Auxilliary verbs in English?

Question

I'm wondering what the exact use is of the auxilliary form of the verb "to do", such as "I do like vegetables" or "I did have to be there". It seems to only modify the secondary verb and sometimes it seems a sentence would be more concise without the use. Is there another reason for its inclusion in the English langauge? Are there equivilents in other languages?

Answer 1

To understand the use of "do" in English you need to understand its history. It started out as a causative in Old English: "I did build a house" meant I made someone build me a house. It lost its causative function in the Middle English period and became an emphatic: "I did build a house" meant I was emphasizing the building. In Early Modern English, it lost much of its emphatic content and simply became a tense holder on nearly ALL verbs: "I did build a house" meant nothing more than I built a house. During Early Modern English times, English developed the modern forms of its negative marking and yes/no question formation: "I built not a house" "I did not build a house" "Built I a house?" "Did I build a house?" Modern English lost the common use of do as a tense holder and do went back to being more of an emphatic marker as an answer to an accusation: "You didn't build a house" "I DID build a house". But Modern English has retained the use of do in negative sentences where there is no other auxiliary verb and in yes/no questions where there is no other auxiliary verb: "I didn't build a house" "Did I build a house?" This is the brief history of "do" in English. Because of its unique history, I know of no other equivalents in any other language. There are good historical reasons for why it occurs where it does, but if all you look at is Modern English, you are right, it doesn't make sense. But language always has many bits of pieces of old grammar that hang on long after their usefulness has ended.

Answer 2

Well, I believe, although the use of auxiliary verbs makes the sentence a bit more wordy, it specifies the action. For example, if you were to say "I will go to the beach" than "I go to the beach" it gives more detail to the verb tense.

In French, the language also utilizes auxiliary verbs as well, to signify the future tense or the past tense. Typically, the auxiliary verbs used are etre and avoir or aller, depending on the tense you wish to use.

e.g. I will go to the beach-- Je vais aller a la plage.

In this case, vais is the auxiliary verb, meaning "am going"-- aller being the unconjugated main verb, "to go".

Or in the past tense:
e.g. I went to the mall yesterday night-- Hier soir, je suis allee au centre commercial.

Suis-- the conjugated form of etre-- is the auxiliary verb, aiding to define the past tense verb, allee: to go.

e.g. I drank coffee this afternoon-- Apres-midi, j'ai bu un cafe.

Ai-- the conjugated form of avoir-- is the auxiliary verb in this case, bu being the main, conjugated verb of "to drink"-- boire.

Essentially, auxiliary verbs give definition of time and space to sentences.

Hopefully this answers your question a bit...

Answer 3

The use of "do" that you are talking about is for emphasis. There are emphatic constructions in other languages, but I am unaware of languages that use an auxiliary verb in this way.
Spanish, for example, uses "sí" for emphasis:
Yo fui al mercado. -> "I went to the market."
Yo sí fui al mercado -> "I did go to the market."

German has a similar use of "ja" for emphasis, I believe. Each of these sentences would be used in a different context.

Answer 4

That use of the verb "to do" adds a certain emphasis to the sentence that would be lacking without it. "I do like vegetables" means that I REALLY like vegetables, or it can mean that I'm insisting that I do like them when you apparently thought that I didn't like them. Removing the "to do" auxiliary verb changes the sense of the sentence.