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Ability

From Teflpedia
Disambiguation: see -able and -ity for the suffixes. See also language proficiency.

Ability (/əˈbɪləti/) is the capacity of having the means or skill to do something.[1]

In English, ability is often expressed using the full modal verbcan,” and its preteritecould.” It’s also possible to use the lexical-grammatical structure “be able to,” particular as an infinitive (i.e. "to be able to") or as a gerund “being able to,” since being a full modal verb “can" lacks an infinitive and gerund.

For someone (e.g. a child) who is subordinate to another person (e.g. an adult), ability is often strongly associated with permission. e.g. Hence a child will ask “can I watch a cartoon?" when they mean “Will you give me permission to watch a cartoon that I would like to watch?"

References[edit | edit source]