Understanding Prepositional Phrases and Auxiliary Verbs
Prepositional Phrases
Modify nouns and verbs while indicating various relationships between subjects and verbs. They are used to color and inform sentences in powerful ways.
A prepositional phrase will function as an adjective or adverb.
Prepositions functioning as adjectives.
It is giving us additional information about a noun or pronoun in the sentence.
As an adjective, the prepositional phrase will answer the question Which one?
The woman on the boat is my aunt Carol.
Which woman? The one on the boat.
The object of this prepositional phrase is 'boat'. The preposition 'on' is telling us the relationship between the boat and the 'woman'. Woman is a noun, so this is an adjective phrase.
The girl in the red shirt is my little sister. (gives relationship between girl and shirt)
Which girl? The one in the red shirt.
Prepositions functioning as adverbs.
It is letting us know the relationship between the object of the preposition and the verb.
As an adverb, a prepositional phrase will answer questions such as How? When? or Where?
Karen stepped onto the boat.
Where Karen stepped? Onto the boat.
The object of the preposition is 'boat'. The preposition 'onto' is telling us the relationship between boat and 'stepped'. 'Stepped' is a verb, so the prepositional phrase is an adverb phrase. The phrase tells us where Karen stepped.
Before class, I got my books. (gives relationship between class and got-tells when)
When I got my books?
Auxiliary Verbs
Are the verbs be, do, have, will when they are followed by another verb (the full verb) in order to form a question, a negative sentence, a compound tense or the passive. The verb 'be'
The verb be
Can be used as an auxiliary and a full verb. As an auxiliary we use this verb for compound tenses and the passive voice. Note that be is an irregular verb:
Simple Present: I am, he/she/it is, we/you/they are
Simple Past: I/he/she/it was, we/you/they were
Past Participle: Been
The verb 'have'
The verb have, too, can be used both as an auxiliary and as a full verb. As an auxiliary we use this verb to form compound tenses in active and passive voice. (Use the past participle of the full verb.)
Present Perfect Simple: He has played football.
Past Perfect Simple: He had played football.
Present Perfect Progressive: He has been playing football.
Past Perfect Progressive: He had been playing football.
The verb 'will'
The verb will can only be used as an auxiliary. We use it to form the future tenses.
The auxiliary verb 'will'
Future I: He will not play football.
Future II: He will have played football.
The verb 'do'
The verb do can be both an auxiliary and a full verb. As an auxiliary we use do in negative sentences and questions for most verbs (except not for be, will, have got and modal verbs) in Simple Present and Simple Past. (Use the infinitive of the full verb.)
The auxiliary 'do' in negative sentences
Simple Present: He does not play football.
Simple Past: He did not play football.
The auxiliary 'do' in questions
Simple Present: Does he play football?
Simple Past: Did he play football?
The full verb 'do'
As a full verb we use do in certain expressions. If we want to form negative sentences or questions using do as a full verb, we need another do as an auxiliary.
Positive sentence: She does her homework every day
Negative sentence: She doesn't do her homework every day.
Question: Does she do her homework every day?