Auxilliary verbs?

Question

So I was reading this book by McGraw Hill called English Verbs & Essentials of Grammar for ESL Learners and there is this short section on auxilliary verbs in the section on verbs in the present tense. It lists "to want to" and "to be able to" as helping verbs and this is a first for me since I do not recall having been taught that these were considered auxilliary verbs.

Also, in the examples, there is a sentence, "Mary likes to sing and dance." where the bolded words were listed as being verbs. In this case, wouldn't "like" be the only verb in the sentence since Mary is not actually doing any singing or dancing?

Mister Micawber · Accepted Answer

It lists "to want to" and "to be able to" as helping verbs and this is a first for me since I do not recall having been taught that these were considered auxilliary verbs.-- Be able to is called a semi-auxiliary, along with be going to, have to, and several more. Want to is not; it is a main verb, but it is useful to consider such frequent forms (want to, would like to, like to) as having some characteristics of modality, specifically as expressions of speech acts (desire, etc).

Also, in the examples, there is a sentence, "Mary likes to sing and dance." where the bolded words were listed as being verbs. In this case, wouldn't "like" be the only verb in the sentence since Mary is not actually doing any singing or dancing?-- Like is the finite verb of the sentence. Sing and dance are infinitive verbs.

I have the feeling that your book is trying to be cutting edge. Some grammarians are taking fresh looks at the way the language is described.

Avangi · Answer

I'm afraid someone else will have to help you with those so-called auxilliaries, but "Mary likes to sing and dance" doesn't seem too difficult.

There are different ways to classify verbs.
For example, there are finite verbs and non-finite verbs. This distinction has to do with the particular form of the verb or the way it's used in the sentence, not the verb itself.

When you look up a verb in the dictionary, the first thing you see is "the base form," or "the bare infinitive."

(to) like; (to) sing; (to) dance

When we use these as "main verbs" in a sentence, we give them a tense, or a time frame:

I like ice cream. (simple present tense)
She sings loud. (simple present tense)
We danced slowly. (simple past tense)

These are finite verbs.

But when we use verbs as objects of the main verb, they don't have a tense. They're non-finite.
Sometimes we call them "verbals."

I tried to like her. (infinitive)
She loves singing. (gerund)
We watched the dancing mouse. (present participle as adjective) Edit. Sorry, not an object.

Auxilliary verbs?

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