Talk:English auxiliary verbs/Archive 1

Archive 1

Move to Auxiliary verb

I don't understand why it's been spun off in the first place. Also, please let's remove all the negations and contractions because they add zero value to the article and dilute its interesting contents. Many examples are wrong (Aren't I special? - That's a frigging copula!) I think it needs attention from an expert. Thanks. 125.175.98.178 (talk) 13:09, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

External links modified

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Modal verbs

@Johnfreez: has twice added a link to the English Wiktionary list of English modal verbs. I removed it the first time because the list fails to include all the English auxiliary verbs (for example, do is not there) and includes non-auxliary items such as be able to or have to, along with many other strings that are not verbs. Note also that the string have to does not even include an auxiliary verb (it is the lexical verb have). In sum, I believe the link should be removed from the page, because including it would be to confuse the orthogonal, though partly overlapping, issues of modality and auxiliary. Brett (talk) 13:33, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

hey :) thanks for your work on WP. question: do you think the article would be better without a link to a relevant wiktionary article on modal verbs? in other words, does it lower the quality of the article if we include it? Johnfreez (talk) 09:50, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Yes, as I explained, I think it would be better without because it leads to the mistaken idea that modal verbs are auxiliaries or that auxiliaries are modal verbs. Neither of these is true. There's already a link to the wiktionary article on auxiliary verbs. What is gained by adding a link to modals verbs?

On another note, when there is a disagreement, it's useful to engage in a discussion and only then edit based on the results of the discussion.--Brett (talk) 12:52, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

discussion is invaluable in working through disagreements, agree. what is gained is an opportunity for a reader to jump to another wiki full of examples. thanks for pointing out the wiktionary links at the bottom of the page. i think they're not as helpful at the bottom as they would be if they showed up in the relevant sections higher up in the article. ~ Johnfreez (talk) 04:49, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

as far as i understand, auxiliary verbs "include the English modal verbs and a few others" as the first line of the article says.

- over on Tense–aspect–mood the traditional modals are referred to as "invariant auxiliaries"

- over on wiktionary have to is listed as an auxiliary

- merriam-webster describes an auxiliary as

"a helping verb, ...a verb that is used with another verb (or two other verbs) in a verb phrase"

and describes modals as

"a small group of auxiliary verbs, called the modal verbs (or modal auxiliary verbs, modal auxiliaries, or simply modals) ...only used in combination with ordinary verbs. A modal verb changes the other verb's meaning to something different from simple fact"

- university college of london [https://www.ucl.ac.uk/internet-grammar/verbs/nice.htm describes "the NICE properties of auxiliaries" as being

"Negation Auxiliaries take not or n't to form the negative, eg. cannot, don't, wouldn't

Inversion Auxiliaries invert with what precedes them when we form questions: [I will] see you soon ~[Will I] see you soon?

Code Auxiliaries may occur "stranded" where a main verb has been omitted: John never sings, but Mary does

Emphasis Auxiliaries can be used for emphasis: I do like cheese"

and also lists a number of "semi auxiliaries", including

"get to, happen to, have to, mean to, seem to, tend to, turn out to, used to, be about to, be going to, be likely to, be supposed to"

all of which i'm inclined to include in another article i created the other other day, a bare list of English auxiliary verbs which i'm sure is full of errors and mis-categorizations :) so please help

- teflpedia talks about NICE too, citing the university college of london,

"The NICE properties are formal definition used to define English auxiliary verbs by way of an acronym.[1][2] They (sic) NICE properties are negation, inversion, code and emphasis"

- over on w3 we have semi-modals seemingly described as periphrastic modals

- englishgrammarfocus.com distinguishes modals thus:

"There are two categories of modal auxiliary verbs: pure modal auxiliary verbs and semi-modal auxiliary verbs."

- thoughtco writes

"In English grammar, a semi-auxiliary is a multi-word construction based on an auxiliary verb and having some of the same grammatical characteristics.

Also known as a semi-modal or a lexical auxiliary. Semi-auxiliaries include be about to, be able to, be going to, be likely to, be supposed to, had better, have to, ought to, used to, and would rather. Some are followed by an infinitive; others by a zero infinitive."

and cites Geoffrey Leech et al. saying semi-modals

" 'are probably the most cited cases of grammaticalization in the ongoing history of English. Among these, in turn, the protoypical, most indubitable cases of semi-modal status are BE going and HAVE to . . .. [T]he lexically independent verbs have and go have, over the centuries, gradually acquired an auxiliary-like function in construction with the infinitive to' (Change in Contemporary English: A Grammatical Study, 2012).

Also Known As: semi-modal, quasi-modal, periphrastic modal, phrasal auxiliary, modal-like, modal idiom, lexical auxiliary"

might we need expanded sections of existing articles and/or new article on the semi-modal, semi-auxiliary, quasi-modal, modal-like, modal idiom, lexical auxiliary, invariant auxiliary, variant auxiliary, or periphrastic modal? ~ Johnfreez (talk) 05:11, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

A Venn diagram showing the overlapping but distinct groups of auxiliary and modal verbs

First, the auxiliary verbs is a group of verbs that pattern alike in syntax. Modal verbs are verbs that have semantically modal meanings. The concept of modality is related not to how the world is but how it could/should/would/might be, to counterfactuals and possibilities. There are also modal adjectives (likely, able), modal adverbs (probably, perhaps), modal nouns (necessity, permission), etc. and what relates all these is their semantic similarity. This article is about a syntactic grouping of verbs, not a semantic grouping.

