/can/cant/ neednt/mustnt/shouldnt learn this table by heart. (specify
internal/external negation). He will /should/must/has to/ might/could know.
b. She was invited, but at the last moment couldnt/??could/was able to get away.
c. Of course he couldn't come in and tell me, because he'd been fired and everything. Of course
he could/??was able to come in, but chose not to. Of course he ??could/was able to come in,
the door was unlocked.
d. In the end, clients are able to walk out of our center with a pride in their sense of
accomplishment. // The people here at the center can/??are able to help you if you like.
e. We neednt have taken his word. ??So we searched him./ We didnt need to take his word so
we searched him.
f. You have to/must/have got to fill out a form every month/now.
g. Must I / Need I fill out this form?
h. We are able to/can sponsor five students every year.
i. You should/must/had better finish this (??) but only if you want to.

2. Identify the values of must/have to.

a. She is alway telling me I must be neighbourly. Thank goodness I dont have to be.
b. You say that was a message? Yes. It has to be. By mandate? Yours? Blah. You know
damn well theres not one chance in a million those pencils took that pattern by accident.
c. I must be allowed to speak.
d. The food must stay hotter if it doesnt sit on the table for an hour.
e. Derby mustnt have said a word to his old friend about the quarrel.
f. Whitner passed me in a big hurry. He must not have recognized me from behind.
g. What happens to them will affect you, you must understand this.
h. And if Mogor is a liar, must he die?
i. Must you drivel, Bertie? Won't you stop it just this once? Just for tonight, to please Aunt Dahlia?
j. I wish there was something else you could call him except 'Uncle Tom'. Yes, Uncle Tom, if
you must have it.
k. But if they must form themselves into a kind of private Home Guards, why not have a
discussion and plan their campaign together? Nothing had been said openly. Yes. That must
be the clue. Nothing said. But why? All that idiotic covering up must mean that some friend
of his was involved and his father mustnt know. It meant, if he was to get anything out of the
boy, hed have to question him on his own
3. Identify the values of CAN:
a. Could I please have just a tiny taste of your marvellous peach? Of course you can! Everyone
can have some!
b. This lift can go sideways and longways and slantways and any other way you can think of!
c. Its tomato soup! I can feel it running down my throat!
d. I dont think you can have read the lease of the house carefully.
e. No good can ever come from spoiling a child like that.
f. He was 96 and a half and that is just about as old as anybody can be.
g. You can even leave it lying in the sun all morning on a hot day and it wont go runny
h. It couldnt kill us to meet new people. Actually it could kill us to meet new people!
i. It stood to reason that there couldn't really be a snake in his room.
j. Incoming ships require an outgoing ship to move before they can use the same berth.
k. It specifies the extra tonnes of cargo that can be loaded onto each ship per extra centimetre
of allowable draft.
l. It cant be coincidence. As a matter of fact, it surely could. Its not like saying: it cant be a
unicorn.
4. Identify the values of the modal verbs below.
a. Theres a guard at the door and there may be others inside.
 SEMINAR MODALS 2

b. Therefore, because all acts are godly, there is no difference between right and wrong, good
deeds and evil ones, and so we may do exactly as we please?
c. Only one man may hear my secret and live.
d. If a crow could get past all the defences of his guards and flap its wings in his face, then
might not a murderer be able to do the same?
What is the value of may/might below? Translate into Romanian:
e. I cut power to the regulator. I may not be able to reprogram the regulator, but I can turn the
bastard off completely.
f. Amerigo might be old and sick but he was safe from harm and at least he could die in peace
after all his wanderings.
g. Yes said Bhakti Ram Jain, who might have been deaf, but who knew how to take a hint.
5. Identify the values of will and would.
a. Im not the only one who knows. Fleur and Krum will know by now Maxime and Karkaroff
both saw the dragons. Theyll have told their champions everything they can. They want to
win.
b. Cedric still didnt know about the dragons the only champion who didnt, if Harry was right
in thinking that Maxime and Karkaroff would have told Fleur and Krum.
c. The house is locked. She wont have heard.
d. If you will throw your mind back to the evening of our arrival.
e. The annoyance of Ogden's presence and conversation had sapped his self-restraint, as
dripping water will wear away a rock.
f. You look like a wreck. Get run over by a steam-roller or something? Only to be expected, of
course, if you will go riding bicycles half the night.
g. Our landing site is at the delta of a long-gone river. The water would have dragged rock and
soil samples from thousands of kilometers away. With some digging, we could get a broad
geological history.
h. Walt ran out of the station office and traded a canvas sack for one the conductor had. That
would be the mail. Sometimes my skills of deduction amaze even me.
i. Three hundred years, and Im the first viking who couldnt /wouldnt kill a dragon.
j. Every step of the way would have had beeping alarms, alerts, and warnings. But it was the
high-oxygen warning that woke me.
6. Identify the values of need.
a. I have to warn you that you neednt answer any question thats likely to incriminate you.
b. Who said this? A Mrs Blaine, I think their names are, and a Miss Nuttel. Then I dont think
we need let it disturb any of us. They would say anything.
c. Action would certainly be taken, they need have no fear on that account.
d. I knew in that instant that I need no longer live a provisional life, I need no longer be what
ancestry, breeding and misfortune had decreed, but could enter, at long last, into myself.
e. After 2000 years, we still did not belong, and indeed, were soon to be erased, which
cancellation need not be followed by any expressions of regret.

