Is the word were a helping verb

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A linking verb is a verb that connects the subject with an adjective or a noun that describes it. … The main helping verbs are: be, am, is, are, was, were, do, did, have, has, had.

Is were a linking verb?

Linking verbs are verbs that serve as a connection between a subject and further information about that subject. … A handful—a very frequently used handful—of verbs are always linking verbs: all forms of to be (am, is, are, was, were, has been, are being, might be, etc.)

Is were a helping verb?

Am, is, are, was, and were are helping verbs! Be, being, and been are three more helping verbs. … They help you form verb phrases, The amazing helping verbs!

Was were use helping verb?

A helping verb (also known as an auxiliary verb) is used with a main verb to help express the main verb’s tense, mood, or voice. The main helping verbs are «to be,» «to have,» and «to do.» They appear in the following forms: To Be: am, is, are, was, were, being, been, will be. To Have: has, have, had, having, will have.

What are the 20 linking verbs?

Here is the list: Be, am, is, are, was, were, has been, any other form of the verb “be”, become, and seem. There are other verbs that can be both linking verbs and action verbs. All of the sense verbs; look, smell, touch, appear, sound, taste, and feel can be linking verbs.

16 related questions found

Did you know that you can own a leopard in some states? It is true and has been for a while! It might sound fun to own a big cat but you may want to think twice about it. After all, you would need a lot of money and a lot of animal knowledge to properly care for one. To keep the leopards happy, we should let them roam free in the wild or live in a zoo where experts can take care of them.

In our discussion about leopards, we used a verb in every sentence. As you may know, a verb is a word that we use to describe actions and states of being. While there are many types of verbs that we can use in a sentence or clause, the italicized words above are members of a particularly helpful kind of verb called a helping verb or an auxiliary verb.

What is a helping or auxiliary verb?

A helping verb (also known as an auxiliary verb, with auxiliary coming from a Latin root meaning “helping”) is “a word used in construction with and preceding certain forms of other verbs, as infinitives or participles, to express distinctions of tense, aspect, mood, etc.”

So what does this mean? To simplify our definition a bit, a helping verb works together with the main verb to form a verb phrase that has a certain tense, mood, voice, or other grammatical aspect. Not every sentence or clause uses a verb phrase, so you can easily have a sentence without helping verbs. For example, the sentence Ducks quack uses a verb by itself to say what ducks do. However, the sentence The ducks have been quacking all morning uses a verb phrase (have been quacking) in order to form the present perfect continuous verb tense. We will exclusively use the term helping verb here, but in general usage the names helping verb and auxiliary verb can be used interchangeably.

When we use helping verbs, we place them in front of the main verb of the sentence. The main verb is the final verb in a verb phrase that actually says what action something is doing or describes a state of being. For example, in the sentence We might leave tomorrow, the main verb is leave and the helping verb is might.

There aren’t that many helping verbs, but the roster of helping verbs includes some of the most commonly used words in English. These include:

• The verb be and its forms: be, am, is, are, was, were, been, being
• The verb have and its forms: have, has, had, having
• The verb do and its forms: do, does, did
• can
• could
• might
• may
• must
• ought to
• shall
• should
• will
• would

Let’s look closer at these helping verbs to figure out why we actually use them.

The verb be

As a helping verb, the verb be is used with a main verb and, potentially, other helping verbs to form the continuous and perfect continuous verb tenses:

• She walks. (no helping verb)
• She is walking. (present continuous tense)
• She was walking. (past continuous tense)
• She will be walking. (future continuous tense)
• She has been walking. (present perfect continuous tense)
• She had been walking. (past perfect continuous tense)
• She will have been walking. (future perfect continuous tense)

The verb be can also be used as a helping verb with the passive voice. For example,

• Joey was rescued by a firefighter.

It is important to remember that the verb be can also be used by itself in a sentence. If it is, it acts as a linking verb and not a helping verb. For example, Mateo is a police officer.

The verb have

As a helping verb, have (and its forms) is mainly used to form the perfect and perfect continuous verb tenses. You can see examples of the perfect continuous tenses above. Here are examples of have used as a helping verb to form the perfect tenses:

• She has walked. (present perfect tense)
• She had walked. (past perfect tense)
• She will have walked. (future perfect tense)

Just like the verb be, have can also be used alone in a sentence to refer to ownership. If it is used this way, it is a stative verb and not a helping verb: Fish have gills.

Get a close-up look at how to use this helping verb correctly with our article on has vs. have!

