Traits of Auxiliary Verbs Across Languages
Typical uses of auxiliary verbs are to help express grammatical tense, aspect, mood and voice. They typically appear together with a main verb; the auxiliary is said to "help" the main verb. The auxiliary verbs of a language form a closed class, i.e. they are relatively small in number. They are often among the most frequently occurring verbs in a language.
Widely acknowledged verbs that can serve as auxiliaries in English and many related languages are the equivalents of be to express passive voice, and have to express perfect aspect or past time reference.
In some treatments, the copula be is classed as an auxiliary even though it does not "help" another verb, e.g.
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- The bird is in the tree.
Definitions of auxiliary verbs are not always consistent across languages, or even among authors discussing the same language. Modal verbs may or may not be classified as auxiliaries depending on the language. In the case of English, verbs are often identified as auxiliaries based on their grammatical behavior, as described below. In some cases, verbs that have similar functions to auxiliaries, but are not considered full members of that class (perhaps because they carry a certain amount of independent lexical information of their own), are described as semi-auxiliaries. In French, for example, verbs such as devoir "have to", pouvoir "be able to", aller "be going to", vouloir "want", faire "make" and laisser "let", when used together with the infinitive of another verb, can be called semi-auxiliaries.
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