Auxiliary Verbs or Helping
Helping verbs or auxiliary verbssuch as will, shall, may, might, can, could, must, ought to, should, would, used to, need are used in conjunction with main verbsto express shades of time and mood. The combination of helping verbs with main verbs creates what are called verb phrases or verb strings. In the following sentence, "will have been" are helping or auxiliary verbs and "studying" is the main verb; the whole verb string is underlined:
- As of next August, I will have been studyingchemistry for ten years.
Shall, will and forms of have, do and becombine with main verbs to indicate time and voice. As auxiliaries, the verbs be, have and docan change form to indicate changes in subject and time.
- I shall go now.
- He had won the election.
- They didwrite that novel together.
- I am going now.
- He was winning the election.
- They have beenwriting that novel for a long time.
shall is used to
express the simple future for first person I and
we, as in "Shall we meet by
the river?" Willwould be used in the simple future for
all other persons. Using willin the first person
would express determination on the part of the
speaker, as in "We will finish
this project by tonight, by golly!" Using
shallin second and
third persons would indicate some kind of
promise about the subject,
as in "This shall be
revealed to you in good time." This
certainly acceptable in the
used far less frequently. The
distinction between the two is often obscured by the
contraction 'll,which is
the same for both verbs.|
In the United States, we seldom use shallfor anything other than polite questions (suggesting an element of permission) in the first-person:
Shallis often used in formal situations (legal or legalistic documents, minutes to meetings, etc.) to express obligation, even with third-person and second-person constructions:
In the simple present tense, dowill
function as an auxiliary
to express the negative and
to ask questions.
(Does, however, is substituted for third-person,
singular subjects in the present tense. The
past tense didworks with all
persons, singular and
Forms of the verb to
have are used to create
tenses known as the present perfect and
past perfect. The
perfect tenses indicate that something
has happened in the past; the present
perfect indicating that something
happened and might be continuing to
happen, the past perfect indicating
that something happened prior to something else
happening. (That sounds worse than it
really is!) See the section on
Verb Tenses in the Active
explanation; also review
material in the Directory of English
To have is also in combination with other modal verbs to express probability and possibility in the past.
|can write well.|
The analysis of Modal Auxiliariesis based on a similar analysis in The Scott, Foresman Handbook for Writersby Maxine Hairston and John J. Ruszkiewicz. 4th ed. HarperCollins: New York. 1996. The description of helping verbs on this page is based on The Little, Brown Handbookby H. Ramsay Fowler and Jane E. Aaron, & Kay Limburg. 6th ed. HarperCollins: New York. 1995. By permission of Addison-Wesley Educational Publishers Inc. Examples in all cases are our own.
cancan be used
to express permission or not — "Can I
leave the room now?" ["I don't know if you can, but
you may."] — depends on the level of formality of your
text or situation. As Theodore Bernstein puts it in
The Careful Writer,"a
writer who is attentive to the
proprieties will preserve the traditional
or power to do something, mayfor
permission to do it.|
The question is at what level can you safely ignore the "proprieties." Merriam-Webster's Dictionary, tenth edition, says the battle is over and can can be used in virtually any situation to express or ask for permission. Most authorities, however, recommend a stricter adherence to the distinction, at least in formal situations.
Authority: The Careful Writer by Theodore Bernstein. The Free Press: New York. 1998. p. 87.
Two of the more troublesome
modal auxiliaries are
might. When used in the context of
granting or seeking permission,
past tense of may.
Mightis considerably more
In certain contexts,
will and would
are virtually interchangeable, but
there are differences. Notice that the
contracted form 'll is very
frequently used for will.|
Willcan be used to express willingness:
The auxiliary verb
construction used tois used to
express an action that took
place in the past, perhaps
customarily, but now that action no
longer customarily takes place: