Auxiliary verbs vs Lexical verb

In your day to day life you tend to say many things to express your views. Ever wondered, how you would have shared it without a language? How can we forget about grammar, without which a sentence would hardly make any meaning? Grammar is an essential aspect of any language,  be it writing or speaking. We express each and everything we do and so we use verbs to show the action we do or did. Verbs are very important to express about a situation that has probably happened or might happen. They are used to express an action or some sort of state of being.

For example, “I washed my car”. This sentence shows the action of a car being washed. Without a verb you cannot show the proper expression or action that is happening. There are different verbs with different uses. In this topic we will be discussing about the Lexical verbs and auxiliary verbs.

Lexical Verbs:



Lexical verbs are also known as main verbs. These verbs act as independent clause. Definitely not a clause but an independent word. They stand on their own and do not need another verb to make a sentence significant. They simply tell you about the action in which the subject is involved. For example, laugh, sing, run and many more. Let’s make sentence out of it.

1) She laughed on the joke.
2) He sings really well.
3) He ran.
4) My father scolded me.
5) He loves the Chinese soup.

Lexical verbs are the open class of verbs, which means new words can be added to the lexical verb category.

Some words which were added lately are as follows:

1) Googled
2) Chillax
3) Twerked.
4) Unfriend.

Let us have a look at auxiliary verbs.

Auxiliary Verbs:

Auxiliary verbs are the contrast of lexical verbs. They cannot stand independent. These verbs are complete when the sentence has a lexical verb in it.



There are three main auxiliary verbs : 'be'(is,am,are), 'have' and 'do'.

These verbs bring about a functional or a grammatical change to the clause or a sentence. In fact, we can say that auxiliary verbs support lexical verbs and make the sentence complete. Hence, they can be called helping verbs.

Auxiliary verb + Main (lexical) verb

1) The cooks have cooked well.
2) Maria has submitted her assignment.
3) They did bring us the gift.
4) Barcelona is winning the match.

The above examples will help you to understand the difference between lexical and auxiliary verbs. Verbs help us to understand the meaning of the sentence completely. Stay tuned to our blogs to improve your English and vocabulary. You can also join our online English course to improve your English speaking skills.


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