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Can I use has, have, and had together in a sentence like,

Karan says he has have had three "epic fail" relationships in life.

I've seen this sentence in The Indian Express and India Today.

A guy has been arguing with me insisting that you can use like that and it's grammatical.

I said it's ungrammatical but he showed the websites above and a few more(of same article).

I still can't understand whether it's grammatical or not. I've never seen such a usage.

Am I right in saying it's ungrammatical? Please someone correct me if I'm wrong.

Omkar Reddy
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    Maybe it's grammatical in Indian English, but it definitely sounds ungrammatical in other Englishes, such as American and British English (as far as I know). –  Dec 26 '16 at 13:23
  • I think it's archaic; it's no place in modern English. – Khan Dec 26 '16 at 13:38
  • https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=has+have+had&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Chas%20have%20had%3B%2Cc0 – Khan Dec 26 '16 at 13:40
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    @Khan On what do you base that? A few contextless spikes in a Google Ngrams graph for "has have had"? That structure is completely legal in certain contexts. The graph is immaterial to the discussion, and your conclusion is hence spurious. –  Dec 26 '16 at 13:56
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    @Khan None of the actual citations in your nGram is an instance of a construction has have had--they're all false hits where the collocation of the three words is either a list of forms in a grammar book or an accidental sequence which crosses constituent boundaries. – StoneyB on hiatus Dec 26 '16 at 15:19

2 Answers2

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*Karan says he has have had three "epic fail" relationships in life.

The above sentence doesn't appear to be grammatical. I suspect the author wanted to say the following instead:

Karan says he has had three "epic fail" relationships in (his) life.


A "has have had" cluster may occur in a sentence such as this one:

[The medical conditions he has] [have had an impact on his professional life.]

Note that the part in bold is an accidental sequence which crosses constituent boundaries, as per StoneyB's comment; i.e., it comprises two units, rather than one, which I denoted by using square brackets.


Read the following answer/post if you don't know how to construct a perfect tense: What is the perfect, and how should I use it? § How do I construct a Perfect?

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    Oh, the fun you can have with these, especially sans punctuation: e.g. he has have had while she had had had. – Lawrence Jul 18 '18 at 15:14
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I think it is just a typo, where a word got lost:

Karan says he has to have had three "epic fail" relationships in life.

Deipatrous
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