// Workers AI · dad joke modeWhat did the modal word say? "I'm likely to mean it.

Modal words are words in a language that express modality, i.e., possibility, necessity, or contingency.^[1] One kind of modal word is the modal verb (should, can, might, and ought, as well as oblige, need, and require). Other types of modal words in English include modal adjectives (likely, probable, necessary), modal adverbs (probably, perhaps, certainly), modal prepositions (despite, unless, if), and modal nouns (possibility, probability, certainty).

References

↑ Matthews, Peter (2003). The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

This semantics article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by adding missing information.

[1] Matthews, Peter (2003). The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

[1]