Pick out the main verb in the following sentence : I have had dinner.
had
In a verb phrase, the auxiliary (helping) verb comes first and the main (lexical) verb carries the actual meaning of the action.
‘I have had dinner’ is in the present perfect tense: ‘have’ + past participle. Here ‘have’ is the auxiliary that builds the tense, and ‘had’ is the past participle of the main verb ‘have’ meaning ‘to eat/take’.
So the main verb in this sentence is ‘had’.
‘have’ alone is only the helping verb. ‘have had’ is the whole verb phrase (auxiliary + main verb), not just the main verb. ‘had have’ is not a word sequence in the sentence and is ungrammatical.
had option is correct.
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