i'd love some grammar help from you guys! i really appreciate it.
should the sentence be "She may have gone into... , or lost..."
or should it be "she may have gone into... , or have lost..."
many many thanks!!
While I think it should be the latter one. "may" just perform a guess tone,so it is the same as "she have gone.." and the sentence should be parallel, so after "or" it should be "have lost".
just my personal opinion. I'm a learner too
Yes. It should be "have gone into ... have lost." This is keeps the tense of the verbs consistent throughout the sentence.
You should use "have gone into ~~, have lost." When you use the tense, you should match the forth and latter tense.
hope it helps you.
It is true that they should match, but you ARE allowed to have one word (have) apply to 2 things instead of just one.
Like this:
She may have gone into work or lost her cell phone, so try sending her an email message.
(In that sentence, "have" applies to both "gone" and "lost.")
Again:
She may have gone into the basement or lost her ability to answer the door, because she never answers even though I keep knocking.
SO, it actually is okay to drop the second "have" as long as the meaning will be clear.
But if there are a lot of words in the sentence I would KEEP the second "she may have" for the sake of clarity:
She may have gone into an area where there is no cell phone service, or she may have lost her cell phone, or maybe the reason she does not answer is that she doesn't want to talk to me!
But still, it would be okay to do this:
She may have gone into an area where there is no cell phone service or lost her cell phone, or maybe the reason she does not answer is that she doesn't want to talk to me!
Technically, both examples are grammatically correct. The first is a more concise rendering of the statement, while the second example clarifies what you are trying to say.