Second, there is certainly a good deal of vagueness, confusion, and inconsistency when it comes to auxiliary verbs in general. But that's because "auxiliary verb" is a concept that is realized in different ways in different languages; "helping verbs" is about as close as we're going to get when talking about auxiliary verbs in the abstract rather than in any particular language. And I would point out that many of the definitions you include are about auxiliary verbs in the abstract. Notice, however, that this article is not about the general concept but specifically about English auxiliary verbs, and when it comes to English auxiliary verbs, we can do much better.

• The NICER properties are relevant and specific to English auxiliary verbs, for instance, and we would not expect them to apply to Qīnghǎi Chinese or even to French or German.
• Any talk about semi-modals, etc. is irrelevant, because modality is a semantic concept, and this article is about syntax.

So, again, the link to the modal verbs in Wiktionary is out of scope. This article is only co-incidentally related to modality. And there is no need for any sections about semi-modal, quasi-modal, modal-like, modal idiom, or periphrastic modal. --Brett (talk) 13:22, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

"Iz"

The article seems to say that in some British English spoken dialects, "iz" has replaced "is". What does this mean? In all American English dialects, as far as I know, "is" is already pronounced "iz", so that wouldn't make much sense to say "iz" replaced "is". Sivamo 20:45, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

What I meant is that some British dialects have a word that's pronouned /iz/ (just like "is"), but that's taken on the role of "is", "has", etc., perhaps because in a dialect with h-dropping it's a small step from "has" to "is", and even in standard English the contracted form of both words is simply "'s". --MarkSweep 21:25, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC) ismail

I came to this talk page for exactly the same reason. Please source this nonsense if you wish to reintroduce it. If "iz" is never written and it sounds "just like 'is'", then how do you know it's written "iz"? How is anyone else supposed to know what you are talking about? 125.175.98.178 (talk) 12:24, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

/just/

There used to be two /jus/ lexemes, the very defective lexical verb, and also a very defective auxiliary verb, usedn't there? And the latter is still used in the Standard English of a fair number (even if, I suppose, a small and dwindling percentage) of L1 English speakers. Is its rarity these days the reason why it goes unmentioned (I think) within this article? -- Hoary (talk) 01:43, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

The only one in the OED is the lexical verb meaning 'adjust'. I don't know of any auxiliary verb.--Brett (talk) 12:43, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

Brett, I very soon have to leave the interwebs for a couple of days. When I return, I'll attend to the matter of /just/ (of course, with references). -- Hoary (talk) 22:01, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

Brett, adding /just/ raises other matters; see "Centrality" below. -- Hoary (talk) 08:53, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

"References"

Below is a list of "References", as the list appeared in this version (17 Nov '23) of the article. The items by Finch, Palmer and Warner were referred to in the article; none of the others were. (I subsequently removed the reference to Finch.) I suppose that they'd range all the way from very useful for improving this article to utterly useless for improving it; but even if they'd all be very useful, I don't see how listing them, unannotated, in the article would help the reader. But in order to help other editors, here they are. -- Hoary (talk) 06:29, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

• Adger, D. 2003. Core Syntax. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
• Allerton, D. 2006. Verbs and their Satellites. In Handbook of English Linguistics. Aarts & MacMahon (eds.). Blackwell.
• Bresnan, J. 2001. Lexical-Functional Syntax. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.
• Crystal, D. 1997. A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics, 4th edition. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers.
• Culicover, P. 2009. Natural Language Syntax. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
• Engel, U. 1994. Syntax der deutschen Sprache, 3rd edition. Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag.
• Eroms, H.-W. 2000. Syntax der deutschen Sprache. Berlin: de Gruyter.
• Finch, G. 2000. Linguistic Terms and Concepts. New York: St. Martin's Press.
• Fowler's Modern English Usage. 1996. Revised third edition. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
• Jurafsky, D. and J. Martin. 2000. Speech and Language Processing. Dorling Kindersley (India): Pearson Education, Inc. / Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2009.
• Kroeger, P. 2004. Analyzing Syntax: A lexical-functional approach. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
• Lewis, M. The English Verb 'An Exploration of Structure and Meaning' . Language Teaching Publications. ISBN 0-906717-40-X
• Osborne, T. and T. Groß 2012. Constructions are catenae: Construction Grammar meets Dependency Grammar. Cognitive Linguistics 23, 1, 165–216.
• Palmer, F. R., A Linguistic Study of the English Verb, Longmans, 1965.
• Radford. A. 1997. Syntactic Theory and the Structure of English: A minimalist approach. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
• Radford, A. 2004. English Syntax: An introduction. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
• Rowlett, P. 2007. The Syntax of French. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
• Sag, I. and T. Wasow. 1999. Syntactic Theory: A formal introduction. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.
• Tesnière, L. 1959. Élements de syntaxe structurale. Paris: Klincksieck.
• Warnant, L. 1982. Structure syntaxique du français. Librairie Droz.
• Warner, Anthony R., English Auxiliaries, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1993.

"It's fine to not go"

Brett, you say "examples like it's fine to not go [show] that [to] allows negation". My first reaction was that no, this example merely shows that go allows negation. But then I started to wonder whether my credulous youthful consumption of "style manuals" was having a lingering (and baleful) effect and I was just subconsciously objecting to the "split infinitive". To me, "It's fine to not go" and "It's fine not to go" are homosemous and grammatical; how do they compare in demonstrating the negatability of putative verb to? -- Hoary (talk) 01:44, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Well, if go allowed negation, then we should be able to get it in let and make constructions, which we can (her parents let her not go to school). So, I think you're instinct was right, and my evidence was mistaken. Not can appear directly before non-finite verbs. It can also appear before to, as you show, which would be expected if (but not iff) to was a non-finite aux.--Brett (talk) 02:00, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

I've made the change, Brett. Thank you. (And I've also added to to the big table "English auxiliary verb paradigm".) -- Hoary (talk) 10:02, 2 December 2023 (UTC)