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Anonymous Posted 14 years ago
Grammar

Auxiliary Verbs

Is Lost the greatest show ever created for television?

Could someone please explain why "Is" at the start of that sentence is not a primary auxiliary verb here? I'm working through a grammar quiz and can't quite get my head around this one.
  

Top answer

' Is ' is the main verb , not an auxiliary, whether the sentence is a statement or in the form of a question. Here is a statement : ' Lost is the greatest show ever. ' Rover

— Rover_KE

  • ' Is ' is the main verb , not an auxiliary, whether the sentence is a statement or in the form of a question.
  • Here is a statement : ' Lost is the greatest show ever.
  • ' Rover
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3 Answers
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'Is' is the main verb, not an auxiliary, whether the sentence is a statement or in the form of a question.

Here is a statement:

'Lost is the greatest show ever. . .'

When we turn it into a question it becomes

'Is Lost the greatest show ever...?'

Rover
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"Is" is an auxiliary verb.

In cases where the first or only verb in a sentence is an auxiliary, we form questions by a process called "subject-auxiliary inversion". The declarative version of your example would be:

Lost is the greatest show ever created for television, where is is an auxiliary verb. So we invert the subject Lost with the
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I stand corrected, Bill.

Rover
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