confuse mind wrote:I am very confused in the correct usage of 'had had / has had / had'. Can somone please explain me the usage or pointers to some text for this.
The three usages belong to three different tenses.
To get to the basics
Every verb has present past and past participle forms.
For ex: Eat Ate Eaten are the present past and past participle forms for the verb "eat".
Similarly for the verb "have"
Has/Have Had Had are the present past and past participle forms respectively.
If you take a closer look the past and past participles forms for this verb are same and this sometimes creates confusion.
Getting to the tenses
The verb in present perfect tense is has/have + past participle of the verb
Ex:
I
have eaten my breakfast.
Now the sentence " I
have had my breakfast" is very similar to the above example.
So in the second sentence the verb "have" is the verb indicating present perfect and "had" is the past participle form of the verb.
The verb is simple past is past form of the verb.
Ex: I
ate my breakfast at 9 AM this morning.
the sentence "I
had my breakfast at 9 Am this morning" also gives the same meaning.
Here "had" is the past form of the verb.
The verb in Past Perfect is had + past participle
Ex: I
had eaten my breakfast before I met my friend.
The sentence " I
had had my breakfast before I met my friend" also gives the same meaning.
the first "had" is indicator of past perfect tense and the second "had" is the past participle form of the verb
