Primary Auxiliary Verbs Explained

Primary auxiliary verbs are verbs, different from lexical or main verbs, that do not indicate action in a sentence. These category of verbs fall under auxiliary verbs and they basically bear the grammatical properties or inflectional properties of verbs in sentences they occur. Take for example;

a. John walking to school.

You would notice that the verb, "walking", in the sentence above bears no Inflectional property—that is, properties that provide information about the number of the subject (singular or plural), person (first, second, third), or even the timing of the action or event (present or past). Hence the sentence above is ungrammatical. But by applying the primary auxiliary verb "to be" to the sentence, it would then read:

b. John is walking to school.

One other factor you would have realized in the sentence is the '-ing' ending of the verb, walk. We could have added an "-s" ending to the verb and the sentence would be grammatical, e.g ,

c. John walks to school.

So this goes to show that primary auxiliary verbs play crucial roles in the formation of continuous tense. Without a primary auxiliary verb, a sentence with a continuous tense verb would lack Inflectional properties and hence come off as ungrammatical. 

Before we proceed with the relevance of primary auxiliary verbs, let us first, look at the types of primary auxiliary verbs that exist. There are three main primary auxiliary verbs, namely:

1. The verb "to be"

2. The verb "to have"

3. The verb "to do"

Now each of the verbs above are in their base forms preceded by the "to-infinitive" also lacking inflectional properties. This is because they are prototypes—models from which other elements are formed—as a result, they have a number of variants peculiar to then which possess inflectional properties. For example;

The verb "to be" has the following variations with inflectional properties;

am, is, are, was, were, being, been

The verb "to have" has the following variations:

has, have, had, having 

And the verb "to do" has the following variations:

do, does, did, done, doing

Each of these variants corresponds with certain inflectional properties in terms of person, tense and number. For example;

Am = first person, singular, present tense

Is = third person, singular, present tense

Are = first, second / third person, plural, present tense

Was = first/ third person, singular, past tense

Were = second/ third, plural, past tense

Being = Progressive tense

Been = Perfective tense

Also, the inflectional properties of the variants of the verb "to have" include:

Has = third person, singular, present tense

Have = first (singular/ plural), second, third (plural), present tense 

Had = first, second, third, singular and plural, past tense 

Had = Perfective (second use)

Having = Progressive 

And the verb "to do" has the following Inflectional properties for its variants:

Do = first (singular and plural) /second/ third, plural, present tense 

Does = third person, singular, present tense

Did = first/second/third person, singular and plural, past tense

Done = perfective tense

Doing = progressive tense 

Now here are practical usages of the primary auxiliary verbs to reflect their Inflectional properties;

"to be"

1. I am

2. He is

3. She was

4. We are

5. You are

6. They were

"to have"

1. I have

2. He has

3 She had

4. They have

"to do"

1. I do

2. He does

3. They did

Did you notice that I omitted the progressive and perfective forms of the verbs "to be", and "to do"? That was a deliberate act and I will be explaining why shortly. Meanwhile, progressive simply refers to verb forms ending in '-ing', all right? For example: walking, sleeping, cooking, fishing, etc., while perfective refers to both the present perfect tense and the past perfect tense—generally, the perfect tense.

Now back to why I ommitted the progressive forms of the verbs "to be" = being, and "to do" = done from the examples above, it is simply to demonstrate how certain primary auxiliary verbs contribute to the formation of progressives and perfectives. For example;

1. He was being careful. 

2. It had been there a long time.

3. He had done the job.

From the examples above, it can be deduced that the primary auxiliary verb "to be" contributes to the formation of progressive or continuous verbs—verbs ending in 'ing'—because it bears the inflectional properties necessary for the grammaticality of the sentences in which they occur, while the verb "to have" contributes to the formation of the perfective tense because like the progressive tense, perfective tense lacks inflectional properties of its own, hence the dependence on the verb "to have" for its grammaticality. 

This is not to say that the primary auxiliary verb "to do" is irrelevant in this regard, however, it functions differently. It can be used to form questions from sentences without primary auxiliary verbs. Take for example;

a. I look content.

Changing to interrogative sentence will read;

b. Do I look content?

Another example;

a. I work best at night.

Changing to interrogative:

b. Do I work best at night?

So you see, the verb "to do" also has its relevance, it fills in for the other primary auxiliary verbs when they are absent in a sentence that needs to be converted to the declarative form, which is why it is referred to as "dummy do" because it is present in the declarative forms of the sentences without a primary auxiliary verb, but often elipted except for emphasis. For example;

a. I work best at night.

Can be rewritten as;

b. I do work best at night.

So the primary auxiliary verb, do, is always present in sentences without a primary auxiliary verb "to be" or "to have", but it is elipted to be restored when such sentences are to be converted to interrogatives.

Now sentences with the primary auxiliary verb, "to be", present, do not need the "dummy do" in converting to interrogative sentences. For example;

a  I am a good person.

It cannot be rewritten as;

b. I do am a good person.

Neither can its interrogative form be written as;

Do I am a good person?*

It does not make sense. When the primary auxiliary verb, "to be" is present, the dummy do is not needed, and interrogative sentences can be formed by the subjects of the sentences swapping positions with the present primary auxiliary verb. For example;

a. I am a good person.

To interrogative sentence;

b. Am I a good man?

The verb "to have", however, does not share in this privilege as it still depends on the dummy do for the formation of interrogative sentences. Take for example;

a. I have a notebook.

Can be rewritten as;

b. I do have a notebook.

And converted to interrogative sentence by;

Do I have a notebook?

So these are basically what you need to know about the primary auxiliary verbs. The verb "to be" helps in the formation of progressive or continuous tense verbs, the verb "to have" helps in the formation of perfect tense verbs, while the verb "to do" helps in transforming sentences without a proper primary auxiliary verb, "to be", into interrogative sentences.

Related posts:

• Lexical Verbs Demystified