Auxiliary verb are helping verbs. They help other both affirmative and negative sentence, meaning they are not use alone in sentences. They are also to ask question.
- Primary Auxiliaries: They are used with other verbs to show tense and number in sentence. They include: be, am, is, was, were, being, been, has, have, having, had, do, does, doing, did, and done.
- Modal Auxiliaries: They are used with other verbs to change their meaning. They express ideas such as possibility, intention, or permission e.g can, shall, should, will, would, may, might, must, ought to, dare, need, used to and had better.
In ordinary sentence, shall gives with I, and we to indicate the future tense e.g I shall eat the food
We shall travel tomorrow.
Will: goes with: he, she, you, they, it, Example
– We will come here today
– She will write the letter
– You will buy the book
– They will go to Abuja
– It will fly away.
Lexical (or main) verb can stand alone as the verb elements in sentence. For example:
The young women danced till dawn
Bola did his homework yesterday.
I would have done away if I know how
(Auxiiliary) (Lexical)
See also