The verb do

In grammar, mood (from a variant of the word mode) is a category that shows if a verb is expressing fact (known as indicative mood), command (imperative mood), question (interrogative mood), wish (optative mood), or conditionality (subjunctive mood). For example, the indicative mood is used to state facts as in Mice like cheese, and the imperative mood is used to give commands as in Bring me that book. In practice, modal verbs are used to alter the meaning of a sentence or clause in some way. The following two sentences have different meanings:

• Do cats chase mice? (Interrogative mood)
• Do not touch the glass! (Imperative mood)

As with the other two main helping verbs, do can also be used alone in a sentence, usually as an action verb. For example, The sergeant watched as the recruits did push-ups.

The modal auxiliary verbs

The subgroup of auxiliary verbs known as modal auxiliary verbs, or modal verbs, include words such as can, could, should, might, must, may, will, and shall. Generally speaking, these words are used as helping verbs to establish the mood of a verb. In practice, this includes sentences that indicate:

• Possibility: It might rain tomorrow. She may ask me to dance.
• Ability: Parrots can imitate human speech. He could beat anyone in a race.
• Necessity: You must clean your room. According to the law, we should report this crime to the police.
• Intention: We will buy more clothes if we can afford them. Malia said she shall visit her parents next month.

Helping verb examples

The following sentences all have examples of helping verbs. Keep in mind that a word is only a helping verb if it is not the main verb in a sentence. It is also possible to use more than one helping verb in a single verb phrase and to make a verb phrase negative by using the word not or a contraction.

• Jack and Jill were walking up a hill.
• The workers had been building the garage all morning.
• I heard that some insects can breathe underwater.
• Does she know that the store opens in an hour?
• Luckily, we had locked the door, so the robbers couldn’t enter the house.

Helping verbs make all the difference for verb tenses. How familiar are you with all of the tenses though? Let’s find out.

Helping verb rules & best practices

The most important thing to remember about helping verbs is that they are not the main verb of a sentence. As their name suggests, they help the main verb in a sentence by expressing a mood, tense, voice etc. When we use helping verbs in English, we typically put them in front of the main verb in a verb phrase.

Generally speaking, we typically do not use more than three helping verbs in a single verb phrase. For example, we would say I may have been eating at that time but we wouldn’t say I could may have been eating at that time.

Although they are not used as the main verb, it is possible for a linking verb to be used alone in a sentence or clause if the main verb has been omitted. Here are some examples:

• Madeline didn’t buy any gifts, but Elijah did.
• I can’t whistle, but my sister can.
• We never recycle even though we know that we really should.
• Ben didn’t know the answer, but Abby might.
• Cats can climb trees and monkeys can, too.

It is important to note that in each of the above sentences, it is easy to tell which verb was omitted in the sentence. When using a linking verb alone in a sentence, it is crucial that a listener or reader understands the meaning of what you are trying to say. It is a good idea to not omit the main verb from a sentence if a sentence is unclear or doesn’t make sense without it.

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Auxiliary (or Helping) verbs are used together with a main verb to show the verb’s tense or to form a negative or question. The most common auxiliary verbs are have, be, and do.

1. Does Sam write all his own reports?
2. The secretaries haven’t written all the letters yet.
3. Terry is writing an e-mail to a client at the moment.

Auxiliary verbs, also known as helping verbs, add functional or grammatical meaning to the clauses in which they appear. They perform their functions in several different ways:

• By expressing tense ( providing a time reference, i.e. past, present, or future)
• Grammatical aspect (expresses how verb relates to the flow of time)
• Modality (quantifies verbs)
• Voice (describes the relationship between the action expressed by the verb and the participants identified by the verb’s subject, object, etc.)
• Adds emphasis to a sentence

Auxiliary verbs almost always appear together with a main verb, and though there are only a few of them, they are among the most frequently occurring verbs in the English language.

How to Identify an Auxiliary Verb

You probably know that every sentence has at least one verb in it. There are two main types of verbs. Action verbs are used to depict activities that are doable, and linking verbs are used to describe conditions. Both action verbs and linking verbs can accompany auxiliary verbs including the three main ones: do, be, and have.

Sometimes actions or conditions occur only one time and then they’re over. It’s at times like these that some of the same verbs that are used as auxiliary verbs are instead used as action or linking verbs. In this example, we see the word “is”. This is one of the most common auxiliary verbs, but because it stands alone here, it is not functioning as an auxiliary verb.

Jerry slammed the car door on his thumb. He is in horrible pain.

“Is” is a linking verb in this sentence. Because it stands alone, it is not an auxiliary verb.

