Learn English – “and been” vs “and has been” when “has” is repeated.

auxiliary-verbsgrammaticalityredundancy

I have the sentence:

The role has gotten easier and easier to play, and been forced upon me more frequently than not.

I was wondering if and been is correct to use in this case, or if "has" must be used again i.e. and been or and has been.

Best Answer

  • The role has gotten easier and easier to play, and been forced upon me more frequently than not.

In this sentence, has is an auxiliary verb used in a present perfect construction. Gotten is the past participle of the lexical verb get. (In British English the past participle of this verb is got, but become would be more natural in this particular sentence.)

We could indicate the structure of the sentence thus:

  • The role has [gotten easier and easier to play] and [been forced upon me more frequently than not]

The bracketed sections there are coordinates linked by the co-ordinator and. They are also both dependents of the auxiliary verb has.

Because both of the conjuncts are verb phrases which are dependents of the the same auxiliary, there is no need to repeat the auxiliary verb here. The sentence is perfectly grammatical.

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