174.

CHAPTER XVII.

AUXILIARY AND DEFECTIVE VERBS.

The Auxiliary Verbs, which supply the deficiencies of inflexions and enable us to mark distinctions of Voice, Mood, and Tense, in the conjugation of a verb, are these :be, have, shall, will, may, and do.

:

Be is used (1) as a Voice Auxiliary, forming with the Past Participle of transitive verbs the Passive: 'I am beaten,' 'to be beaten' and (2) as a Tense Auxiliary, forming the Imperfect Tenses in both voices: 'I am beating,' 'I am being beaten.'

Notice that, with the Past Participle of certain Intransitive verbs, be forms the Perfect Active: 'I am come,' 'He is gone,' 'It is fallen.' See p. 137.

Have is a Tense Auxiliary and forms the Perfect Tenses both Active and Passive: 'I have beaten,' 'I have been beaten,' 'I had beaten,' 'I shall have been beaten.'

Shall and will form the Future Tenses of the Indicative Mood, Active and Passive: 'I shall beat,' 'He will be beaten,' 'They will be beating,' 'We shall have been beaten.'

May and might, should and would, are used as signs of the Subjunctive: 'Strive that you may succeed,' 'He strove that he might succeed,' 'I should be glad,' 'This would seem to be the case.'

Do is used as an auxiliary in negative and interrogative sentences: 'I do not believe this,' 'Do you believe this?'

We shall briefly discuss these verbs in turn.

175. Be is a defective verb, and its conjugation contains forms derived from three roots which we see in am, was, be. Am is the only form of a verb in English that retains the sign of the first person, m, which stands for me. The t in art is the sign of the second person, as in shalt, wilt. Is has dropped its ending -th: compare German ist, Latin Are is a Danish word which has taken the place of the Old English form of the third person plural. The simple tenses of the indicative and subjunctive moods have been given on p. 140.

est.

Be is used as

I. A Notional Verb, with a meaning of its own, signifying 'to exist,' when we say, 'God is,' 'There was a Palmerston.'

2. A Copula, connecting the terms of a proposition: 'The boy is lazy,' 'A griffin is an imaginary beast.' This account of is belongs to logic rather than to grammar however in the language of grammar we should describe is here as a verb of Incomplete Predication.

3. An Auxiliary of Voice and Tense: 'He is beaten,' 'He is beating,' 'He is come.'

176.

Have shows contraction in some of its forms,hast for havest, has for haves, had for haved. It is used asI. A Notional Verb, meaning 'to possess,' and then admits of a passive use: This suggestion has long been had in mind.'

2. An Auxiliary of Tense to form the Perfects: 'He has written a letter,' 'He will have finished his work,' 'They had missed the train.' On this construction see

p. 147.

177. Shall was originally a past tense, meaning 'I have owed,' hence, 'I must pay,' 'I am under an obligation, or necessity.' The German word for debt,' Schuld, shows the same root. The idea of obligation is still conveyed in such expressions as 'You should do your duty,' 'He should not say so.' Shall acquired the sense of a present, and a weak past was then formed from it, but the absence of the ending -s from the third person singular shall is due to the fact that it was formerly a past tense. The same circumstance explains the forms can, may, will, must, in the third singular, instead of cans, mays, wills, musts. Compare these

Sing. 1, 3, Pl. 1, 2, 3.

could might

Sing. 2.

should would

should (e)st would (e)st could (e)st might(e)st

178. Will as an auxiliary contains only the tenses given above. As an independent, notional verb it can be conjugated regularly throughout: 'I did this because you willed it so,' 'It has been willed by the authorities.' Old English had a negative form nill, meaning 'will not,' as Latin has volo and nolo. Nill survives in the adverb willynilly, i.e. will he, nill he,—' whether he will or won't.'

179. Shall and will express the contrast between doing a thing under compulsion from outside and doing a thing from one's own inclination. Used as auxiliaries they express (1) futurity, (2) determination. To express futurity, shall is the auxiliary of the first person, will of the second and third. To express determination, will is the auxiliary of the first

1 Low's English Language, p. 143.

person, shall of the second and third. More will be said on the subject of this distinction in dealing with the Syntax of these verbs. An Englishman never uses them wrongly : an Irishman or a Scotchman seldom uses them without tripping. Why was it absurd of the Irishman in the water to say, according to the venerable story, 'I will be drowned and nobody shall save me'? Because 'I will' and 'nobody shall' indicate the resolution, or determination, of the speaker, and not simple futurity.

180. May formerly ended in g, which is still written, though not sounded, in might. As a Notional Verb it expresses permission, 'You may go out for a walk,' or possibility, 'He may pass his examination': in the latter case, emphasis is usually laid upon the word. As an Auxiliary it occurs as a sign of the subjunctive mood: 'Give him a book that he may amuse himself,' 'They have locked the door so that he may not get out.'

181. Must was a past tense but is now used as a present indicative. It has no inflexions but can be used of all persons. It expresses the idea of necessity: You must work,' 'I must get that book,' 'This must be the case.'

182. Can was the past tense of a verb meaning 'to know' compare the German, kennen, 'to know,' and the English, con, 'to learn'; also cunning, originally 'knowing.' What a man has learnt, he is able to do, so can came to signify 'to be able.'

It has no

The in could deserves particular notice. business to be there, but has been inserted owing to a mistaken notion of analogy with should and would, in which words the 7 is rightly present as part of the roots, shall and will. Uncouth, unknown,' and so 'odd,' or awkward,' shows the correct spelling without the Z

183. Dare is (1) an Intransitive Verb, meaning 'I venture,' and (2) a Transitive Verb, meaning 'I challenge.'

(1) The Intransitive dare was originally a past tense which came to be treated as a present, and a past tense durst was then formed from it. The s of durst is part of the stem, and not of the inflexion of the second person singular, which would be durstest. As dare was a past tense, the third singular of the present indicative properly takes no -s, 'He dare not say so.' But the Intransitive Verb has been confused with the Transitive, and before an Infinitive with to the form dares is used: 'He actually dares to say so.'

(2) The Transitive Verb is regularly conjugated: 'He dared me to do this.'

184. Ought was originally the past tense of the verb owe which meant, first, 'to have,' and then 'to have as a duty,' 'to be under an obligation.' Shakespeare often uses owe in the sense of own, or 'possess.' It seems a little odd that 'I owe a thousand pounds' might signify in the Elizabethan age either 'I possess a thousand pounds,' or 'I am a thousand pounds in debt,' but our modern words own and owe express the same contrast, and the notion of possession is the older meaning of the two. As ought is now used with the sense of a present, we have to express past obligation by altering the tense of the dependent infinitive. Thus we render non debet hoc facere, he ought not to do this,' non debuit hoc facere, he oughtn't to have done this,' which is less defensible logically than the vulgar form of expression, he hadn't ought to do this.'

185. Need is used without the final s in the third singular present, when it means 'to be under the necessity': 'He need not go.' The reason for the omission is not clear, as need was not originally a past tense which has acquired a present force. Hence we cannot explain the absence