At other times, an action or condition is ongoing, happening predictably, or occurring in relationship to another event or set of events. In these cases, single-word verbs like is are not accurately capable of describing what happened, so phrases that include auxiliary verbs are used instead. These can be made up of anywhere from two to four words.

A main verb, also known as a base verb, indicates the kind of action or condition taking place. An auxiliary or helping verb accompanies the main verb and conveys other nuances that help the reader gain specific insight into the event that is taking place.

Read the following sentences and explanations to gain greater insight into how auxiliary verbs work.

1. Jerry caught his thumb in the car door as coffee spilled from his cup onto his favorite shirt.
2. Jerry is always spilling things.
3. Since Jerry is also accident prone, he should have been drinking coffee from a mug with a lid, which would not have spilled on his favorite shirt.

In sentence one, caught and spilled, single-word verbs, describe quick, one-time actions of both Jerry and his messy coffee. This sentence does not contain an auxiliary verb.

Since Jerry often has unfortunate accidents, is spilling communicates the frequency of his clumsy actions in sentence two. In sentence three, the auxiliary verbs that make up should have been drinking and would have stained express time relationships as well as an evaluation of Jerry’s actions.

Three Common Auxiliary Verbs

There are just three common auxiliary verbs:

• Have
• Do
• Be

In this section, we’ll take a closer look at how these common verbs work, plus you’ll see some examples.

Have

“Have” is a very important verb that can stand alone in all its tenses, including has, have, having, had, and hadn’t or had not. It is usually used to denote ownership, and it can also be used to discuss ability or describe appearance. “Have” is also a very popular substitute for the verbs “eat” and “drink.” For example: “Let’s have dinner.”

When used as an auxiliary verb, have is always teamed up with another verb to create a complete verb phrase, making it easy to differentiate between uses. You can see the difference in the sentences below:

• Jerry has a large coffee stain on his shirt. → Has = action verb
• Jerry has bought a new shirt to replace the one that was ruined earlier. → Has = auxiliary verb; bought is a past participle that competes the verb phrase.
• Jerry should have been more careful! → Have = auxiliary verb; phrase “should have been” expresses time and evaluates Jerry’s actions.

Do

“Do” can be used as an action verb that stands alone in all its tenses, including to do, do, does, done, did and didn’t, doesn’t or did not .

When used as an auxiliary verb, do is always paired up with another verb to create a complete verb phrase. In some cases, it is used to add emphasis: “I did put the garbage out!” Do is often used to form questions and negated clauses. It is also used in elliptical sentences, where the main verb is understood and is omitted as a result. For example: “He plays piano well, doesn’t he?” or “They all had dinner, but I didn’t.”

• Because he spills things so often, Jerry does more laundry than most people.  Does = action verb
• Jerry didn’t put his coffee in a cup with a lid.  Didn’t = auxiliary verb
• Jerry doesn’t always spill things, but it happens a lot.  Doesn’t = auxiliary verb

Be

“Be” or “to be” is an important verb that has a multitude of uses in English. It can be used as an action verb that stands alone in all its tenses including be, to be, been, am, are, is, was, were, wasn’t, was not aren’t, are not, weren’t and were not.

When used as an auxiliary verb, be is always paired with another verb to create a complete verb phrase. It can be singular or plural, present or past. Negative sentences are formed by adding the word “not”.

• Jerry is messy.  Is = action verb
• Although he is always complaining about his accidents, Jerry fails to pay attention.  is = auxiliary verb
• Jerry is going to be doing extra laundry for the rest of his life.  to be = auxiliary verb

Modal Auxiliary Verbs

In addition to the three main auxiliary verbs, have, do, and be, there are additional auxiliary verbs. These are called modal auxiliary verbs, and they never change form. A complete list of modal auxiliary verbs follows:

• Can
• Could
• May
• Might
• Must
• Ought to
• Shall
• Should
• Will
• Would

Auxiliary Verb Examples

Here are some examples of auxiliary verbs and verb phrases. In the examples below, the verb phrase is italicized and the auxiliary verb is in bold.

1. Jessica is taking John to the airport.
2. If he doesn’t arrive on time, he’ll have to take a later flight.
3. Unfortunately, our dinner has been eaten by the dog.
4. I have purchased a new pair of shoes to replace the ones that were lost in my luggage.
5. We hope you don’t have an accident on your way to school.
6. She was baking a pie for dessert.
7. Dad has been working hard all day.
8. The bed was made as soon as I got up.
9. Sarah doesn’t ski or roller skate.
10. Did Matthew bring coffee?

