Having had....

RomanGirl · Post by **RomanGirl** » Wed Feb 18, 2004 1:45 pm

Kids,
Please help me with this: "having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we carried this message....etc."

What verb tense is "having had"? I have looking everywhere, and someone said that DAVE's ESL would have the answer!
thanks in advance,
RomanGirl

Peter · Post by **Peter** » Wed Feb 18, 2004 3:23 pm

It's not a tense, it's a participle clause.

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Wed Feb 18, 2004 3:58 pm

Has your teacher been surfing the internet in search of difficult grammar?

http://www.udel.edu/eli/g10b.html

Q. (from Craig) what is the verb tense for the following passage: "...having had a spiritual awakening..."? i have looked and can not seem to find the answer. help

A. Craig, the phrase "having had" is a reduced adverbial phrase. The adverbial clause it's derived from is probably something like "because I had a spiritual awakening" or "after I had a spiritual awakening." It's related to the past perfect in that it expresses one action (i.e. having a spiritual awakening) that preceded another action that happened after the spiritual awakening. This reduced phrase is a device to indicate a cause and effect relationship.

Lowell

Here's more on reduced adverbial clauses:

http://depts.gallaudet.edu/englishworks ... auses.html

lolwhites · Post by **lolwhites** » Wed Feb 18, 2004 5:56 pm

Some people look down on this construction so be careful with it. Also, you need to make sure it's unambiguous as regards who does the "-ing thing". When I was at school, my head teacher commented on the rubbish in and around the building by angrily announcing "I saw a sandwich walking down the corridor". An extreme example, but a real one! Prince Charles was criticised in the media when he said "us both having tried" in an interview about his marriage