Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Seoulman69]

Quick question:

To function as a verb do past participles need to be teamed with an auxiliary verb?

Thanks.

[edwardcatflap]

No. Newspaper headlines use them all the time without auxliliaries.

e.g. 5 killed in car crash, houses destroyed in floods etc....

[jizza]

From wiki: The primary auxiliary verbs in English are to be and to have; other major ones include shall, will, may and can

some past participles:
to talk - I've talked
to eat - I've eaten
to freeze - I've frozen
to run - I've run
to drink - I've drunk
to see -I've seen

To use the past participle as a verb, there are two situations

1) Passive voice
use (be + past participle)
The door was opened. ('opened' here could function both as an adj. or a verb. ie. someone opened the door, or the door was not closed)

2) Perfect aspects
(again from wiki:
* Present perfect: "The girl has eaten the cookie."
* Past Perfect: "The girl had eaten the cookie before she ate her lunch."
* Future perfect: "The girl will have eaten the cookie by this afternoon."

The perfect aspects always require the verbs (to have), (to be), or both as auxiliaries.

[edwardcatflap]

people often miss them out in informal questions too.

e.g. 'been to the bar yet? 'bought the drinks?'

[Khenan]

Good responses so far.

There are specific times when it's okay to leave them out, but you should teach your students to always use them, unless they're advanced.

[waynehead]

Yup, only fluent/near-fluent students should be bothered with learning when not to use the auxiliaries.

[Seoulman69]

Thanks for the replies.

I teach at an elementary school so my students aren't at this level yet. I just asked the question because I want to keep improving my grammar. Hopefully this will help me if I ever take a step up to higher level students.