Abstract
Abstract Attempts to describe ‘what auxiliaries are and why they behave the way they do’ on the basis of syntactic criteria have not been successful. This study, which approaches the problem from the point of view of meaning, postulating that any word is used for the meaning it expresses, focuses on the nature of DO, the auxiliary usually considered a ‘dummy’ word. It proposes for DO a residual lexical meaning, the representation of a stretch of duration, as well as the grammatical meaning of any verb in the indicative. On the basis of this meaning combined with that of the infinitive, an explanation of usage in interrogative, negative and positive sentences is proposed. This analysis provides a starting point for exploring the system of auxiliaries in English and the nature of compound verbs.
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