ought to (ellipsis)

Point 145 in the category of MODALITY and ELLIPSIS is defined as:

‘ought to’ without a following verb where the previous main verb is understood.

There is an important note in the comments section of the EGP:

This is a very low-frequency form in both the learner and native speaker data.


There’s only one example in the TED corpus:

But as I said earlier, this kind of logic applies across the board for infectious diseasesand it ought to.


A search for collocates up to 4 spaces to the left of ought to.


1 THEY (PPHS2 ) 210


2 THAN (CSN ) 128


3 THINK (VV0 ) 47
4 REALLY (RR ) 42
5 WAY (NN1 ) 39

*google search does not allow a search for the full stop.  This makes it very hard to find examples of it.

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