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171

CHAPTER XVII.

AUXILIARY AND DEFECTIVE VERBS.

174. 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. 146.

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 : 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 mocds have been given on p. 146.

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 asA Notional Verb, meaning 'to possess,' and then admits of a passive use: This suggestion has long been had in mind.'

I.

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 § 160.

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 forms:

[blocks in formation]

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. When employed as Auxiliaries to form the future tense, i.e. to predict an action—to mark its futurity and nothing more-shall is used in the first person and will in the second and third. As a general rule, when will occurs with the first person it expresses intention, and when shall occurs with the second or third person it

expresses a command, a promise, or a threat.

Now the

notion of intention, command, promise, or threat is something more than the notion of simple futurity, and when shall and will suggest more than simple futurity they are Notional verbs, not Auxiliaries.

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 nc 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, können, 'to know,' 'to be able,' and our con, 'to learn,' cunning, originally 'knowing.' What a man has learnt, he is able to do, so can came to signify 'to be able.' Can is always a Notional Verb, never an Auxiliary.

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

183. 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.

Dare has two meanings, (1) 'to venture,' (2) 'to challenge.' In the latter sense it is conjugated regularly throughout. The two sets of forms were confused in the Elizabethan period. At the present day, dare ('venture') is used for the third singular of the present tense with a negative, and to is not inserted before the infinitive which follows: thus, 'He dare not say so,' but 'He dares to say so.' For the past tense either durst or dared is employed: 'He durst not (or dared not) say so.'

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 also drops the final s in the third singular present, when it means 'to be under the necessity' and is followed by a negative, or used interrogatively: e.g. 'He need not go, need he?' The reason for the omission is not

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