| 词源 |
of. An auxiliary verb is a “helping verb” (have, be, may, do, shall, can, must, etc.) that is combined with other verbs. But the preposition of can be an auxiliary verb, too, at least in Ameri- can vernacular. Some say the humorist Ring Lardner was the first to recognize this in his characters’ conversational speech. One critic goes so far as to say that “until Lardner wrote You Know Me, Al (1916) no one ever considered of to be an auxiliary verb. Who would of thought of it but the man with the phono- graphic ear for American speech.” |