---
title: Modal verbs like can, could, will, should and must help the main ver… — Verbs: doing words and being words · tree and pragmatics
description: Modal verbs like can, could, will, should and must help the main verb, which carries the main action. Who acts: Modal verbs, main verb. A sentence of the lesson «Verbs: doing words and being words» of the language course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every c
---

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# Verbs: doing words and being words, sentence 9

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Modal verbs like can, could, will, should and must help the main verb, which carries the main action.

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**Who acts:** Modal verbs, main verb · **What happens:** help, carry · **To what, where:** main verb, main action

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Verbs: doing words and being words» of the language course of Mova's primary school. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Modal verbs, main verb), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:language:003-verbs-doing-words-and-being-words.lesson:9
# text = Modal verbs like can, could, will, should and must help the main verb, which carries the main action.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = language
# lesson = 003-verbs-doing-words-and-being-words.lesson
# annotation = Mova annot: Rust (en) → Haiku 5.5 (medium, Batches API) patches; gates UD 2.18; agreed by treeagree rules (Stanza, Trankit, spaCy trf): R2-punct-next ×1, R5-strong ×1, R7-rel-agree ×1
1	Modal	modal	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	amod	_	_
2	verbs	verb	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	13	nsubj	_	_
3	like	like	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=4:mark|HaikuPos=SCONJ:IN:_
4	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	2	acl:relcl	_	_
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	_
6	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	_
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	Agree=R2-punct-next|Haiku=6:punct
8	will	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	6	conj	_	_
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	_
10	should	should	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	_
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
12	must	must	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	_
13	help	help	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
15	main	main	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	16	amod	_	_
16	verb	verb	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obj	_	_
17	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	19	punct	_	_
18	which	which	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	19	nsubj	_	_
19	carries	carry	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	16	acl:relcl	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=13:conj
20	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	22	det	_	_
21	main	main	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	22	amod	_	_
22	action	action	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	obj	_	_
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	13	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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- form: statement
- act: assert
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: changed act=assert

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **help** | must | Modal verbs | the main verb |  |  |  |  | vn help-72.1-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent verb=Beneficiary |
| 2 | **carry** | present | the main verb | the main action |  |  |  |  | vn carry-11.4 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent action=Theme |

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One row per clause the reader finds. «not said here»: a role filled from the clause above. «roles by»: a VerbNet class and frame when one fits the verb, else the reader's rules on the tree.

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**Licence: [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)**, as the whole of Mova corpus 0.4, of which this treebank (the agreed school, `mova-school-agreed-en.conllu`) is part. The lessons were written for Mova's primary school. Sentence `school:language:003-verbs-doing-words-and-being-words.lesson:9`.

**The tree:** Mova annot: Rust (en) → Haiku 5.5 (medium, Batches API) patches; gates UD 2.18; agreed by treeagree rules (Stanza, Trankit, spaCy trf): R2-punct-next ×1, R5-strong ×1, R7-rel-agree ×1. **The frames** are read from the tree by Mova's frames reader (`prag`) when this page is built, the lesson read in order, so a pronoun may be resolved from an earlier sentence.

See the [release 0.4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/releases/0.4/).

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