Why do we say "does absence make" and not "does absence makes"?
In English, it’s the helping verb and not the main verb that takes the tense, and in sentences in the interrogative form, the helping verb takes the frontline position, as in “
Does absence
make men’s hearts fonder?” Here, the helping verb is “does”—the present tense form of the verb—and the main verb is “make”—the bare infinitive form of “to make” that has shed off the “to.” This is the prescribed form in English for interrogative or question-form sentences in the present tense. Of course, the helping verb here can also take the two other simple tenses—the past tense (“
Did absence
make those men’s hearts fonder?”), the future tense (“
Will absence
make those men’s hearts fonder?”)—and in every case, the main verb “make” remains in its bare infinitive form.
In the present perfect tense and past perfect tense, however, the helping verb and the main verb behave differently. The helping verb takes the perfect tense—“has,” “have,” or “had”—and the main verb takes the past participle form. That sentence you presented will then take the following forms—present perfect tense (“
Has absence
made those men’s hearts fonder?”) and past perfect tense (“
Had absence
made those men’s hearts fonder?”).
In the progressive tense, the main verb takes the progressive form and the helping verb takes the simple tense, as in the following examples—the past progressive tense (“
Was absence
making those men’s hearts fonder?”), the present progressive tense (“
Is absence
making those men’s hearts fonder?”), and the future progressive tense (“
Will absence
be making those men’s hearts fonder?”).