7. Identify the values of should.

a. Duct tape works anywhere. Duct tape is magic and should be wordshipped.
b. We should be all right. Should be? This is not encouraging.
c. His father should be able to sort him out. Theyre a close family.
d. Its twenty-seven minutes and thirty-six seconds past one, so they should have finished their
lunch hour.
e. My math tells me that, including my initial 50-liter burst, I should have added 130 liters of
water to the system. Well, my math was a damn liar!
f. You should probably wait outside. You should be fine. Just dont make any eye contact.

8. Identify the values of the modal verbs. Give the negative counterpart of the
sentence.If there is more than one possibility, discuss.
a. I told you what Ive heard and Im sticking to it. Oh, youve got to stick to it, havent you?
 SEMINAR MODALS 3

b. He looked overworked and underappreciated. He had to be the writer.

c. I must simply make a sacrifice to my good friends the gods.
d. You must have seen that he was making it all up.
e. But by acting promptly we should avoid such a contingency.
f. In one hand he carried a long case that would be the gun while his other hand moved
stiffly at his side. A military gait.
g. Its doubtful. It might spark a debate but eventually the controversy would die down.
h. If I say two words in your praise, you may sit by the fire in the cave.

9. Specify the temporal interpretation of the modal and its complement. Identify the
value of the modal. Specify the scope of the negation.
a. He was disposed to like Moody simply for the reason that the other man had undertaken a
pursuit about which he evidently knew very little, and from which he must expect a great return.
b. I said to John that if he liked to take me without any fuss, he might. And we were married at
Greenwich church.
c. She had come to understand that her life would inevitably ask her to make choices between
her love and her self and when those crises came she must not choose love.
d. The army was not permitted to enter the zone of the palaces but had to stay at the foot of the
royal hill.
e. In any case , a horse could not keep pace with a railway car, as he was fond of saying.
f. Without the lake the ice blocks from Kashmir could not bring fresh mountain water to the
palace.
g. Childhood is a luxury I cannot afford, just as you could not.
h. To become a virtuoso violinist, you must have started to practice early in life.
i. If an incoming ship is going to a berth that an outgoing ship is leaving from, the outgoing
ship must have left by the time the incoming ship arrives at the berth.
j. She might not have liked the colour of YOUR hair.
k. Channels of communication may be being watched

10. Identify the values of the modal verbs and the scope of the perfect.
a. I realized, listening to her words, that she must be referring to Gussie--I mean to say, there
couldn't have been a whole platoon of men taking thorns out of her dog that day.
b. I've been kidnapped twice before, and the only guys that made anything out of it were the
kidnappers. They couldn't have got a cent without me, and they never dreamed of giving me
a rake-off.
c. She neednt have confessed.
d. Things that should have been at peace had become disturbed.
e. What was it? It might have been an explosion of some sort or an earthquake.
f. We should have finished by tomorrow.

11. Illustrate: epistemic necessity, deontic necessity, epistemic possibility, deontic

possibility, dynamic possibility, dynamic necessity, internal negation, external negation,
internal perfect, external perfect

12. Discuss the value of may/might as well. Translate.

a. Nevertheless, from the way she spoke, it certainly looked as if poor old Gussie might as
well scratch his name off the entry list, and I didn't at all like the prospect of having to
break the bad news to him.
b. I spent most of today out at whats left of the communications array. Its really a sorry
sight. I may as well yell towards Earth for all the good that damned thing will do to me.
c. Svetlana aimed at the ceiling and fired. In the tight quarters, it might as well have been
dynamite.
d. She pushed off, and it seemed to me that I might as well go with her. Nothing to keep me
here, I mean.
 SEMINAR MODALS 4

e. The bed covers were burning ... I pitched water at the wall, but it might as well have been
gasoline for all the good it did.

13. Discuss the discourse function of the modals below:

a. I hadn't thought of that, and I must confess it shook me for a moment.
b. I have to say youre not exactly easy on the eye.
c. I am what you might call a man embarked on a quest.

14. Translate into Romanian:

a. She was standing by the door with a hand to her heart, panting a little, as housemaids will
when they enter drawing rooms at 20 minutes to one in the morning and find them occupied
by the ruling classes.
b. A person may object to many institutions, in my case it might be banks and fast-food outlets,
but such strong feelings might well fall short of the tendency to murder.
c. Mr. Brewster's eye was fiery and intimidating. A basilisk might have gone to him with
advantage for a course of lessons.
d. My "good evening" might have been that of a man with a particularly guilty conscience
caught in the act of doing something more than usually ignoble. She spoke like a somewhat
offended angel.
e. I remember when I was a kid at school having to learn a poem of sorts about a fellow who
made a statue of a girl, and what should happen one morning but that the bally thing
suddenly came to life.
f. He was a small man of middle age, with tortoise-shell-rimmed spectacles. He might have
been a professor or something of the kind.
g. Standing up, I might have been pathetic and pleading. Sitting down, I was compelled to be
matter of fact.
h. The emperors eyes were slanted and large and gazed upon infinity as a dreamy young lady
might, or a sailor in search of land.