Skill 30: Use Past Participles After Have and Had

The perfect tenses use an auxiliary verb (have, has, or had) and a past participle. An auxiliary verb helps the main verb. A regular past participle usually ends in -ed. Irregular past participles, such as eaten, have other forms.

Present perfect: have or has + past participle

Use have with I, you, we, and they; use has with he, she, and it. The present perfect connects a past action to the present.

_{*Auxiliary have or has.
*Past participle.}

Eaten and seen are irregular past participles; played is regular. In each sentence, the red auxiliary verb and the blue past participle form the present perfect verb phrase.

Past perfect: had + past participle

Use had with any subject to place an action before another point in the past.

The dog ate before we came home. Mia finished her book before dinner. Had eaten and had finished show which actions happened first. Had is the auxiliary verb; eaten and finished are past participles.

Do not confuse simple past with past participle

Some irregular verbs have different simple past and past participle forms: eat → ate → eaten and see → saw → seen. Use the past participle after the auxiliary have, has, or had.

_{*Auxiliary have, has, or had.
*Simple past verb or past participle.}

Ate and saw are simple past forms. Eaten and seen are past participles. The sentence The cat ate its food yesterday is correct because it uses the simple past without an auxiliary.

Check the role of have

Have does not always form a perfect tense. In I have a book, have is the main verb. In I have eaten, have is an auxiliary verb and eaten is the past participle. Check the job of have before applying the rule.

TOEFL strategy

Find have, has, or had and ask whether it is an auxiliary verb. If it is, check that the main verb is a past participle. Watch for irregular forms such as eaten, seen, and gone. Use has with a singular third person subject such as Mia or the cat.