ought – English Grammar Profiler

In the English Vocabulary Profile at B1: If something used to happen or a situation used to exist, it happened regularly or in the past but it does not happen or exist now. In the English Grammar Profile at B1: Point 60 in MODALITY: ‘used to’ to talk about repeated actions or states in the …

didn’t use to + INFINITVE Read More »

In the English Grammar Profile, B2 point 50 in the category of VERBS is defined as: ‘there’ with other verbs with modal meaning + ‘be’ + complement. The EGP modality examples contain: ‘need, have, is going + to’ However, in the English Vocabulary Profile, ‘there needs to be’ is listed at C2 with the following example: …

THERE + modality + TO BE Read More »

In the English Grammar Profile, C1 point 202 in MODALITY is defined as: PAST AFFIRMATIVE ‘ought to have’ + ‘-ed’ to refer to desired states of affairs in the past. This structure can express regret or show that something did not happen or was not the case in the past. For example: l ought to have stayed in Kentucky where l belong. listen In …

ought to have + PAST PARTICIPLE Read More »

In the English Grammar Profile, C1 point 180 in the category of MODALITY is defined as: ‘ought to’ with ‘really’ to add emphasis. A search on iWeb for clusters with lexical verbs: 1 REALLY OUGHT TO KNOW 254 2 REALLY OUGHT TO GET 136 3 REALLY OUGHT TO GO 76 4 REALLY OUGHT TO CONSIDER …

really ought to Read More »

In the English Grammar Profile, C1 point 192 in the category of MODALITY is defined as: ‘THERE OUGHT TO BE” to talk about desired states of affairs. An iWeb search for: there ought to be* * * 1 THERE OUGHT TO BE A WAY TO 66 2 THERE OUGHT TO BE A LAW AGAINST 33 …

There ought to be Read More »

Point 145 in the category of MODALITY and ELLIPSIS is defined as: ‘ought to’ without a following verb where the previous main verb is understood. There is an important note in the comments section of the EGP: This is a very low-frequency form in both the learner and native speaker data. There’s only one example …

ought to (ellipsis) Read More »

In the English Grammar Profile, B1 point 91 in Modality is defined as: ‘ought to’ with ‘you’ to give advice. This depends on usage but at the same time we could add our own vocabulary range criteria to ensure it marks higher complexity.  As you can see most of the 20 most frequent lexical verbs …

You ought to (advice) Read More »

B1 to C2 variations of this modality.