Difference Between Linking And Helping Verbs, Definition and Examples

Difference Between Linking Verb and Helping Verb

In this lesson, we will examine closely the subject of “difference between linking verb and helping verb“. Verbs in English are divided into two, these are; verbs that report action and state. Verbs reporting action; go, come, stay, sleep etc. Verbs that report the state reflect sensation, perception and emotional states.

For example; sad, happy, cheerful, angry, desperate etc. If we give an example from the verb “look”, we can better understand the linking verbs. Look is used to mean ‘see’ when the action reports and ‘seem’ when the state reports. Here linking verb is the state verb. Using a verb as a stating verb is linking verb.

In English, linking verbs are verbs characterized by adjectives, not adverb. On the other hand, it is also known as “copular verb”. These are some linking verbs; feel, turn, keep, get, seem, look, become, be etc. Along with some example sentences given below, linking verbs will be more clearly understood:

Look – You look tired.
Seem – My father seem happy.
Smell – Soup smells delicious.

As seen in the examples, when verbs are used as linking verb, they are characterized by an adjective.

She look like a baby.
Our baby seems to be growing rapidly.
The lights turned green in traffic and I started driving.
My son became a dentist.
Fish scallop tastes very delicious.
My directors sounded happy.

Helping verbs act as auxiliary verbs in the sentence. We use these verbs when make a sentences in English and the positive, negative, question structure of the sentence is provided by helping verbs. Auxiliary verbs are given below with sample sentences;

Be: am, is, are, was, were, been, being.

I am running home now.
Will you come to visit us tomorrow?

Do: do, does and did.

Did not I tell you that these assignments would not be done like this?
Do you come here on a bicycle every year?
I do not know about you, can you tell me a little bit about yourself?
She does not come here.
Although my grandfather is 86 years old, it does not seem to be old at all.

Have: have, has and had.

He has been watching TV.
She has a beautiful flower.
We have two children and two cats.

Modals: can, could, must, should, may, might, will, would, shall, need, ought to, have to.

Can you help me finish my homework?
You have to come to school and apologize to him.
You should quit smoking immediately or you will be sick.
You must quit alcohol, your kids do not like it.
Would you like to come to dance course with me?
I should have thought he could do all this.
I will come today.

Helping verbs have some rules. We cannot use auxiliary verbs in present simple tense and past simple tense sentence structures. The auxiliary verbs “do, does and did” can also be used as verbs in a sentence. Verbs that come after all the modal auxiliary verb take nothing and the verb is used simply.

Verbs are necessary for the formation of a sentence, and the sentence cannot be completed without the verb. There are more than one verb in English. Two of them are linking verb and helping verb. Linking verbs contain verbs that state the situation. Auxiliary verbs are called verbs that help the main verb in the sentence to complete a sentence. But most of them do not make any mean when used alone.

Since these verbs do not make a mean when used alone, its cannot be used as action verbs. The use of auxiliary verbs strengthens the sentence and functions to adjust the timing of the verbs.

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