- [Voiceover] Hello grammarians!
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.
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.
And 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, I'm just gonna throw
out some examples, just so you can see what it means
for a helping verb to be a helping verb.
So the specific way in which helping verbs help
is that they establish certain facts about a sentence,
usually when they're happening in time.
And we'll get more and more into that as we get
more into tenses and aspect, but I just wanna 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.
And, as I said, we'll get into those later,
but, just for a brief overview, for example,
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.
And this is just the most basic introduction
to helping verbs.
So, verbs can show actions, verbs can link concepts,
verbs can help other verbs.
You can learn anything.
David out.