Approaches to the study of the category of modality in modern English

Isaeva Aygun Khanoglan

The article deals with a small description of the category of modality in English. In the ancient Germanic languages, there was a small, but very important due to its frequent use, a group of present verbs. The verbs of this group are of particular interest, since it is to them that modal verbs ascend - the main means of expressing internal modality. In fact, this is a group of strong verbs that in the preliterate period lost some forms, but retained and acquired others, changing their lexical and grammatical meaning. Modality is a grammatical and semantic category that expresses the various connections between expression and reality. Modality is a linguistic universal that belongs to the main categories of natural language. The group of modal verbs includes a small number of verbs that stand out among all verbs in a number of characteristic features in meaning, use and grammatical forms. These verbs do not have any proper verb grammatical category (type, temporal attribution, voice); they can only have forms of mood and time, which are indicators of the predicate. Due to this, and also due to their lack of non-predicative forms (infinitive, gerund, participles), modal verbs are on the periphery of the verbal system of the English language.

Keywords:language, linguistics, modality, verb, objective, subjective, grammatical, lexical.