Modal auxiliary verbs have long been a nightmare for anyone learning English as a second language.This particular aspect of the English language is probably the one in which learners find the most complicated. Without context the lexical meaning of modal auxiliary verbs becomes extremely vague. With their parallelisms and overlapping meanings they become a messy business. At times the negative has a totally different meaning from the affirmative and more often than not, there is a shift in meaning according to context. Modal auxiliary verbs are used to express degrees of...