Helping Verbs

Helping Verbs (also called Auxiliary Verbs) are not always clearly understood.

It is not uncommon among students of English, especially those who began seriously learning the language late in life, to mistakenly believe that some words are always auxiliary verbs and others always main verbs.

For instance, in the minds of such students, the verb 'is' in the sentence — 'John is a good student' is incorrectly branded as an auxiliary verb. They consider all occurrences of 'is' as auxiliary verbs.

The truth is that the verb 'is' can function as a helping verb in one sentence and as a main verb in another...

• John is a good student. (is – is a main verb in this sentence).
• John is reading a book. (is- is a helping verb; and reading is the main verb—both these verbs together forming a single finite verb phrase).

What are Helping Verbs?

Helping Verbs are part of finite verb phrases. Finite verb phrases usually have a main part and a helping part.

Finite verbs are usually phrases (groups of words), except for two instances, when they are single words.

Do not worry about these two exceptional cases just now. We shall see about them when we come to verb tenses. In all other instances, a finite verb phrase consists of two or three or four words.

• I  write an article every week. 
• Now the article  is written.
• My daughter  has been writing it since last Monday.
• In my wife's opinion, I should have been writing it.

The finite verbs in these sentences can be broken up as follows:

From this table we know that write, written and writing are the main verbs. Each of them is a different form of the verb 'to write.'

All the other verbs in the table are helping verbs.

• Both 'is' and 'been' are forms of the verb 'to be.'
• 'has' and 'have' are forms of the verb 'to have.'
• The verb 'should' is called a modal auxiliary (or simply a modal).

You can also notice that in the four sentences above...

• there is no helping verb in the first sentence,
• you find one, two, and three auxiliary verbs inthe second, third and fourth sentences respectively.

There is a main verb in all the sentences. So, a helping verb requires a main verb to receive its help. Without a main verb, there can be no helping verb.

How Do Helping Verbs Help?

1. Some helping verbs (called Primary Auxiliaries) help syntactically, i.e. they perform some grammatical function, such as...
   
   • in forming the passive,
   • in expressing the continuity (progressive) aspect,
   • in expressing the perfect (completed) aspect,
   • in providing a dummy verb where a negative or interrogative sentence is to be made in particular tenses.
     


2. Other helping verbs (called Modal Auxiliaries) perform semantic functions. They add meaning to the meaning of the main verb. What they add are meanings like...
   
   • ability,
   • possibility,
   • permission,
   • command,
   • habitual action, etc.

More details (with examples and explanation) about the functions of Helping Verbs is matter for more pages to come.

Go from Helping Verbs to Types of Verbs
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