Is "have" a helping verb?

[ZhengJ600]

Hi GMAT Experts,

I have a general question on whether "have" can be used as a helping verb. This is originally from OG2020 SC #836 (choice D). I understand that we can't talk about OG problems here, so I have tweaked the sentence below slightly for the sake of discussion. Can you please let me know whether my interpretations below are correct?

1) People in the U.S. never wore face masks as people in any other countries did. (Correct - "wore" is in parallel with "did")

2) People in the U.S. never wore face masks as people in any other countries have. (Incorrect - just like the choice D from the OG problem, "have" by itself can't be used as the helping verb)

The correct version should be: People in the U.S. never wore face masks as people in any other countries have done.

Thank you for your help. Much appreciated.

[Sage Pearce-Higgins]

The verb 'have' can certainly be a helping verb. It appears in the present perfect (e.g. 'She has lived here for 4 years.') and in the past perfect (e.g. 'By the time he was 3, he had started speaking Japanese.'), as well as some other constructions (e.g. 'Having finished his work, Ivan went home.)

Confusingly, the verb 'have' can also be used as a regular verb, e.g., 'We have a house that is painted blue.'

The correct version should be: People in the U.S. never wore face masks as people in any other countries have done.

I disagree. If we follow the logic of SC 836, we've got a mismatch of tenses.

The question of whether helping verbs need to strictly match in parallel or comparison structures is somewhat controversial. Take a look at this discussion here: https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/foru ... 30990.html

Consequently, the takeaway from SC 836 may be not that helping verbs need to match in all situations, but that they need to match in this situation, in which the context is that two past events are being compared.

[ZhengJ600]

Thanks Sage. This is very helpful.

[Sage Pearce-Higgins]

You're welcome.