A Student's Introduction to English Grammar

[24] AUXILIARY USAGE

a. Need we tell anyone?

ii a. She needn't go.

iii a. *Need she any help?

§3.4 The general concept of auxiliary verb 41

LEXICAL VERB USAGE

b. Do we need to tell anyone?

b. She doesn't need to go.

b. Does she need any help?

Note that in [i-ii] auxiliary need takes a bare infinitival complement (tell anyone

and go), whereas lexical need takes a to-infinitival.

(d) Dare

Auxiliary dare (again, a modal) is very much like auxiliary need, in that it occurs
only in non-affirmative contexts and takes a bare infinitival complement. Lexical
dare mostly occurs in non-affirmative contexts too, but is not restricted to them.

[25] AUXILIARY USAGE

a. I daren 't tell anyone.

LEXICAL VERB USAGE

b. I didn 't dare to tell anyone.

ii a. Dare they accept her challenge?

iii a. [no auxiliary counterpart]

b. Do they dare to accept her challenge?

b. She had dared to contradict him.

There is no auxiliary counterpart to [iiib], for two reasons. In the first place, dared
is a past participle whereas modal auxiliaries have only primary forms. Secondly,
this is not a non-affirmative context.

3.4 The general concept of auxiliary verb

The grammatical properties outlined in §3.1 serve to distinguish auxil­

iary verbs from lexical verbs in English. There are many languages, however, that

have auxiliary verbs, so we need to shift focus at this stage and consider what is

meant by auxiliary verb as a general term.

A general definition of auxiliary verb can be given along the following lines.

Auxiliary verbs form a small subclass of verbs whose members are characteristi­

cally used to mark tense, aspect, mood or voice. These categories are also often

marked in languages by inflection, so auxiliary verbs tend to convey meanings

which elsewhere are expressed by inflection of the verb.

The subclass of verbs in English with the distinctive properties concerning inver­

sion and negation clearly satisfies this general definition. Most members of the class

do serve to mark tense, aspect, mood or voice, as shown in [26]:

[26] AUXILIARY VERB

have

ii be

iii may, can, must, etc.

iv be

CATEGORY MARKED

perfect tense

progressive aspect

mood

passive voice

EXAMPLE

Sue has written the preface.

Sue is writing the preface.

Sue may write the preface.

The preface was written by Sue.

What is meant by the general terms tense, aspect, mood and voice will be explained

as we describe these categories for English. The full set of verbs for [iii] comprises

the modal auxiliaries listed in [14]: 'modal' is the adjective corresponding to the cat­

egory 'mood'.