My friend and I were looking towards our boss and wondering when to enter his room to speak to him. Usually, a good indication of whether he is free or not is to check whether he is sitting down.
So my friend looks at me and asks me "Has he sit yet?"
To which I laughed and said, it's supposed to be "Has he sat yet?"/"Has he sat down yet?"
But she insisted that she was right, and now there is some money on the line. I wasn't able to get clear examples of this online. Which one is grammatically correct?
Best Answer
By using the helping verb has, your friend has started a present perfect interrogative. This is commonly used to ask if an event has been completed, so it is appropriate for the circumstance. As you can see at various resources (such as englishpractice.com, found by googling for "present perfect interrogative"), the present perfect interrogative is formed by "have/has + (subject) + (past participle)", so "has he sat" is correct form.
If your friend had used did instead of has, she would have been starting a simple past interrogative, which can be used to ask if an event has occurred, which is also appropriate for the circumstance. (In many cases, the choice between the two forms can come down to personal preference.) The simple past interrogative takes the bare infinitive form of the base verb along with the helping verb; "did he sit" would be correct for this.
It appears that your friend accidentally mixed these two forms, resulting in an incorrect sentence.