Abstract:

This research paper focused on the modal verbs (MV), such as; dürfen, können, müssen, sollen, mögen and wollen as a means of speaking for possibility and necessity in circumstantial, epistemic and evidence-based readings. The modals belong to a homogeneous category of meaning, where the present research takes a look at the internal nature of modals and other modifiers. In this work we will answer the following questions: what are modal verbs or modal auxiliary verbs? What does the term modal verb mean exactly? What are the specifics of this term? To answer the first question, the term “modal verb” is probably one of the youngest in the contemporary presentation of German grammar. Accordingly, Busch et. al. the most common answer is that this word refers to a series of six specific verbs which, in the opinion of many, represent a "relatively closed system" and are "part of a grammatical system of rules" (Busch, 1971: 7). This is absolutely what is taught most in German-speaking schools, and sometimes at institutes where German taught as a second language. The first section introduces the term modal verb. Based on this, a detailed description of this term follows, which can be observed in traditional modal verbs. This section expands the investigation to be more precise interpretation of the modal auxiliary verbs of language and takes a look at the systematic representation of the MV by contemporary German. This section also deals with the traditional perspective of the German MV, which is important because it has morphological criteria (the substitute infinitive). The second section presents an outline on the concept of modality and other detailed descriptions such as; the relationship between epistemic modality and non-epistemic modality. Furthermore, the categorization options in the grammatical core area of the modality, which are also included with the corpus analysis results.

Keywords: