The second one.He dared not to come.
He dared not come.
Which of the two is correct ?
Blends between the auxiliary construction and the main verb construction occur and seem to be widely acceptable (more so in the case of dare than in that of need):
They do not dare ask for more.
Do they dare ask for more?
These two examples combine the support of the main verb construction with the bare infinitive of the auxiliary construction. On the hypothesis that there are two different verbs (the main verb DARE and the auxiliary verb dare), one would expect these to be ungrammatical; but they are not. The past tense form dared without DO-support may be regarded as another example of a blend, since the -ed past inflection is not characteristic of modal verbs:
They dared not carry out their threat.
As a modal, dare exhibits abnormal time reference in that it can
be used, without inflection, for past as well as present time:
The king was so hot-tempered that no one dare tell him the bad news.
/A learner/
<>
As a modal, dare exhibits abnormal time reference in that it can
be used, without inflection, for past as well as present time:
<>
Aren't both the dare and the need semi-modals?
Thanks
A small correction: it's "et al.", without a period after "et".Quirk et. al.
In a book, I've seen that they were named semi-modals.They are, dare and need, according to the Quirkian taxonomic system, two examples of the so-called marginal modals. Your question after the quoted part suggests to me you see some contradiction. There is not. 'As a modal' means sometimes 'dare' exhibits features characteristic of modals, and at other times ones characteristic of main verbs. It can be argued that 'dare' is a modal and that there is a homomorphic 'dare' with main verb characteristics. This conception, however, is not able to account for the fact that 'dare' often mixes the features of auxiliaries and main verbs.