... distinctions.indd 106-107 Should vs Ought to 107 —(only for ought to) do-support vs absence of do-support —(only for ought to) infinitive marker to vs reduced (oughta) vs absent The quantitative ... of ought to (cf Kennedy (2002)), which amounts to a should/ ought to ratio of 19:1. Similarly, in Collins’s (2009) study (involving different corpora), the ratio of should to ought to appears to ... observed from the table that should is much more frequent than ought to in the corpora, with a 9:1 should/ ought to ratio in the spoken corpus and a 36:1 should/ ought to ratio in the written corpus. These...