AUXILIARY VERBS AND VERBAL PHRASES: DESCRIPTION AND COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF PORTUGUESE, FRENCH, AND ENGLISH

Abstract

This paper presents in an objective and structured way the use of the main auxiliary verbs and their application in verbal phrases in Portuguese, French, and English. Auxiliary verbs play an important role in the modulation of aspect in compound tenses. They allow the construction of complex verbal phrases which can relativize the aspect and tense of the events described by the main verb. The use of the auxiliary verbs has many similarities and parallels in the different languages, but also distinctions which are diachronically and grammatically defined. Therefore, this study makes a detailed description of the main auxiliary verbs from the three languages mentioned, using concepts and definitions from the literature. Then, this paper performs an analysis of the use of the different auxiliary verbs by examples and equivalences among the languages. Finally, the auxiliary verbs, compound tenses, and verbal phrases in Portuguese, French, and English are discussed in a comparative way among these languages. From this study, we can have a better understanding of the predicative modulation in complex verbal propositions.

Keywords

• Auxiliary verbs
• Verbal phrases
• Compound tenses