"Auxiliary Verb" and "Main Verb" are antiquated concepts[edit]

If a be verb is an auxiliary verb in the "She is the boss" example, what is the main verb? It's tempting to consider can as an auxiliary verb in the "I can swim" example, but in that case I'm hopeful that a linguistic guru can explain how can can simultaneously constitute a finite verb and an auxiliary verb. Some linguistic gurus assert that "do" can function as an auxiliary verb in a sentence such as, "I do want tea." Please!

There are finite verbs and there are infinitive verbs as well as participles:

Old school linguistic gurus STILL want to identify a "main verb" in a sentence such as, "Have the papers been scrutinized by Fred?" If "scrutinized" is purported to be the main verb, then an exemplar reply about Fred's papers, "Yes, they have," contains no main verb despite how have is a finite verb. Uh-oh.

The most intransigent old school linguistic gurus insist that sentences such as "Come help me" and "I dare not attempt it" contain auxiliary verbs. That's where the old school definition for modal verb is exposed. Both "come" and "dare" indeed are modal verbs in the examples above (i.e. they modify the operation of their respective infinitive verbs) despite how they are not the uninflected variety of modal verbs that typically are the only ones included in the defective class of modal verbs.

Let's ditch the auxiliary verb/main verb construct as a late 19th century relic and reconsider the modal verb construct. (FYI: I'm neither a phrase structure proponent nor a dependency grammar proponent; call me a functionalist who wants to help ESL learners avoid the pitfalls evident in old school grammar definitions.) Kent Dominic 01:38, 12 April 2019 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kent Dominic (talk • contribs)

I'm walking back the suggestion to ditch the abovementioned terms: "auxiliary verb" has a place in modern linguistic theory but only vis-a-vis its interaction with participles and infinitive verbs. Also, "main verb" might be a useful introduction to linguistics in primary school education. It also deserves encyclopedic mention concerning its historical use before the terms "participle" and "infinitive" took on linguistic primacy. --Kent Dominic·(talk) 07:13, 30 January 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Very long auxiliary verb chain[edit]

Is it worth including an extreme example of a long unbroken chain of auxiliaries? The current longest is "Fred may be being judged to have been deceived by the explanation," but this chain is broken into to bigger parts. A sentence like "The photo would have had to have been taken before 1910" has a longer string of unbroken auxiliaries. noktulo (talk) 05:04, 28 October 2020 (UTC)Reply[reply]

POV issue with catenas[edit]

The section on Auxiliary_verb#Multiple_auxiliaries writes about the "catena". This section was written by User:Tjo3ya. This user is the researcher who has proposed the "catena" concept. This lead to an issue of possible WP:COI / WP:ADVOCACY / WP:OR on the Catena (linguistics) page. The same issue appears here, and probably in many other places. Kaĉjo (talk) 08:44, 22 October 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@Kaĉjo: Aside from the WP:COI / WP:ADVOCACY issues re User:Tjo3ya, the section is rife with linguistic typological errors. For instance:
The following example contains three auxiliary verbs and one dispositive participle: "The paper will have been scrutinized by Fred." The auxiliary verbs are in bold and the dispositive (i.e. head) participle is underlined. Together these verbs form a verb catena (chain of verbs)."
Not to mention that the entire quote is argumentative WP:OR, it presents the following errors in typology:
  • "been" is a participle, not an auxiliary verb.
  • "will" and "have" form an auxiliary verb catena.
  • "been" and "scrutinized" form a participial catena.
  • "These verbs form a verb catena (chain of verbs)" is equivocal since the chain includes verbs and participles. The argument would be accurate if verb catena had been defined as a chain of verb forms.
Also:
"Fred may be being judged to have been deceived by the explanation." Viewing this sentence as consisting of a single finite clause, it includes five auxiliary verbs.
FIVE? Nope; it has only TWO because "be" is an infinitive; "being" is a present participle; "been" is a past participle. Calling them all auxiliary verbs is the linguistic rumorings of a catenavista. Again, such an analysis would be accurate if the pertinent verb catena paradigm applied to verb forms rather than to verbs, but I'm not here to prescribe how to teach catena theory. I'd also prefer that an article on auxiliary verbs didn't attempt the same. --Kent Dominic·(talk) 15:24, 3 December 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Get/Got[edit]

Shouldn't this be considered an auxiliary verb as well? Ex: He got killed. The car got stolen. MToumbola (talk) 10:19, 2 November 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@MToumbola: It fails the tests listed in the article. Subject-auxiliary inversion is not possible (*Got he killed?) and the negation cannot appear after got (*He got not killed). See perhaps Alexiadou's 2006 article A note on non-canonical passives: the case of the get-passive (https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110892994.13/html) if you want more discussion. Kaĉjo (talk) 08:13, 4 November 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Kaĉjo: You're right that it fails the tests, which begs the question of either the tests' sufficiency or the lede's precision, since the got in "the car got stolen" certainly adds functional or grammatical meaning to the clause in which it occurs, so as to express tense, aspect, modality, voice, emphasis, etc. The current lede is accurate in some respects, but it's neither attested nor cited, and – most importantly, IMHO – it ambiguously asserts that an auxiliary verb "adds functional or grammatical meaning to the clause in which it occurs." A better iteration might be that it establishes the tense, aspect, modality, voice, emphasis, etc. of the verb phrase in which it occurs. I admit I have no more WP:RELIABLESOURCES for that iteration than the current lede presents. Kent Dominic·(talk) 12:23, 18 April 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Kaĉjo: As a follow-up, got passes the subject–auxiliary inversion test if you consider Middle English constructs, e.g., https://books.google.com/books?id=2S_DAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA211&lpg=PA211&dq=%22Got+ye%22&source=bl&ots=VfRpGU2FOH&sig=ACfU3U0k683EqRDIXRdgGAb6DTS7Uc8lqA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjkquOJ8Z33AhVLWs0KHRKRDOAQ6AF6BAgSEAM#v=onepage&q=%22Got%20ye%22&f=false. --Kent Dominic·(talk) 15:15, 18 April 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
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