Three Types of Auxiliaries: A Corpus-based Analysis

DOI:10.21742/IJIS.2020.4.1.02

AUTHORS

Namkil Kang,Far East University, Korea

ABSTRACT

The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) contains more than one billion words of text from eight genres: spoken, fiction, magazines, newspapers, academic texts, TV and movies subtitles, blogs, and other web pages. The main goal of this article is to provide an in-depth analysis of the frequency of the three modal verb types must be+ing, may be+ing, and might be+ing within the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). The COCA clearly indicates that may be+ing is the most commonly used of these three modal verb types in America. More specifically, may be+ing is the type most preferred by Americans, followed by might be+ing, and must be+ing, in that order. A major point to note is that the type might be+ing is the most widely used in the fiction genre in America. A further point to note is that may be+ing is the most widely used of these three modal verb types in the spoken genre in America. This in turn suggests that Americans are fond of using statements with moderate possibility when they talk. With respect to the magazine genre, may be+ing is the type most preferred by American writers. It is significant to note, however, that American journalists prefer statements with moderate or low possibility to statements with necessity. With respect to the academic genre, it is worth noting that may be+ing is the type most preferred by Americans. The reason why may be+ing is the most widely used in America may be that may be+ing, with its moderate possibility, is the most suitable for conveying knowledge, academic information, and actual facts.