Talk:English auxiliary verbs

Centrality
The table "English auxiliary verb paradigm" (atop the section "Auxiliary verbs versus lexical verbs") seems odd to me. For one thing, it puts auxiliary verbs ought, need and dare among the non-modal auxiliaries. For another, its distinction between "central" and "peripheral" is not accompanied by any explanation of what this "centrality" is.

The first is plain wrong. They're modal auxiliaries (or anyway they are when need and dare are auxiliary verbs at all). Easy to fix that. As for the second, whoever decided that ought, need and dare were "peripheral" auxiliary verbs may have had a reason for doing so but I don't know what it was.

I'm thinking of replacing the table with something better; however, as I dislike editing tables, I want to reduce the risk that I'll be forced to backtrack. Any objection to the removal of the "central"–"peripheral" distinction?

Incidentally, one problem faced by anyone hoping to improve this article is that while it (reasonably enough) refers to the article English modal auxiliary verbs, the latter article is horribly confused, seeming to be about English auxiliary verbs that are used for modality (a superset of English modal auxiliary verbs). Thus (just to take one example) use /jus/ (in some varieties of Standard English, a highly defective non-modal auxiliary verb, and one whose absence from the article English auxiliary verbs surprises me) is listed in English modal auxiliary verbs as a modal auxiliary verb, which it isn't. -- Hoary (talk) 08:53, 25 November 2023 (UTC)


 * No objection from me. Now I see what you meant about /just/. Somehow totally missed the fact that this was phonemic transcription.--Brett (talk) 13:40, 25 November 2023 (UTC)


 * My comment above now seems to me at least as confused as what it complains is confused. And, following CamGEL and CompGEL, I've brought back "central" as a term distinguishing the modal auxiliary verbs can, may, must, shall and will (together with their preterites) from the other modal auxiliary verbs. ("Prototypical" wouldn't be right: CamGEL points out that only can and will are prototypical.) -- Hoary (talk) 00:27, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

"Contractions and inversion"
The section "Contractions and inversion" looks like a respectable attempt to describe odd syntactic behavior -- or rather, behavior that would seem odd to anyone who hasn't realized that "negative contractions" such as haven't or wouldn't are instead negative inflected forms of the verb. For haven't and wouldn't are indeed inflected forms of have and would respectively, as explained on page 91 of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language and as hurriedly written near the top of the section currently titled "Contracted forms" (a section that itself needs further revision and perhaps retitling).

And therefore I propose to delete the section "Contractions and inversion". Any objections to this? -- Hoary (talk) 10:02, 2 December 2023 (UTC)


 * I've deleted it. -- Hoary (talk) 07:35, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

bain't
The article tells us:
 * Bain't or bain't, apparently from "be not", is found in a number of works employing eye dialect, including J. Sheridan Le Fanu's Uncle Silas.[source] It is also found in a ballad written in Newfoundland dialect.[source]

And there are eight examples of it in this thing alone. But does the article benefit from entries for minor and obsolete dialect words? -- Hoary (talk) 12:47, 2 December 2023 (UTC)


 * I'd meant to ask whether it benefited from material about words that (i) never spread beyond nonstandard dialects and also (ii) have been obsolete for decades even in those nonstandard dialects. -- Hoary (talk) 07:39, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Contractions in the big table
"English auxiliary verb paradigm" is a handsome table, but its two columns headed "Contr." (i.e. contractions) don't and can't say as much as is said in "Unstressed and contracted forms of individual verbs". I propose to delete the two columns. Comments? Incidentally, I'm not at all confident of "Unstressed and contracted forms of individual verbs": I have a certain knack for dumb mistakes in this kind of material. -- Hoary (talk) 13:22, 6 December 2023 (UTC)


 * Tables never can say that much. But that's not their purpose. I think the contracted columns provide useful and easily accessible information without running a significant risk of confusing or misleading folks. I say keep.--Brett (talk) 17:41, 6 December 2023 (UTC)


 * Certainly the unstressed/contracted versions of the modals would need to be written up first. (English modal auxiliary verbs is currently a less than stellar article....) As for English auxiliary verbs, more needs to be added, notably the matter of how a difference between lexical and auxiliary verbs emerged. (I mean, how it emerged diachronically. But come to think of it, I start to wonder about how the difference might emerge during first language acquisition.) Perhaps I should concentrate more on needed additions to the article before looking for possible subtractions. -- Hoary (talk) 21:40, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Choices among rival "standards"
I've plonked two templates atop this article. First, Template:Use British English Oxford spelling (which I now notice redirects to Template:Use Oxford spelling, and by whichever name refers to Oxford spelling). It later occurred to me that Template:Use Canadian English (for Canadian English) might have been (and might be) more appropriate. (The two "standards", Oxford and Canadian, seem to be pretty much the same.)

Secondly, Template:Use dmy dates (which should be self-explanatory).

Hope they're both OK. -- Hoary (talk) 21:58, 7 December 2023 (UTC)