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Please read the following sentence:

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is planning his retirement in the next nine months from the software giant he helped build.

Would you consider "helped" a Non-Modal verb?

If yes, then would you please tell me why?

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APPLE
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    Related: http://english.stackexchange.com/q/3578 – tchrist Nov 17 '13 at 13:23
  • One more question. Would you please tell me why there is a bare-infinitive(build) after "helped"? Is it because of "help" being a causative verb? – APPLE Nov 17 '13 at 22:01
  • In "help build", help has an auxiliary function here. There's no other reasonable way to analyze it. Its a modal that inflects. – William Sep 19 '16 at 01:20

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Just because one verb can follow another in the bare infinitive form does not automatically make the former verb a modal, nor does the lack to the to particle somehow make the latter verb a finite verb.

Help is not a modal verb because modal verbs are not subject to changes of inflectional morphology due to person or number (or arguably by tense). Since helped has been inflected, it cannot be a modal verb.

See this answer for more.

Since modals cannot inflect, they have no -ing form: one cannot saying **mighting* or **musting* or **oughting* the way one can say helping or stopping or making, thus further showing that help cannot be a modal.

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tchrist
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  • Thank you tchrist. Your answer is very instructive.but I am a little confused.you said number doesn't affect modal verbs.but for example "be" as a non-modal verb changes by the subject number and gender.please help me to understand it. – APPLE Nov 17 '13 at 13:50
  • "Be" is not a modal verb. – Colin Fine Nov 17 '13 at 14:06
  • @Colin Fine. Hi. I know. It's a non-modal. My question was about non-modal. Or I should say primary auxiliary verb. – APPLE Nov 17 '13 at 14:09
  • Ah! I understand! You are using "non-modal" in a special way. I thought you meant "not modal". I guess you mean "auxiliary that is not modal". Helped is not an auxiliary. – Colin Fine Nov 17 '13 at 14:17
  • Your question does not make sense, then. Modal verbs do not inflect for person or number. All other verbs (including auxiliary verbs) do. ‘Be’ is not a modal verb. Therefore, it is not strange that ‘be’ does inflect for person and number. Also, no verb in the English language changes according to the subject’s gender. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Nov 17 '13 at 14:17
  • @JanusBahsJacquet Yes, I suppose there do exist situations where modals do inflect (or seem to inflect? unclear) for tense: “She says she will go* tomorrow, but yesterday she said she would go today.”* There are of course other equivalent pairs. I believe all our classic modals fit the pattern of what the OED calls “the class of preterite-presents, in which the present tense has the inflexion of a strong preterite, while the past tense is formed from the root by means of a suffix”. – tchrist Nov 17 '13 at 14:27
  • @JanusBahsJacquet I wonder whether the old strong past tense and strong past participle of help, namely holp and holpen instead of helped, might have made people think of them more as a modal. There appear to be some examples of uninflected uses of holp in the present 3p sg, but I’m not convinced. – tchrist Nov 17 '13 at 14:49
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    Holp(e) in the 3sg is surely quite regular, once the plural holpe(n) had taken over from the older singular past h(e)alp. We’re still in the preterite here, so no inflection would be expected in the 3sg in Middle English. ‘Help’ is a regular strong verb, rather than a preterite-present (which is a common Germanic group, rather than an individual-daughter-language one), that just happened to turned weak over time. I don’t think the strongness of its conjugation really made it more modal to people. ‘Help/holp/holpen’ is after all almost perfectly parallel to ‘steal/stole/stolen’. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Nov 17 '13 at 15:01
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    Help is never an auxiliary. It is never a modal. It is used intransitively (John helped yesterday too) and transitively (John helped me yesterday). It is also used in catenative constructions (John helped (me) wash up / John helped (me) to wash up. – Edwin Ashworth Nov 17 '13 at 15:05
  • Thannk you Edwin, Janous, colin and tchrist. This is my last question. Do you all agree that primary auxiliary verbs(non-modals) are restricted to "Do", "Be" and "have"? – APPLE Nov 17 '13 at 15:31
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    Here is an answer I consider better than a simple 'Yes'. (Apart from the fact that it doesn't seem to get round to saying that the auxiliaries other than these three are not primary auxiliaries!) – Edwin Ashworth Nov 17 '13 at 16:46
  • The defective modals (can, may, might, must, etc) used to inflect in early modern english, e.g "Canst thou speak Greek". So were they not modals back then since they were inflected? The narrow definition of modals people have today doesn't make any sense. Theres no other way to analyze "I helped build the castle". Help is an auxiliary here ; it's just one that still inflects. – William Sep 19 '16 at 01:32