Auxiliary Verb Exercises

Fill in the blank with the correct auxiliary verb from the choices presented:

1. What ________________ the kids doing when you last saw them? (was, were, are, did, been)
2. Carla ________________ always wanted to try skydiving. (was, doesn’t, has, is, have)
3. Where __________________ you go on your summer vacation? (were, been, are, did, does)
4. Why do you think she __________ call you like she said she would? (didn’t, is, hasn’t, has been, have)
5. Mary _____________ going to be upset when she hears what happened. (will, don’t, is, didn’t, has)
6. Jeremy _____________ want to go to the movies; he wants to stay home instead. (doesn’t, isn’t, wasn’t, hasn’t, was not)
7. I _________________ appreciate his jokes. They weren’t funny. (did, have, been, didn’t, haven’t)
8. I really like fish but I _______________ care for meat. (weren’t, been, don’t, is, was)
9. Where _____________ you going when I saw you last night? (were, was, is, do, did)
10. Tara ________________ called yet; she’s late as usual. (are, were, has, hasn’t, wouldn’t)

Answers: 1 – were, 2 – has, 3 – did, 4 – didn’t, 5 – is, 6 – doesn’t, 7 – didn’t, 8 – don’t, 9 – were, 10 – hasn’t

Helping verbs are used in a verb phrase (that is, with a second verb) to show tense or form a question or a negative.

Helping verbs are always followed by a second verb, and they show the perfect verb tenses, continuous/progressive verb tenses, and passive voice.

To show tense

The sentence pattern will be:

1. Subject (noun, pronoun, or noun phrase)
2. Helping verb
3. Verb
4. The rest of the sentence (adj, adv, noun, prepositional phrase, etc.)

To form a question

The sentence structure will be:

1. Helping verb
2. Subject (noun, pronoun, or noun phrase)
3. Verb
4. The rest of the sentence (adj, adv, noun, prepositional phrase, etc.)

Categories

There are three categories for helping verbs: “Do/be/have”, one-word modals, and two-word modals.

Do/Be/Have

These help other verbs make questions, negatives, and some verb tenses. Remember: Do, be, and have are helping verbs only when they are used with a second verb.

Do is a helping verb when it is used to indicate questions, negatives, and emphasis.

Be is a helping verb when it is used to form the continuous/progressive tense or to show passive voice.

HAVE is a helping verb when it is used to show the perfect verb tenses, or used to form a question.

These sentences are in question form. Do/Does/Did are used as helping verbs with Have to form these questions.

• Do you have a car?
• Does he have a car?
• Did he have a car before?

Emphasis with Do

To respond to a statement like, “You don’t want to go to the park,” you may want to reply with great emphasis. Situations like that are perfect for using Do/Does/Did to indicate you really mean something.

In these sentences, Do/Does/Did are used with the verb Want.

• I do want to go to the park.
• He does want to go to the park.
• They really did want to go to the park.

Negatives with Do

Do/Does/Did are used as helping verbs and the word Not to form a negative. In these sentences, they again are used with Want.

• I do not want to go to the zoo.
• He does not want to go to the zoo.
• They did not want to go to the zoo.

Continuous tense with Be

These sentences use Am/Was/Will Be (forms of the verb Be) to form the continuous verb tense with the verb Helping.

• I am helping Diane right now.
• I was helping Diane when George paged me.
• I will be helping Diane when George comes home.

Passive voice with Be

These sentences use Is/Was/Will Be with the verb Canceled to show passive voice.

• The picnic is being canceled because of rain.
• The picnic was canceled because of rain.
• The picnic will be canceled because of rain.

Perfect tense with Have

These sentences use Have/Had with the verb Studied to show the perfect tense.

• I have studied French for two years.
• I had studied French for two years before I went to Paris.
• I will have studied French for three years in August.

Questions with Have

Have is used with the verb Seen to make a question.

• Have you seen that new movie yet?

Modals

Modals are a special kind of helping verb, used to show possibility, probability, and necessity. They:

• Do not show tense
• Do not follow subject/verb agreement
• Do not add an “-s” in the third person singular (he, she, it)
• Are not conjugated

Like other helping verbs, modals are always followed by a second verb. But the second verb follows a different conjugation pattern if a modal is present. The second verb can never add “-s,” “-es,” “-ed,” or “-ing.” It also cannot be in the infinitive form (“to …”) or in the gerund form (“…-ing”).

When using modals, the sentence structure will be:

1. Subject (noun, pronoun, or noun phrase)
2. Modal (should, would, could, may, might, etc.)
3. Verb
4. The rest of the sentence (adj, adv, noun, prepositional phrase, etc.)

The Modal page of this guide includes more information on modals, including sentence examples.