The Verb “Have”

Having looked at the “do” verb, let us turn our attention to the verb “have”. Objective: Construct sentences in the present perfect aspect using the verb “have”. Like the “do” verb, the “have” verb is a helping verb. Take note that you can use the verb “have” as a main verb under two circumstances. First, if you use it to mean eat e.g. We have supper at 8:00pm. Second, we use it as a main verb when referring to possession e.g. I have a pen. “I am having a pen” is wrong. The verb “have” has three forms: have, has and had. We use have and has to form the present perfect aspect. For all plural subjects and the pronoun I, we use have. Therefore we say I have, you have, they have, we have, Mary and John have. For singular subjects we use has. Thus, Mary has, it has, the town has, Kenya has, and my school has. Because the “have” verb is a helping verb, it has to be used alongside a main verb. The main verb has to be in its past participle form. Care should be taken to use the correct form of the irregular verbs. Most good dictionaries have an exhaustive list of irregular verbs. These are the verbs that do not add –ed to get the past and past participle forms. Therefore the verb “add’ is regular and so is the verb “walk”. Your sentences would look like these. 1) I have added sugar to your tea. 2) We have walked to the park. We will now turn our attention the irregular verbs. Let us start with the verb drive, shall we? The past tense is “drove” and the past participle is “driven”. Your sentences would look like these. I have driven this car. You have driven this car. They have driven this car. We have driven this car. Mary and John have driven this car. Now let us look at the verb eat. The past tense is “ate” and the past participle is “eaten”. The resulting sentences will look like these: 1) I have eaten lunch. 2) You have eaten lunch. 3) They have eaten lunch. 4) We have eaten lunch. 5) Mary and John have eaten lunch. I will now leave you with ten irregular verbs of activities that are common. Construct as many sentences as you can in the present perfect aspect. Begin, burn, catch, come, feed, find, give, go, shake, and stand. In the next post we shall look at “has”.