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This page pertains to UD version 2.

AUX: auxiliary

Definition

An auxiliary is a function word that accompanies the lexical verb of a verb phrase and expresses grammatical distinctions not carried by the lexical verb, such as person, number, tense, mood, aspect, voice or evidentiality. It is often a verb (which may have non-auxiliary uses as well) but many languages have nonverbal TAME markers and these should also be tagged AUX. The class AUX also include copulas (in the narrow sense of pure linking words for nonverbal predication).

Modal verbs may count as auxiliaries in some languages (English). In other languages their behavior is not too different from the main verbs and they are thus tagged VERB.

Note that not all languages have grammaticalized auxiliaries, and even where they exist the dividing line between full verbs and auxiliaries can be expected to vary between languages. Exactly which words are counted as AUX should be part of the language-specific documentation.

Examples

References


AUX in other languages: [bej] [bg] [bm] [cs] [cy] [da] [el] [en] [es] [et] [fi] [fro] [fr] [ga] [grc] [gub] [hu] [hy] [it] [ja] [ka] [kk] [kpv] [ky] [myv] [no] [pcm] [pt] [qpm] [ru] [sl] [sv] [tr] [tt] [uk] [u] [urj] [xcl] [yue] [zh]