English auxiliary verbs

English auxiliary verbs are a small set of English verbs, which include the English modal auxiliary verbs and a few others. Although the auxiliary verbs of English are widely believed to lack inherent semantic meaning and instead to modify the meaning of the verbs they accompany, they are nowadays classed by linguists as auxiliary on the basis not of semantic but of grammatical properties: among these, that they invert with their subjects in interrogative main clauses (Has John arrived?) and are negated either by the simple addition of not (He has not arrived) or (with a very few exceptions) by negative inflection (He hasn't arrived).

History of the concept

When describing English, the adjective auxiliary was "formerly applied to any formative or subordinate elements of language, e.g. prefixes, prepositions." As applied to verbs, its conception was originally rather vague and varied significantly.

Some historical examples

The first English grammar, Bref Grammar for English by William Bullokar, published in 1586, does not use the term "auxiliary" but says:

<blockquote>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, that being a mere sign of the future tense. [orthography standardized and modernized]</blockquote>

In volume 5 (1762) of Tristram Shandy, the narrator's father explains that "The verbs auxiliary we are concerned in here, . . . , are, am; was; have; had; do; did; make; made; suffer; shall; should; will; would; can; could; owe; ought; used; or is wont."

Charles Wiseman's Complete English Grammar of 1764 notes that most verbs

<blockquote>cannot be conjugated through all their Moods and Tenses, without one of the following principal Verbs have and be. The first serves to conjugate the rest, by supplying the compound tenses of all Verbs both Regular and Irregular, whether Active, Passive, Neuter, or Impersonal, as may be seen in its own variation, &c.</blockquote>

Along with have and be, it goes on to include do, may, can, shall, will as auxiliary verbs.</blockquote>

The verbs that all the sources cited above agree are auxiliary verbs are the modal auxiliary verbs may, can, and shall; most also include be, do, and have.

Auxiliary verbs as heads

Modern grammars do not differ substantially over membership in the list of auxiliary verbs, though they have refined the concept and, following an idea first put forward by John Ross in 1969, have tended to take the auxiliary verb not as subordinate to a "main verb" (a concept that pedagogical grammars perpetuate), but instead as the head of a verb phrase. Examples include The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language and Bas Aarts' Oxford Modern English Grammar. This is shown in the tree diagram below for the clause I can swim.

alt="“Swim” shown as a verb phrase (VP) that constitutes a clause, which is the complement of “can” in a second, higher-level VP."|frameless

The clause has a subject noun phrase I and a head verb phrase (VP), headed by the auxiliary verb can. The VP also has a complement clause, which has a head VP, with the head verb swim.

Recent definitions

A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (1985) says of "verbs in auxiliary function" that "In contrast to full [i.e. lexical] verbs, [these verbs] are capable of functioning as auxiliary or 'helping' verbs (cf 2.27f)", which seems to refer back to a table showing the "main verb" (sink in various inflected forms) following one to four auxiliary verbs (be and have, again in various inflected forms; and may and must). It is not obvious how this definition would exclude lexical verbs such as try (in tried sinking, tried to have sunk, tried being sunk, etc) For these, see a later section. Where there is a blank, the auxiliary verb lacks this form. (In some cases, a corresponding lexical verb may have the form. For example, although lexical verb need has a plain past tense form, auxiliary verb need does not.)

{| class="wikitable"

English auxiliary verb paradigm

! rowspan="2" style="text-align:right;" | Citation<br />form

! rowspan="2" |Modal/<br />Non-modal

! rowspan="2" |Plain

! colspan="3" |Present tense

! colspan="3" |Past tense

! colspan="2" |Participles

! rowspan="2" |Confusible<br />lexical<br />homonym?

!Neutral

!Contr.

!Negative

!Neutral

!Contr.

!Negative

!Present

!Past

! style="text-align:right;" | will

| rowspan="8" |Modal

|will

|ll

|won't

|would

|wouldn't

| none

! style="text-align:right;" | may

! style="text-align:right;" | need), or with most lexical verbs: *I haven't swum much recently but I used/want/hope.

It does however work with a number of lexical verbs: I'd be grateful if you tried/started/stopped.

NICER: Rebuttal

When two people are arguing, one may use a stressed too or so immediately after the auxiliary verb to deny a statement made by the other. For example, having been told that he didn't do his homework, a child may reply I did too. (Or anyway, this is true for US English. For British English, indeed. Rodney Huddleston argues against this position in The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, In a book on the historical emergence and spread of infinitival to, Bettelou Los calls Pullum's arguments that it is an auxiliary verb "compelling".

In terms of the NICER properties, examples like it's fine not to go show that to allows negation. Inversion, contraction of not, and rebuttal would only apply to tensed forms, and to is argued to have none. Although rebuttal is not possible, it does allow ellipsis: I don't want to.

