by Mark Angelo S. dela Peña
Many people, especially ESL/EFL learners, find it hard to determine what a LINKING VERB really is and what its differences from a HELPING VERB are. As an English teacher, I always encounter this question and, somehow, found a good way of explaining it. I'd like to post it here to help other people with their study or presentation.
LINKING VERBS ARE, simply, VERBS THAT LINK. Observe the following sentences:
The buildings are majestic.
Dumbledore is a professor.Notice that the verbs link the left side to the right side of the sentences. The left side tells something about the right and the other way around. Also, notice that the words after the LINKING VERBS are nouns or adjectives. These are called SUBJECT COMPLEMENTS.
SUBJECT COMPLEMENTS do NOT always follow the verb. Notice the following sentence.
Dangerous are the Death Eaters.- - - - -
Now let's talk about VERBS. Helping verbs are verbs that help. In this case of verbs, they don't help the elderly but other verbs. Now, here comes the question: how can helping verbs help other verbs? Observe the following sentences:
Hermione is creating a polyjuice potion.
Ron has been drinking a liquid luck.Surely, "creating a polyjuice potion" does not describe Hermione even if others would contend that "creating" can be a participial-adjective. Also, "drinking a liquid luck" can't mean anything ABOUT Ron but, of course, it means something about what he is doing.
Now, how can we explain about HELPING VERBS? Observe the following tenses embedded within the above sentences.
Hermione is creating a polyjuice potion.[In this sentence, the tense of the verb is simple progressive. This means present + ING-form. One verb cannot contain two tenses in the same time in the English language. See the example below:]
Hermione *createsing* a polyjuice potion.[Now, anyone would agree that the above sentence is heavily nonsensical. Here is where the helping verbs enter the scene. They carry the excess tense to relieve other verbs from much burden. Imagine tenses as cargoes and verbs as individual cargo-carriers.]
Ron has been drinking a liquid luck.[In this sentence, the tense of the verb is present prefect-progressive. This means simple + past participle + ING-form. As I have mentioned earlier, one verb cannot contain two tenses in the same time in the English language. See the example below:]
Ron *dranksing* a liquid luck.[Applying all the things I said a while ago, the sentence should be:]
Ron has been drinking a liquid luck.- - - - -
There are a lot more helping verbs like, will, might, should must, could, etc. but they fall under a special category called MODALS.
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