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Alphenz Posted 14 years ago
Grammar

we had was

Hello,
this is my first time here, and I have a question.
Yesterday, I made a sentence and it was:
"The success we had was because of you."

and my teacher said it was wrong, because there are double verb in it.
but then I searched through Internet, there are so many sentences with "..had was..."
can someone explain to me what is wrong? Thank you very much. Emotion: smile
  

Top answer

The only thing that's wrong is your teacher. "The success we had" is a noun phrase. It's the subject of the verb "was".

— DMW

  • The only thing that's wrong is your teacher.
  • "The success we had" is a noun phrase.
  • It's the subject of the verb "was".
  • It's common for a noun phrase to end with a verb, like this; and when such a noun phrase is the subject of a sentence, you typically end up with two verbs together, as in your example.
  • I have written some more such examples below.
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5 Answers
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The only thing that's wrong is your teacher.

"The success we had" is a noun phrase. It's the subject of the verb "was". It's common for a noun phrase to end with a verb, like this; and when such a noun phrase is the subject of a sentence, you typically end up with two verbs together, as in your example. I have written some more such examples below. All of them are correct English.
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DMWThe deer that the lion attacked tried to fight it off with its antlers.
The movie that I saw was highly acclaimed by the reviewers.
The little boy that my wife and I raised has grown into a fine young man.
Hello DMW,

Just wanted to ask, shouldn't there be a comma before tried, was, and has?

Thank you.
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I can't imagine anyone putting a comma there. It would be interesting to google some of these pairs of verbs and see what other people do. I certainly wouldn't pause there in speech.
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SurferJust wanted to ask, shouldn't there be a comma before tried, was, and has?
No. What makes you think there should be?
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So there is nothing wrong with my sentence.
Great, thank you DMW and enoon for helping me.
I'm gonna explain to my teacher about this, how come she didn't know about this
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