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Question

Difficulty: HardModal Auxiliaries and Expressing Modality

During the forensic audit of the municipal budget, the chief auditor noted that the council __________ hired external financial consultants, as the internal treasury department had already compiled all the required reports.

Which of the following modal verb forms correctly completes the sentence to express an action that was performed but was unnecessary?

  1. need not haveAnswer
  2. B
    might can have
  3. C
    must to have
  4. D
    oughted to have

Answer

The modal phrase 'need not have' correctly completes the sentence by expressing an action that took place in the past despite being unnecessary.
The correct answer uses 'need not have' paired with the past participle 'hired' to indicate that the council actually hired external consultants, even though doing so was unnecessary because the internal treasury had already prepared the reports.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the context of the sentence
The internal treasury had already completed the reports, meaning hiring external consultants was redundant, yet the action of hiring took place.
Identifying the target modality (unnecessary past action that occurred) guides the selection of the correct modal perfect structure.
2
Evaluate modal structures for past absence of obligation/necessity
'need not have + past participle' expresses that an action occurred but was unnecessary.
This matches the contextual requirement of the stem.
3
Eliminate ungrammatical modal combinations and inflections
Options containing double modals ('might can'), bare infinitive errors ('must to'), or pseudo-inflections ('oughted') are grammatically invalid.
English modal verbs cannot be stacked directly or inflected with past tense suffixes.

Key Concept

Expressing Past Absence of Necessity with Modal Auxiliaries
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Topics

Modal Auxiliaries and Expressing Modality

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