Emily Dickinson anticipated much of twentieth-century poetry. Other main verbs function as linking verbs. A linking verb does not show any physical or emotional action. Its function is to link the sentence's subject to a subject complement , a word or phrase that renames or describes the subject. Carbon disulfide smells bad.
Auxiliary verbs indicate tense, voice, or mood.
Certain auxiliary verbs, known as modal auxiliaries, indicate necessity, possibility, willingness, obligation, or ability. In the near future farmers might cultivate seaweed as a food crop. Coal mining would be safer if dust were controlled in the mines. Verbals include participles, infinitives, and gerunds. Participles may function in a sentence as adjectives or as nouns.