Talk:Auxiliary verb

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Contents 1 "To be gone" 2 How did these come about? 3 Go as a quasi-auxiliary 4 aux verb ase 5 Could as past tense of Can

[edit] "To be gone"

"English uses "be" only with "go" in some senses." Does that make any sense? We could just say that "gone" is an adjective. It's no use to say that "I'm gone" is a present perfect. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Army1987 (talk • contribs) 23:22, 31 October 2004 (UTC)

[edit] How did these come about?

I'm very curious as to why these verbs started to be used this way. In Middle and Old English one could say "I can music", so why did that change? When you think about it, many of these verbs are very illogical; to see the truth of this, just read this sentence: "Do you be hungry?" Pretty weird, eh? Well that's how weird "Do you want to dance" would sound if we weren't so used to the construction. I know I for one would love an explanation of how this bizarre phenomenon came about. Fuzzyblob 20:48, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Go as a quasi-auxiliary

In the sentences "I will go fishing" and "We went shopping," is go a quasi-auxiliary, or something else which I can't guess at? Fishal 18:47, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

I may be mistaken about this, but I believe that both fishing and shopping are functioning as gerund nouns in their respective sentences. In both of these sentences, the speakers are merely talking about the acts of fishing and shopping; nobody is actually fishing or shopping in the sentences. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.204.84.2 (talk) 13:24, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] aux verb ase

he as gone ( can tell whule talking) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.212.201.50 (talk) 13:16, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Could as past tense of Can

I might joke when somebody asks; 'Could I help you?'. My joking reponse might be 'Yes you could, but you can't now'. Is this an example of could being interpreted as past tense?

The article says 'Could I get you something?' clearly is not expressing past time. In my opinion, it is expressing the past time, but (depending on context) is likely to be understood to mean the same as 'Can I help you'

hrf 10:57, 7 September 2007 (UTC) (England)

English in general does allow the usual past tense to be used with a sense of remoteness in some cases (consider a shopkeeper asking, "Did you need help finding anything, sir?"), but I think it's pushing it to claim that there's "past time" here. —Ruakh_TALK 18:16, 7 September 2007 (UTC)