(Had) better, (woul)d rather, and others

With their normal senses (as in You had better/best arrive early), had/d better and had/d best are not about the past. Indeed they do not seem to be usable for the past (*Yesterday I had better return home before the rain started); and they do not occur with other forms of have (*have/has better/best). The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language observes:

<blockquote>If we take [the had in had better] as a distinct lexeme, we will say that it has been reanalysed as a present tense form (like must and ought). . . . [In view of its syntactic behaviour], it undoubtedly should be included

among the non-central members of the modal auxiliary class. They would be:

Superlative modals: had best, d best
Comparative modals: had better, d better, better, would rather, d rather, had rather, should rather, would sooner, d sooner, had sooner, should sooner
Equative modals: would (just) as soon as, may (just) as well, might (just) as well

Among these, had better, d better, better occur the most commonly. They express either advice or a strong hope: a deontic and an optative sense respectively.)

Followed by the present participle of a verb (whether lexical or auxiliary), be realizes the progressive aspect: He was promoting the film.

In Early Modern English, perfect tenses could be formed with either have (as today) or be. The latter pattern persisted into the 19th century: a character in Pride and Prejudice says, But before I am run away with by my feelings on this subject, perhaps it will be advisable for me to state my reasons for marrying.

Do

Do-support

The auxiliary verb do is primarily used for dosupport. This in turn is used for negation, interrogative main clauses, and more.

If a positive main clause is headed by an auxiliary verb, either the addition of not or (for most auxiliary verbs) a n't inflection can negate. So They could reach home before dark becomes They couldn't reach home before dark. (This is the "negation" of NICE and NICER.) However, a lexical verb has to be supported by the verb do; so They reached home before dark becomes They didn't reach home before dark.); the inverted alternative to How wonderful it tasted! would be How wonderful did it taste! A negative constituent that is not the subject can move to the front and trigger such inversion: None of the bottles did they leave unopened. A phrase with only can do the same: Only once did I win a medal. Ditto for phrases starting with so and such: So hard/Such a beating did Douglas give Tyson that Tyson lost. And in somewhat old-fashioned or formal writing, a miscellany of other constituents can be moved to the front with the same effect: Well do I remember, not so much the whipping, as the being shut up in a dark closet behind the study;for years and years did they believe that France was on the brink of ruin. in English, a sentence using a perfect tense may or may not have a perfective interpretation. although slightly revised. The first, with an unspecified starting point and continuing uninterruptedly to the present, is illustrated by I've lived in Oslo since 2016; the experiential by Yes, I've watched a bullfight, and I never want to watch one again; the perfect of result by I've just watched a bullfight, and now I feel rather sick; and that of recent past by George Santos has just given a press conference (usable at the time of writing, but likely to become odder as time passes). The perfect is also used in contexts that require both past reference and an untensed verb form (He seems to have left; Having left, he lit a cigarette).

Other uses

When used to describe an event, have is exclusively a lexical verb (*Had you your teeth done?; Did you have your teeth done?; *Had you a nap?; Did you have a nap?). When used to describe a state, however, for many speakers (although for few Americans or younger people) there is also an auxiliary option: (he'd stop at a pub, settle up with a cheque because he hadn't any money on him; Hasn't he any friends of his own?; I'm afraid I haven't anything pithy to answer; This hasn't anything directly to do with religion). It hasn’t got anything to do with the little green men and the blue orb; What right had he got to get on this train without a ticket?; Hasn't he got a toolbox?).

With their meaning of obligation, have to, has to and had to – rarely if ever rendered as ve to, s to and d to – can use auxiliary have for inversion (if he wants to compel A. to do something to what Court has he to go?; How much further has he to go?; Now why has he to wait three weeks?), although lexical have is commoner.

Use

Use (rhyming with loose) satisfies only one of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Languages five criteria for modal as distinct from other auxiliary verbs. "It is also semantically quite distinct from the modal auxiliaries: the meaning it expresses is aspectual, not modal."</blockquote>

Use is far more commonly encountered as a lexical than as an auxiliary verb, particularly for younger or American speakers. This forms questions and negatives with did. The plain form use (sometimes spelt ) of the lexical verb is seen in Did you use to play tennis?). Its preterite perfect had used is rare but attested. A simple declarative (I often used to play tennis) could be either auxiliary or lexical.

Use of the preterite used should not be confused with that of the participial adjective (i.e. the adjective etymologically derived from the participle), meaning "familiar with", as in I am used to this, We must get used to the cold. (As is common for adjectives and impossible for verbs, used here can be modified by very.) When the participial adjective is followed by to and a verb, the latter is a gerund-participle: I am used to going to college in the mornings.

Data from a corpus of American and British spoken and written English of the 1980s and 1990s show that used not to, usedn't to (both auxiliary), and didn't use to (lexical) were then rare in both American and British English, other than used not to in British novels. Never used to is a commonly used alternative. Modal auxiliary use is not used in interrogatives in conversation (Used you to . . . ?); and even the lexical version with do-support (Did you use to . . . ?) is rare. They usually involve the elision of a vowel – an apostrophe being inserted in its place in written English – possibly accompanied by other changes. Many of these contractions involve auxiliary verbs.

