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Auxiliaries, also known as auxiliary verbs or helping verbs, are verbs that accompany the main verb in a sentence to express tense, aspect, voice, mood, or other grammatical features.
Primary Auxiliaries:
These include " be ," " have ," and " do ."
They are used to form different tenses, questions, negatives, and emphasis.
"Be": Used for progressive tenses (Example: present continuous: "I am reading") and passive voice (Example: present passive: "The book is read").
"Have": Used for perfect tenses (Example: present perfect: "I have finished") and perfect progressive tenses (Example: present perfect continuous: "I have been reading").
"Do": Used for emphasis, questions, and negatives in present simple and past simple tenses (Example: present simple: "I do like it," "Do you like it?").
Modal Auxiliaries:
Include " can ," " could ," " may ," " might ," " must ," " shall ," " should ," " will ," " would ," and " ought to ."
They are used to express possibility, necessity, permission, ability, obligation, and advice.
Example: "She can swim," "You should study," "He must go."
Expressing Tense: Auxiliaries are used to indicate the time frame of an action or event (e.g., present, past, future).
Example: "She is reading" (present tense), "He has finished" (past tense), "They will go" (future tense).
Forming Questions: Auxiliaries are used to invert the subject and verb to form questions.
Example: "You are coming" (statement), "Are you coming?" (question).
Forming Negatives: Auxiliaries are used to create negative sentences by adding "not" after the auxiliary.
Example: "She has finished" (affirmative), "She has not finished" or "She hasn't finished" (negative).
Expressing Modality: Auxiliaries are used to convey various degrees of possibility, necessity, permission, ability, obligation, and advice.
Example: "You should study" (advice), "They can swim" (ability), "He might be late" (possibility).
Auxiliaries typically come before the main verb in a verb phrase. In questions and negatives, the auxiliary is placed before the subject.
Example: "She has been waiting," "Has she been waiting?" "She has not been waiting."
Auxiliaries are often contracted with other words, such as "not" or pronouns, in informal speech and writing.
Example: "She isn'tcoming," "They haven't finished."