Have is two words that look the same. In she has seen it helps the verb after it. In she has a sister it is the verb. The test is the word that comes next. The scan files 17 of the chapter's 37 forms of have as helping verbs and 10 as main verbs, and ten it reads as questions or cannot place; read by hand, 24 of the 37 are helping verbs, and the rows show where the scan went wrong.
Core ideas
Three ideas. The first is the whole lesson in a line.
A participle after it makes it a helping verb: had been, has written, have met. A noun phrase after it — a word such as a, the, no, much — makes it the main verb, and it means own or hold or experience: had the fortune, had no pleasure.
Have to followed by a verb says that something is needed: I have to go. It is not the helping verb and not quite the main verb. The lab counts it apart, and the chapter has none.
The scan files 17 of the chapter's 37 forms as helping verbs, 45.9%. Read the rows and 24 are: three have a participle the word list lacks, and four have a word or a phrase between have and its participle, had by some accident been lost. Counted by the same scan over the whole novel, 59.5% are helping verbs. This lesson reads the 37 and quotes the 2,339.
The material
Five rows filed as something else, one filed as a question and one filed as the main verb are helping verbs: seven in all.
She has seen the letter. She has a letter. The same word, the same spelling, and two different jobs. In the first, has is a helping verb: it stands in front of seen and carries the tense. In the second it is the verb, and it means that she holds the letter.
The word after it decides which. If a participle follows — seen, been, written — have is a helping verb. If a noun phrase follows — a letter, no pleasure, much to say — it is the main verb.
Chapter XXVI has 37 forms of have: have, has, had and having. The lab steps over not and short adverb words and reads the next word. It finds 17 helping verbs, which is 45.9%, and 10 main verbs. Zero are have to. Three are filed as questions, because a pronoun follows have, and seven as something else.
Look at the three: she might have foreseen, the event has proved you right, apparent partiality had subsided. Each has a participle after the helping verb. The scan's word list does not have foreseen, proved or subsided as participle forms, so it could not place them. Now read the other rows. Four more are helping verbs too. Had by some accident been lost and if he had at all cared have a phrase between have and its participle, and the scan files them as something else. Had fortune permitted it and for had I really experienced are the old way of saying if, with the subject moved in behind had; the scan files the first as the main verb and the second as a question. Add the seven and the split is 24 helping verbs against 13 others, 64.9%. The number the page prints is the scan's, and the rows tell you the rest.
37 forms is a small count. Counted once over the whole novel and quoted here, have appears 2,339 times, and 59.5% of them are helping verbs, 32.1% main verbs and 1.1% have to. The page's lower share for the chapter is the scan's reading, not the chapter's: by hand the chapter gives 64.9%, and the novel's count comes from the same one-word scan, with 6.8% filed as something else. In the play The Importance of Being Earnest, quoted the same way, the split is 50.1% helping verbs, 42.0% main verbs and 2.9% have to. In the two modern documents the lab counts 16 helping verbs in 23 forms, 69.6%, 3 main verbs, one have to, had to do, and three filed as something else, had violated, has diminished, has morphed, all helping verbs with a participle the list lacks.
We had better not mention it. The scan reads better as no word it knows, so it files had as something else. The phrase had better is one unit, and it gives advice. I would have you be on your guard is a third use of the word: have with a person and a bare verb after it means make or let, and the scan, which sees a pronoun after have, files it as a question. Rows like these are in the lab's counts, and they are the reason to read the rows.
Interactive
Every pronoun, modal, have, be and not in the chapter, and what comes next
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Method
Look one word to the right, then two.
Had not, has already: look past them to the next word. A subject can move in front too, had I known, had fortune permitted; look past that as well.
Been, seen, written, met. Then have is a helping verb.
Then have is the main verb, and it is about having something.
Then it is have to. Read the verb after it, and ask whether the sentence is about need.
These rows are from the chapter. The first column is what the lab files them as.
In the first two rows a participle follows, so the helping verb is doing a job for another verb. In the next two the word after have begins a noun phrase and have is the verb itself. The fifth row is the three the lab files as something else: foreseen, proved and subsided are participle forms, but the word list the scan uses does not hold them as that. The last row is two of the other four. In had I really experienced and had fortune permitted the subject has moved in between; the lab files the first as a question, because a pronoun follows had, and the second as the main verb. In if he had at all cared and had by some accident been lost a phrase has, and the lab files both as something else. All seven are helping verbs, so read by hand the split is 24 helping verbs against 13 others, and the page keeps the lab's own count so you can see what the scan did.
You should be able to say what comes after have in each case, sort a list of rows into the helping verb, the main verb and have to, and read the three shares off a printed chapter.
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