A case of lost forms

During the development and shifts of English language many words were left without similarly changing or behaving items, leaving them to be regarded commonly as exceptions, and to be learned by heart. Even more “problematic” for English learners are the words which could not be clearly put in one grammatical category, as their conjugation and usage is irregular. One of such words are verbs ought and used to, as they simultaneously have characteristics of modal, auxiliary, and main verbs. To better understand how and why they change (or don’t) and are used we should turn to their etymology, as it explains where they came from and what they used to mean and be employed. The verb ought is a verb derived from past tense of the Old English owe, meaning possession. Ought is used to express moral obligation, which is a trait of modal verbs, but it is followed by the infinitive form with to, which is not typical for modal or auxiliary verbs. A form without to is acceptable, but less commonly used. It doesn’t have infinitive or participle forms, as the verb itself is derived from past tense, but has a negative form ought not. It can appear at the beginning of questions, but the sentences built like this are considered to be too formal: What ought I to do?. An example of right use of ought to in a sentence would be If you haven’t read the book then you ought to see the movie. It doesn’t change form for person, making sentences like He oughts to listen to his mother. ungrammatical. Judging by all the abovementioned characteristics, it is hard to put ought to in one grammatical category, but it would make more sense to consider it a modal verb nowadays, even though it is a form of a main verb, as other forms are lost, and the only use it is left with is to express obligation. Used to is a participle form of the verb use, indicating former custom or state of being. For example, I used to live alone. means that in the past I lived alone, but it is not the case now. As the case was with ought to, in the past all the forms of the verb use had a meaning of “habitual practice, an action or state a person is accustomed to“. In modern form it is used only as past-participle adjective, and sentences like She uses to watch TV. are nonsensical. The expression does not change for person, like modal verbs, and forms questions and negative form with the auxiliary verb do, as main verbs do: We didn’t use to like him, but now we do. Again, as with ought, it is difficult to determine a category for the verb form, as its characteristics indicate both modal and main verb, but in this particular case it makes more sense to put it in the main verbs category, as the expression’s meaning does not relate to possibility or obligation, but to past habit instead. In English there are words with characteristics of several categories, as a result of their development, that perhaps would be better put in the category of main verbs, as their roots suggest. However, due to their present form and usage, their category affiliation is fuzzy, as they exhibit characteristics inherent to several categories. In this situation we should consider the historical meaning and usage of the verbs in questions, and present shift as well, to determine which category suit better in each particular case. As we can see in abovementioned cases, both ought and used to are past participles of expressions no longer used, but their category affiliation is different, because of their meaning.