What are helping verbs?

Helping verbs are also known as auxiliary verbs. They are the verbs that come before the main verb. Though they have no meaning of their own, they are necessary for the grammatical structure of a sentence. Since they help the main verb, they are known as helping verbs.

For example: The cat is drinking milk.

Here, the main verb is 'drinking'. and 'is' is the helping verb/auxiliary verb.

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An auxiliary verb is a verb used to add functional or grammatical meaning to the clause in which it appears for example, to express tense, aspect, modality, voice, emphasis, etc. ...

Just as the name implies, helping verbs, sometimes called auxiliary verbs, help out the main verb in a sentence. They accomplish this by giving more detail to how time is portrayed in a sentence. For this reason, they are used in [verb conjugation] to show the progressive and the perfect tenses of verbs.

On their own, helping verbs dont show meaning in that they dont communicate much when they stand alone. There sole purpose to help the main verb, which provides the real meaning.

Helping verbs help explain the sometimes complicated nuances of meaning. For example, they can show expectation, probability, obligation, potential, and directions. Though this may sound complicated, its really not. The examples to follow will make things more clear.

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