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THE EXERCISE:

"I told my mother that my thoughts were bent upon seeing the world that I should never settle to anything with resolution enough to go through with it, and my father should be giving me his consent than force me to go without it.

In the passage, there appear to be three auxiliaries in this sentence:

  1. WERE: Be Auxiliary; precedes (and inflects upon)the main verb BEND; passive construction

  2. SHOULD: Modal Auxiliary; precedes the auxiliary BE and the main verb GIVE

  3. BE: Be Auxiliary; precedes (and inflects upon)the main verb GIVE; active construction"

MY QUESTION: Why isn't the first "should" an auxiliary? ("...that I should never settle to...")

--> SHOULD: Modal auxiliary; precedes main verb SETTLE

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  • Were is a linking verb here and bent is a past participle adjective.
    – Tinfoil Hat
    Commented Mar 11, 2023 at 15:46
  • 1
    The whole page has a number of typos and other errors, beyond the one Greybeard mentions in the answer below.
    – alphabet
    Commented Mar 11, 2023 at 16:17
  • 2
    The passage contains several grammatical errors. "Should" is always a modal auxiliary verb, never a lexical verb.
    – BillJ
    Commented Mar 11, 2023 at 16:33
  • The original has a comma after world, and reads and my father had better give me his consent than force me to go without it (i.e. he would do better to give his consent).
    – Kate Bunting
    Commented Mar 11, 2023 at 17:03

1 Answer 1

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Your question is from https://nagelhout.faculty.unlv.edu/AGiC/s4nx.html with the commentary:

Again, the first step is to highlight any words that might be auxiliaries:

The author has failed to notice the "should" in "that I should never settle."

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  • 1
    One more reason not to get your ideas about grammar from the internet.
    – John Lawler
    Commented Mar 11, 2023 at 17:44

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