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An auxiliary verb (abbreviated aux) is a verb that adds functional or grammatical meaning to the clause in which it occurs, so as to express tense, aspect, modality, voice, emphasis, etc. Auxiliary verbs usually accompany an infinitive verb or a participle, which respectively provide the main semantic content of the clause. [1]
This is a list of English auxiliary verbs, i.e. helping verbs, which include Modal verbs and Semi-modal verbs. See also auxiliary verbs , light verbs , and catenative verbs . Primary Auxiliary Verbs
The first English grammar, Bref Grammar for English by William Bullokar, published in 1586, does not use the term "auxiliary" but says: All other verbs are called verbs-neuters-un-perfect because they require the infinitive mood of another verb to express their signification of meaning perfectly: and be these, may, can, might or mought, could, would, should, must, ought, and sometimes, will ...
When the affirmative already uses auxiliary verbs (I am going), no other auxiliary verbs are added to negate the clause (I am not going). (Until the period of early Modern English, negation was effected without additional auxiliary verbs: I go not.) Most combinations of auxiliary verbs etc. with not have contracted forms: don't, can't, isn't, etc
The English modal auxiliary verbs are a subset of the English auxiliary verbs used mostly to express modality, properties such as possibility and obligation. [a] They can most easily be distinguished from other verbs by their defectiveness (they do not have participles or plain forms [b]) and by their lack of the ending ‑(e)s for the third-person singular.
Stat is an auxiliary for inchoative aspect when combined with the verbal suffix -in: gon stat plein ("gonna start playing"). The auxiliary pau without the verbal suffix indicates completion: pau tich "finish(ed) teaching". Aspect auxiliaries can co-occur with tense markers: gon ste plei ("gonna be playing"); wen ste it ("was eating
Specifically, it is made up of a form of the auxiliary verb to be and a past participle of the main verb which carries the lexical content of the predicate. In other languages, such as Latin , the passive voice for some tenses is simply marked on the verb by inflection : librum legit "He reads the book"; liber legitur "The book is read".
Light verbs, however, are not auxiliary verbs, nor are they full verbs. Light verbs differ from auxiliary verbs in English insofar as they do not pass the syntactic tests that identify auxiliary verbs. The following examples illustrate that light verbs fail the inversion and negation diagnostics that identify auxiliary verbs: a.