Auxiliary

An auxiliary verb is an element on the continuum from lexical verb to functional affix that, somewhat bleached, expresses a verbal category, most often aspect or modality but also tense, negative polarity or voice, and forms a single clause with a lexical verb. No language- independent criterion separates it from a lexical verb, so the class is drawn language by language, English's by the constructions of negation, inversion, code and emphasis.

This file provides the entry of a member of such a class, a word form in the cells it is entered for with the features those cells share and its register, and the entry of a modal auxiliary, an auxiliary that is also a modal item, expressing force–flavor pairs. Per-language fragments supply the entries.

Main declarations

• Auxiliary: the entry.
• ModalAuxiliary: the entry of an auxiliary that is a modal item.
• Auxiliary.toWord: the AUX word it spells out.

Implementation notes

An entry is a word form, not a lexeme: English can and could are two entries, as they are two expressions of modal meaning, and English were is two, the preterite and the irrealis. A syncretic entry, English are of the second person and the plurals, carries no person or number, and the cells it realizes are read off the paradigm that has it.

References

• Anderson 2006a, Auxiliary Verb Constructions formalized
• Huddleston & Pullum 2002, The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language