Lexical versus Auxiliary Verbs

Auxiliary means to help or support something else, to act as a backup, and to be secondary to something more significant. Auxiliary verbs are often called helping verbs. There is a fixed number of auxiliary verbs in English as opposed to lexical verbs which are infinite and can be added to all the time. Lexical means "relating to words." Lexical verbs are the main verbs in a phrase or sentence. To put it simply, lexical verbs are any verbs which are not auxiliary verbs. Lexical verbs carry their own meaning, (full verbs), and therefore can use but don't necessarily need a helping (auxiliary) verb.

• I was playing football yesterday.

"Was" is the auxiliary verb and "playing" is the lexical verb because it describes the state or action in the sentence.

• If we go to that restaurant, I will want the steak.

In the main clause, "Will" is the auxiliary and "want" is the lexical verb.

• The auxiliary verbs are: be, is, was, have, had, do

• The Modal auxiliary verbs can, could, would, will, might, may, shall, should

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After seeing the video tutorials test your knowledge on a quiz about modal, auxiliary, lexical verbs

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