Verbs and Verb Phrases

Sentence Type

We have already looked at different sentence types, and it now bears repeating that there are four major sentence types that are reflected in what the verb looks like in a sentence.  There are affirmative statements, negative statements, questions, and short answers.  Basic word order is based on the order of affirmative statements.  We have already seen that there is some shifting of position of the subject when questions are formed.  In order to talk about this shifting, it is important to be aware that verbs can be formed through the use of more than one word.  The use of multiple words for verbs is also a feature that affects the formation of negative statements and short answers, so describing the effects that sentence types have on verb forms necessitates a closer look at the subparts of a verb.

If we look back at the example sentences in Activity 20, we see that almost all of the sentences have verbs with more than one word in them.  Only a few have just one word.  There is an essential difference between the parts of the verb.  The rightmost word of the verb is called the main verb – it provides the greatest amount of meaning.  The other words that comprise the rest of the verb are called auxiliary verbs, or helping verbs as they are often taught to elementary students in the U.S.  These two types of verbs, main and auxiliary, form the first subcategory of verbs.

The auxiliary verbs carry the majority of the grammatical information about the verb.  It is the auxiliary verbs that agree with the subject, for example.  As we will also see, it is the auxiliary verbs that invert with the subject to form questions and it is the auxiliary verbs that the clitic n’t attaches to in order to form a negative statement.  Finally, in a short answer, it is the auxiliary that remains while the main verb is deleted.

If we look at the sentence my dog is eating yogurt, we would identify the complete verb as is eating.  That is, the complete verb is comprised of two words.  The one on the right, eating, is the main verb, and it tells us the real action that is happening.  That is, it carries the meaning.  The word on the left, is, is an auxiliary and functions mostly at the level of syntax—or simply for sentence formation.  To make a question, we invert only the auxiliary with the subject and get Is my dog eating yogurt?  In answer to that question, we can reply with a short answer, saying Yes, he is, or No, he isn’t.  No matter the answer, only the subject and auxiliary are necessary to convey the information desired.  To make a negative, we can add n’t to the auxiliary and get My dog isn’t eating yogurt.

If we look at the sentence My dog eats yogurt, we see an example of a sentence with only one word for the verb.  It seems that an auxiliary isn’t necessary for sentence formation, at least until we attempt to form a question, make a negative statement, or give a short answer.  Then speakers add the auxiliary do in order to carry out the sentence formation steps of inversion (questions), cliticization (negative statements), and deletion (short answers), and we get Does my dog eat yogurt? My dog doesn’t eat yogurt, and Yes, he does or No, he doesn’t.  In fact, the auxiliary can be present in affirmative statements, too, but when it is there, there is an added emphasis on the action, underscoring its truth value (I do believe in spooks!) or in clarifying for a listener who didn’t hear accurately (I do want to watch Rambo!).

On the other hand, some verb forms contain more than two words.  An example is my dog has been eating yogurt for several minutes.  In this sentence, the complete verb has three words, has been eating.  Again, the rightmost word, eating, is the main verb carrying the meaningful information of what the activity is.  The other two words are both auxiliaries.  In a case where there are two auxiliaries, only the first inverts to forms questions, only the first is used to create short answers, and only the first takes the clitic n’t to form a negative.

It should be noted at this point, that particular auxiliaries are used in particular ways.  There is more agreement going on, but this time it’s between the auxiliary and the main verb, between the auxiliary and the verb’s relationship to time, and between the auxiliary and the verb’s relationship to other events.

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