Helping Verbs (Auxiliary Verbs)

  

                           English language has a unique system of verb structure. Broadly the verbs are classified into two categories. i) Main Verbs (unlimited in number)

ii) Helping Verbs ( limited , only  27 ).

Ø Auxiliary verbs help the main verbs and some of them can act as main verbs also.

Main Verb has five forms :

Take ( V1 or Present Tense or Base form) ,

Takes ( S-form or Present singular),

Took ( V2 or Past Tense),  

     Taken ( V3 or Past Participle),

Taking ( ing-form or Present Participle)

•     Among these five forms , two forms i.e. Present Participle ( ing-form) & Past participle ( V3) are incomplete forms and need some helping verbs to get complete sense.  V1, V2, S forms need helping verbs to make questions and negative sentences. So the students must learn Helping verbs thoroughly  to avoid blunders in verbs.

Helping Verbs: ( 27)

·                     Be- forms : am, is, was, are, were, be, been, being

·                     Have- forms : has, have, had

·                     Do- forms : does, do, did, ( done )

·                     Modal Auxiliaries:  will, would, shall, should, can, could, may, might

                                           dare, must ,need , aught to, used to

Ø Be forms, (except ‘be, been, being’), Have forms, Do forms ( except ‘done’) can act as main verbs independently besides helping certain forms of main verbs.

Ø Every helping verb or  set of helping verbs has unique function in the sentence. They are not substitute to each other. So we can't use 'Be' forms in the place of 'Do' forms.

               Follow the blog for detailed information about Helping verbs.