Difference between "has" and "was" in past tense sentences.

Question

Hi all. I was recently asked a question by a friend who speaks English as a second language. He asked what the rule was about "has" and was", and he gave the following examples:

A surgical complication has occurred.
The drink was drunk.

He wondered why it's not possible to say "a complication was occurred", and although I know it's incorrect, I couldn't figure out the reason why (I guessed it had something to do with concrete vs. abstract). Anyone able to explain this plainly, or point to a relevant website (I tried a search, but didn't have much luck).

Thanks in advance!

DaveinJapan

Cool Breeze · Accepted Answer

DaveinJapanA surgical complication has occurred.

The sentence is in the active voice. A surgical complication is the grammatical subject and the actual subject, and has occurred is the present perfect tense.

DaveinJapanThe drink was drunk.

The sentence is in the passive voice. The drink is only the grammatical subject, which determines that was, not were, must be used as the passive voice auxiliary in the past tense. The drink didn't drink anything. It was only the object of drinking. The present perfect would be The drink has been drunk.

CB

Anonymous · Answer

DaveinJapan Hi all. I was recently asked a question by a friend who speaks English as a second language. He asked what the rule was about "has" and was", and he gave the following examples:A surgical complication has occurred.The drink was drunk.He wondered why it's not possible to say "a complication was occurred", and although I know it's incorrect, I couldn't figure out the reason why (I guessed it had something to do with concrete vs. abstract). Anyone able to explain this plainly, or point to a relevant website (I tried a search, but didn't have much luck).Thanks in advance!DaveinJapan

The explanation is that "to occur" is an intransitive verb and "to drink" is a transitive one.

They drank the drink, here the object of the transitive verb, i.e. "the drink" becomes the subject of the passive The drink was drunk.

In A surgical complication has occurred there is no object following the verb (as "occur" is intransitive), i.e. there is lack of the object "complication" to be reversed into the subject of the passive sentence. Otherwise, you'd have to have a nonsensical sentence, an impossible one, *A surgical complication has occurred a complication.

Difference between "has" and "was" in past tense sentences.

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