Author Topic: When to use the peculiar verb forms “have had” and “had had”  (Read 4947 times)

Joe Carillo

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Question posted by Baklis, Forum member, on my Personal Messages box, October 27, 2014:

Good Morning Sir Joe, I just want to ask when are we going to use “have had” and “had had.” Thank you!

My reply to Baklis:

You will recall that in English, “have” can either be a main verb that means “to hold or maintain as a possession, privilege, or entitlement,” as in “to have a car” and “to have breakfast,” or be an auxiliary verb. As an auxiliary verb, “have” or its inflections (“has” and “had”) is used with the past participle of the verb to form the perfect tenses, as follows:

(1) The present perfect tense, which has the form “has or have + the past participle of the verb,” as in “has taken” for singular nouns and “have taken” for plural nouns;

(2) The past perfect tense, which has the form “had + the past participle of the verb,” as in “had taken” for both singular and plural nouns; and

(3) The future perfect tense, which has the form “will have + the past participle of the verb,” as in “will have taken” for both singular and plural nouns.

We have to use the form ”have had” to denote the present perfect tense of “have” as a main verb. In that form, “have” is the auxiliary verb and “had” is the past participle of the main verb “have.” Here’s an example: “I have had dinner.” This is actually the semantic equivalent of the present-perfect sentence “I have already taken dinner.” In both sentences, the sense is that the action of having dinner was completed right before or shortly before the very moment of speaking.

On the other hand, we have to use the form “had had” to denote the past perfect tense of “have” as a main verb. In that form, the first “had” is the auxiliary verb and the other “had” is the past participle of the main verb “have.” Here’s an example: “I had had dinner the other night by the time I got the long-distance call.” The sense here is that the action of having dinner was completed shortly before the speaker got the long-distance call.

For a more detailed discussion of the usage of the forms “have had” and “had had,” check out this previous Forum posting, “A question on the form ‘I have had...’” I am sure that it will give you a much clearer grasp of these rather peculiar grammatical forms.
« Last Edit: October 29, 2014, 11:50:01 AM by Joe Carillo »

Baklis

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Re: When to use the peculiar verb forms “have had” and “had had”
« Reply #1 on: October 29, 2014, 10:40:24 AM »
Thank you for enlighting my mind regarding that matter, but I'm still a little bit confused. The link of the previous posting doesn't work. Thanks anyway Sir Joe.

Joe Carillo

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Re: When to use the peculiar verb forms “have had” and “had had”
« Reply #2 on: October 29, 2014, 11:53:10 AM »
There has been a glitch in my reply as initially posted.  I have already fixed it so the link is now working perfectly. My apologies.