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Helping verbs | The parts of speech | Grammar | Khan Academy

2m read
·Nov 11, 2024

Hello, Garans.

Now, we've already talked about how verbs can show actions and link concepts, and today I'd like to talk about a third function of the verb, which is helping other verbs. Now, we call this the helping verb. You may have heard it called that, or the auxiliary verb, and these are just two words for the same thing. Auxiliary is just a more Latin way to say helping; that's all it means.

Now, I've brought along an image of my friend Brian to help explain this principle. What helping verbs are is really just inflected forms of the verbs "to have" and "to be." As we get deeper into the verb, I'll explain what each one means in each one of its different versions. But for now, suffice it to say that I'm just going to throw out some examples just so you can see what it means for a helping verb to be a helping verb.

The specific way in which helping verbs help is that they establish certain facts about a sentence, usually when they're happening in time. We'll get more and more into that as we get more into tenses and aspect, but I just want to give you some examples.

So here we have Brian is eating a pizza. Brian and I love pizza; we used to eat a lot of pizza. Brian has eaten a pizza. Brian was eating a pizza. And finally, Brian had been eating a pizza.

So the presence of all these helping verbs has different effects depending on which ones you use. As I said, we'll get into those later, but just for a brief overview, for example, um, let's see. Brian is eating a pizza; that suggests that it's going on now. Brian has eaten a pizza; that means he had done it; it's over in the past. Brian was eating a pizza, which means he was in the middle of eating a pizza when something happened. And finally, Brian had been eating a pizza, so he was doing it, and then he stopped at some point in time.

This is just the most basic introduction to helping verbs. So, verbs can show actions, verbs can link concepts, and verbs can help other verbs. You can learn anything!

David out.

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