Note 73 — Chapter V
Reading edition
"Foundations," pp. 83-88. [74] By "notional verb" is meant a verb that has some distinct idea or notion of its own: as, "I have a ball." Here "have" expresses the idea of possession. In the sentence "I have lost my ball," the word "have" does not express a distinct idea; it only helps to form a tense of the verb "lose": that is, it is not notional, but auxiliary. [75] Chaucer.