A Student's Introduction to English Grammar

38 Chapter 3 Verbs, tense, aspect, and mood

(a) Subject-auxiliary inversion

We have seen that interrogative clauses differ from declaratives in the position of the

subject. In interrogatives the subject follows a primary verb-form, instead of preced­

ing the verb as it always does in canonical clauses. This inversion of positions

between subject and verb is permitted only with auxiliary verbs. It is referred to as

subject-auxiliary inversion. Compare:

[15] AUXILIARY VERB

a. She has taken the money.

ii a. Has she taken the money?

LEXICAL VERB

b. She takes the money.

b. *Takes she the money?

[ declarati ve ]

[interrogative]

Interrogative clauses with lexical verbs have to be constructed in a different
way. To form the interrogative of She takes the money we add the auxiliary verb
do. This has no meaning of its own - it simply permits compliance with the
grammatical requirement that this kind of interrogative clause should contain an
auxiliary verb. We refer to it therefore as the dummy auxiliary do. It cannot be
used in combination with another auxiliary verb, so the [b) example in [16] is
ungrammatical. The present tense in [a] is marked on do; take is a plain form.

[ 16] DUMMY do + LEXICAL VERB

a. Does she take the money?

(b) Negation

DUMMY do + AUXILIARY VERB

b. * Does she have taken the money?

There are two ways in which auxiliaries differ from lexical verbs with respect to
negation. In the first place, the simplest type of negative clause construction, where
the negation is associated with a primary verb-form, is permitted with auxiliary
verbs, but not with lexical verbs:

[17] AUXILIARY LEXICAL VERB

a. She has taken the money.

ii a. She has not taken the money.

b. She takes the money.

b. * She takes not the money.

[positive]

[negative]

To form the negative of She takes the money we have to add dummy do, just as we
did to form the interrogative, and again this do cannot combine with another auxil­
iary verb:

[ 18] DUMMY do + LEXICAL VERB DUMMY do + AUXILIARY VERB

a. She does not take the money. b. * She does not have taken the money.

In the second place, auxiliaries have negative inflectional forms. They all end in n't,
and are found in the preterite and present tense:

[19] PRETERITE

11 PRESENT

He couldn 't swim. She wouldn 't help us.

He can't swim. She won 't help us.

They hadn't finished.

They haven't finished.

No lexical verb has forms of this kind: tookn't, taken't, et c., are completely impos­
sible. Historically the negative forms arose through contraction, with could + not