Cambridge Grammar of English Hardback with cd-rom a comprehensive Guide

NEED

397

Semi-modal need most commonly occurs in the negative declarative, to indicate

absence of obligation:

She 

needn’t take the exam if she doesn’t want to.

At least the spare time on his hands could be good fun. He’d please himself

and no one else. His tie could hang loose all the time. He 

need not wear a tie.

He 

need not wear a suit. That was the uniform of servitude. He need not hasten

through the city streets, his coffee hardly drunk, to be at work on time. 

Affirmative declaratives with semi-modal need are much rarer and are associated

with formal styles and contexts. There is almost always some element of negation

in the clause, even if the verb phrase is affirmative:

No one

else 

need see what he was doing either.

If we feel wisdom itself is lost, we 

need

only

enter a library. 

(we need not do more than enter a library)

Interrogatives with semi-modal need are very rare and are associated with formal

styles and contexts:

[She here refers to a fishing boat which sank while at sea]

She was most likely run down by a larger ship which never stopped. Fishing is

dangerous – er, but 

need it be this dangerous? 

Semi-modal need has no past tense equivalent, and the lexical verbs didn’t need to

or didn’t have to are used to express absence of obligation in the past:

I got better quite quickly and I 

didn’t need to go back to the hospital.

She’d done half the course the year before so she 

didn’t have to go to all the

lectures.

658 | Modality

Cambridge Grammar of English

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Semi-modal need can be used with a future-in-the-past meaning:

I was locked out but I knew I 

needn’t panic because Laura would be home at

five.

Needn’t have

+ -ed participle is used to refer to events which happened but which

the speaker considers were unnecessary:

I 

needn’t have bought so much food now that Suzie won’t be with us for dinner.

(speaker did buy food but now considers it was unnecessary)