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Defective Verbs in English. In English grammar, defective verb is a traditional term for a verb that doesn't exhibit all the typical forms of a conventional verb. English modal verbs ( can, could, may, might, must, ought, shall, should, will, and would) are defective in that they lack distinctive third-person singular and nonfinite forms.
3 days ago · English Common defectives The most commonly recognized defective verbs in English are auxiliary verbs—the class of preterite-present verbs — can/could, may/might, shall/should, must, ought, and will/would (would being a later historical development). Though these verbs were not originally defective, in most varieties of English today, they occur only in a modal auxiliary sense. However ...
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may. 'may' is the model of its conjugation. This defective modal helping verb exists only in the present and preterit tenses. It is followed by a main verb in the bare infinitive, or by [ have + past participle]. Both the present and the preterit may be used in combination with [ have + past participle] to express a guess or a possibility about ...
May - English Grammar Today - a reference to written and spoken English grammar and usage - Cambridge Dictionary
Defective refers to a word that is missing a grammatical element, such as a tense or case marker, while verb is a part of speech that expresses action or being. In other words, a defective word is one that is incomplete or incorrect in its grammatical form, while a verb is a specific type of word that conveys an action or state of being.
A defective verb is a verb that cannot be used in all moods or tenses. Irregular verbs have all moods and tenses, but are irregularly formed. Regular verbs consist of three main parts (root/present, simple past, and past participle). Regular verbs have an -ed added to the end of the root verb for both the simple past and past participle.
Aug 19, 2018 · 4. There aren't many defective verbs in English, but it's difficult to say exactly how many there are because some words might or might not be defective, depending on how willing you are to accept weird-sounding forms. For example, various linguists seem to have noted that for many English speakers, nothing sounds natural as the past participle ...