Certain contractions tend to be restricted to less formal speech and very informal writing, such as John'd or Mary'd for "John/Mary would". (Compare the personal pronoun forms I'd and you'd, much more likely to be encountered in relatively informal writing.) This applies in particular to constructions involving consecutive contractions, such as wouldn't've for "would not have".

Contractions in English are generally not mandatory, as they are in some other languages, although in speech uncontracted forms may seem overly formal. They are often used for emphasis: I ready! The uncontracted form of an auxiliary or copula must be used in elliptical sentences where its complement is omitted: Who's ready? / I am! (not *I'm!).

Some contractions lead to homophony, which sometimes causes errors in writing, such as confusing ve with of, as in "" for would have.

Unstressed and contracted forms of individual verbs

The lists below derive from F. R. Palmer's The English Verb An't, ben't, can't, don't, han't, shan't and won't were well established by the end of the 17th century; isn't, aren't, wasn't, weren't, didn't, doesn't, don't, hadn't, hasn't, haven't, can't, couldn't, daren't, mayn't (now obsolete or dialectal), mightn't, mustn't, needn't, shan't, shouldn't, won't and wouldn't by the end of the 18th; and oughtn't in the early 19th. and Eric Partridge calls it "ugly", but it is the standard inflected form in some varieties, mainly Hiberno-English (Irish English) and Scottish English. In Hiberno-English the question form (amn't I?) is used more frequently than the declarative I amn't. (The standard I'm not is available as an alternative to I amn't in both Scottish English and Hiberno-English.) An example appears in a poem by Oliver St. John Gogarty: If anyone thinks that I amn't divine, / He gets no free drinks when I'm making the wine. These lines are quoted in James Joyce's Ulysses, which also contains other examples: Amn't I with you? Amn't I your girl? (spoken by Cissy Caffrey).

Amnae

Amnae exists in Scots, and has been borrowed into Scottish English by many speakers. It is used in declarative sentences rather than questions. Geoffrey Nunberg has argued that ain't is used by Standard English speakers "to suggest that a fact is just obvious on the face of things".

Aren't

Aren't is a very common means of filling the "amn't gap" in questions: Aren't I lucky to have you around? It was common by the early 20th century: Otto Jespersen writing in a book published in 1917 that:

<blockquote>Nowadays [] is frequently heard, especially in tag-questions: I'm a bad boy [], but when authors want to write it, they are naturally induced to write aren't. . . . I find the spelling aren't I or arn't I pretty frequently in George Eliot . . . but only to represent vulgar or dialectal speech. In the younger generation of writers, however, it is also found as belonging to educated speakers. . . . In 1979, however, it was described as "almost universal" among speakers of Standard English. As an alternative to am not, aren't developed from one pronunciation of an't (which itself developed in part from amn't). In non-rhotic dialects, aren't and an't are homophones, and the spelling began to replace in the early 20th century, although examples of (or ) for am I not appear in the first half of the 19th century, as in arn't  I listening; and isn't it only the breeze that's blowing the sheets and halliards about? from 1827.

An't

An't (sometimes a'n't) arose from "am not" (via "amn't") and "are not" almost simultaneously. "An't" first appears in print in the work of English Restoration playwrights. In 1695 "an't" was used for "am not", and as early as 1696 "an't" was used to mean "are not". "An't" for "is not" may have developed independently from its use for "am not" and "are not". "Isn't" was sometimes written as "in't" or "en't", which could have changed into "an't". "An't" for "is not" may also have filled a gap in the paradigm for the verb be. From 1749, an't with a long "a" sound began to be written as ain't. By this time, an't was already being used for "am not", "are not", and "is not". An't and ain't coexisted as written forms well into the 19th century.

Bain't

Bain't, apparently from "be not", is found in a number of works employing eye dialect, including J. Sheridan Le Fanu's Uncle Silas. It is also found in a ballad written in Newfoundland dialect.

Other negative inflections of have

Han't or ha'n't, an early contraction for has not and have not, developed from the elision of the s of has not and the v of have not. Han't also appeared in the work of English Restoration playwrights. Much like an't, han't was sometimes pronounced with a long a, yielding hain't. With H-dropping, the h of han't or hain't gradually disappeared in most dialects, and became ain't. Ain't as a contraction for has not/have not appeared in print as early as 1819. As with an't, hain't and ain't were found together late into the nineteenth century.

Hain't, in addition to being an antecedent of ain’t, is a contraction of has not and have not in some dialects of English, such as Appalachian English. It is reminiscent of hae (have) in Lowland Scots. In dialects that retain the distinction between hain't and ain't, hain't is used for contractions of to have not and ain't for contractions of to be not. In other dialects, hain't is used either in place of, or interchangeably with ain't. Hain't is seen for example in Chapter 33 of Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: I hain't come back—I hain't been .

Other negative inflections of do

Don't is the Standard English negative inflected form of do. However, in nonstandard English it may also be used for third person singular: Emma? She don't live here anymore.