Not all auxiliaries are modal. "Be, do, have" are not modal 
auxiliaries. The core modals are can, could, may, might, must, shall, 
should, will, would. Other verbs, such as "ought to, have to", express 
modal meanings. Modals have what are called "deontic" meanings, having 
to do with ability (can), possibility (can, may, might), permission 
(can, may), obligation (should, must), and intention (will) and 
"epistemic" meanings, which indicate the speaker's surmise or a 
conclusion reached without direct evidence ("The lights are on; they 
must be home").

"Used to" is an aspect marker: it marks past habitual actions ("Back 
then, I used to run 5 miles every morning") or past durative states 
("That house used to be green"). It is similar in this way to 
aspect-marking "would" ("Back then, I would run 5 miles every morning") 
(note that aspect-marking "would" is not the same as modal "would", as 
in "If I could, I would run 5 miles every morning"). Huddleston & 
Pullum (p. 115) call it "the most marginal of the auxiliaries" and 
"highly defective" (in the sense that it doesn't have usual verb forms 
such as present tense, gerund or participle or past participle (in its 
habitual meaning).

I recently read a biography of Samuel Pepys, who lived in the 
1500-1600's. I wish now that I had made a note of the examples, but 
quotations from his writings had "use" as an indicator of habit, 
perhaps in tenses other than past. It has fossilized so that now we 
only use the past tense form, and the "to" is not really separable from 
the "used" (this is similar to the obligation sense of "have to"). Note 
the completely fixed form of it in expressions like "I'm not used to 
it."

The whole area of verbs that accompany other verbs (with and without 
"to") is complex and interesting in English, with changes under way 
that take centuries and are at different points for different verbs. 
The modals listed above used to have non-auxiliary meanings and used to 
inflect fully, like main verbs. We can't expect things to fit neatly 
into pigeonholes in this area of grammar. The verb "use" as an 
indicator of habit is clearly on its last legs.


Dr. Johanna Rubba, Associate Professor, Linguistics
Linguistics Minor Advisor
English Department
California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Tel.: 805.756.2184
Dept. Ofc. Tel.: 805.756.2596
Dept. Fax: 805.756.6374
URL: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba

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