Regulaciones no arancelarias cuantitativas

This is often referred to as subject–auxiliary inversion, but there are really two functions involved here, namely, subject and operator, rather than a function and a category. At the end of this section, it should be clear why we want to make this distinction. As we saw in Chapter 5, questions are signalled in English by the subject occurring after a verb and not in its customary position before all the verbs. There is one important condition,

135 though, and that is that the verb preceding the subject must be of a special kind – it must be one of the verbs capable of being an operator. Compare the following sentences:

Could you reinvent yourself as someone new? (N#279:9) Can you be nutty? (SCO #245:35)

Whose brain is it anyway? (N#260:14) with these:

*Reinvented you yourself as someone new?

*Considers Blackman herself a dishonourable lady?

*Intended they to become parents during their stay?

These examples show that could, can and is function as operators, and that the verbs in the starred sentences – reinvent, considers and intend – cannot.

In the last sentences, we need to insert a verb that doesn’t mean anything much but which seems able to function as an operator – the dummy do, about which we will hear more later. This gives us the following grammati-cal interrogatives:

Does Blackman consider herself a dishonourable lady? (N#274:30)

Did they intend to become parents during their stay? (N#258:13) (back to John and Yoko)

We need to point out here that apart from interrogatives, there are a few other environments where you get subject–operator inversion; for instance, in so-called conditionals (as in the first example below) and when negative adverbials have been moved to the front (as in the other two examples).

As we would expect, unless there is an operator in the sentence naturally, dummy do must be inserted:

Had he been really brave, rather than derivative of his own formula, he might have created something truly … (N#269:26)

Nor did I imagine that I was in a picture that appeared within the sleeve of a Lennon LP … (N#258:12)

Never in the error-strewn history of English cricket, never in the rich 195-year history of Lord’s, has there been a day as dark. (The Daily Mail lament-ing the English cricket team’s loss, AUS#331:11)

Negation

Consider the following negative sentences:

We’re (we are) not trying to have a baby … (N#258:13)

Why can’t you do it in your vacation? (N#258:13) (this is John Lennon on everybody staging a ‘bed-in’ for peace)

I wish I had not gone that day. (N#258:12) [adapted]

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Here we see that the clause negator not, or its contracted form n’t, can occur with verbs like can, be and have. Compare this with the following ungram-matical sentences:

*I swear I dreamt not/dreamtn’t it.

*I wantn’t to make a habit out of it.

Just as in some of the interrogatives above, we have to insert the seemingly meaningless verb do:

I swear I didn’t dream it. (N#258:12)

I don’t want to make a habit out of it. (N#258:13) (John Lennon on how nice it is to get married)

There is a little quirk here – I want not to make a habit out of it is actually grammatical. However, the negator not doesn’t negate the whole sentence.

It only modifies make a habit out of it, not want. In the original example, Lennon says he has no particular desire to make a habit out it, whereas in the example with not following want, it means the speaker is actively trying to not make a habit out of it.

We can conclude, then, that in English, sentence negation requires the presence of a special kind of verb. Verbs like dream and want cannot have negation attached to them. Instead we need an operator, just as with interrogatives.

If an operator is needed to make an interrogative and to add clausal negation, then there is one environment in which these two criteria are often combined: the TAG qUESTION. As we saw in Chapter 5,atag question is often added at the end of a sentence, not always as a real question, but more to invite some sign from the hearer that she is still with you. Being interrogatives, tag questions have subject–operator inversion and hence only finite auxiliaries can occur in tag questions.

We have insisted here on making the distinction between the function operator and the sub-category auxiliary. Not all elements that can function as operators are auxiliaries; there are one or two lexical verbs that can do it, too. We will return to these exceptions below in Section 6.5. This means that to define the sub-category of auxiliary verb, we need more than just its ability to function as an operator. We have seen that auxiliaries differ from all lexical verbs in that they take a verbal complement. We can say, then, that an auxiliary is a verb which can function as an operator and which takes a verbal complement.

We still want to distinguish between the function operator and the sub-category auxiliary, because auxiliaries do not always function as operators.

Consider the following description of room 702 of the Amsterdam Hilton.

This hallowed venue has been turned into something of a stylised, all white shrine. (N#258:13)

In this sentence, there are three verbs, has, been and turned (into). Of these, only the first one can function as an operator, in that it can invert with the subject to form an interrogative and it can carry the negation:

137 Has this hallowed venue been turned into something of a stylised, all white shrine?

This hallowed venue hasn’t been turned into something of a stylised, all white shrine.

The complement of has clearly functions as an operator here. How about been in the same sentence? Well, it has the VP complement typical of an auxiliary: turned into something of a stylised, all white shrine; so it looks like an auxiliary. However, when we try to use been for subject–operator inver-sion and for negation the result is ungrammatical. In this sentence been doesn’t function as an operator.

*Been this hallowed venue has turned into something of a stylised, all white shrine?

*This hallowed venue has been’t turned into something of a stylised, all white shrine.

However, this shouldn’t lead us to the conclusion that be isn’t an auxil-iary; if has wasn’t there, then be (in the form of was) can do the operator jobs:

Was this hallowed venue turned into something of a stylised, all white shrine?

This hallowed venue wasn’t turned into something of a stylised, all white shrine.

If we go back to the original sentence:

This hallowed venue has been turned into something of a stylised, all white shrine.

We can conclude that both has and been are auxiliary verbs – they both take VP complements and they can both, in principle, fill the function of opera-tor. However, in this particular sentence, only has is an operator, because to be an operator, an auxiliary has to be finite, and only the first auxiliary of a verb string can be finite. This is similar to the fact that, say, the peace-loving couple is always a noun phrase and as such it can fill the subject function.

However, just because it is a noun phrase, it doesn’t always have to fill the subject function.

6.4  Auxiliary verbs

Now that we know how to spot auxiliaries, let’s take a closer look at what verbs are auxiliaries and what kind of meaning they may contribute to the sentence. A distinction is usually made between MODAL AUxILIARIES and

PRIMARY AUxILIARIES. The core modal verbs are can–could, may–might, shall–

should, will–would and must, and the primary auxiliaries are be, have and do.

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